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jcreator
Modern science tells us that a critical factoring in maintaining fitness levels while driving in a race is proper hydration. Jules Goux, one of the Peugeot team’s star drivers pre-World War I, could have told you this more than a century ago, when Goux and his mechanic won the 1913 Indy 500 fueled by champagne. Early post-race reports indicated they had a bottle at each of their six pit stops, but this proved unfounded. It was only four bottles, and they were small ones at that, they said.
Sure.Big or small, afterward Goux was quoted as saying, “Without the good wine, we wouldn’t have won.” The next year’s rules included a no-alcohol regulation.We all know being physically fit is good for you and that exercise science has developed any number of programs to make you even more fit. Pick a sport—any sport, except possibly horseshoes—and you run into a wealth of material covering both the mental and physical aspects of paths to improvement, nutritional advice, everything right up to the address of your local purveyor of “Better Living Through Chemistry.” Mario Andretti in the lead at the 1978 Belgian Grand PrixToday’s major-league racing teams—in Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar, whatever—have enough fitness equipment to stock a retail outlet; trainers, physical therapists, psychologists and nutrition gurus are almost as common as mechanics.
Roger Penske, who seldom runs second to anyone when it comes to adding a new wrinkle, installed the first fitness program for his IndyCar team 23 years ago. The stock-car facility was installed in the late 1990s.Today, with both single-seat and stock-car teams headquartered in the same North Carolina building, Penske’s full-time staff includes an athletic director and a trainer. “Our drivers and crew members are all on some type of fitness program,” says Penske spokesman David Hovis.Despite all the obvious evidence of benefits, three men you can find in any hall of fame that includes racing drivers say they never had an exercise program. They are Mario Andretti, Sir Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney.Too busy, they all said.
Sir Stirling Moss chatting with Colin Chapman while clutching the 1961 Silver City Trophy at Brand Hatchs. Sir Stirling, the great British pilot of the 1950s and early ’60s, and a leading candidate for the best sports-car driver of any era, told Autoweek, “I never trained because I was racing every week of the year. This adds up to 156 days in a racing car, plus two or three days a week testing.”
Moss is primarily known for not winning the world driving title. He won almost everything else, but it was his performances in long-distance events that were truly remarkable.
When he won the 1955 Mille Miglia, he covered the 1,000 miles of Italian roads in 10 hours, 7 minutes.
He drove 42 of the 44 laps when he won the Nürburgring 1,000 Kilometers in 1958 and all but six of the 84 laps when he won the 1955 Tourist Trophy on Ireland’s dangerous 7.4-mile Dundrod Circuit.
He did it all in front-engined cars without power steering.
Andretti, someone observed, might not be the world’s best driver ever, but you cannot discuss the “best” driver without having his name on the list.
Mario Andretti offering a few pointers to grandson, Marco Andretti One of America’s two world champions, a Sebring winner, an Indianapolis winner and winner of most anything else you might care to name, Andretti says he didn’t have a formal training program because he was too busy doing what he was doing.
Andretti’s grandson Marco, Mario says, “doesn’t drive nearly as much,” since the design features of Indy cars are fixed, leading to less development time. “So when he is home, he works out every day, and runs 5, sometimes 8, miles,” he said. Andretti’s endurance reputation goes back a long way—to 1963, the year before he got his first ride in a USAC Championship car.He won the feature event at a New Jersey track, loaded up his dirt car, towed it 110 miles west to a Pennsylvania oval and won two feature events there the same night.
Gurney, who spent at least as much time building cars as he did driving them, says playing table tennis was a favorite method of maintaining hand-eye coordination. In general, however, he was careful not to work up to too fine an edge, because, as he put it, “I might get too aggressive.”None of the three, it should be noted, included champagne.This article first appeared in the May 25, 2015 issue of Autoweek.
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