Tweet
A place to make comments and discussion that's going to inspire certain people to demand how dare you say such a thing. To start off, in blazing fashion...
Are male auto racers superior to female ones, at core level?
*Weathers whatever immediate rage comes from a lot of people, including likely all the women on this board, and then proceeds to name where he got such an idea.*
Ever read a book by Brock Yates, called Against Death and Time?...It's my favorite volume, on racing, period. In it, he identifies what people in the 1950s thought of the men who raced the "cast-iron chariots", who in turn were being killed, sooner or later, by a greater ratio than 50% of those who competed. Responses, in turn, were mixed.
People like one of the writers for LIFE decried to sport as appealing to the basest instincts in humanity, in his article "Motorized Lemmings?" Clark Gable, in turn, hung around the "real men" at Indy, and made it a point to be a regular there. Women like Rudi Valley, Jean Greer (sp?), and Barbara Briton were likewise all regulars, women that Yates claims, openly so, were automatically attracted to the atmosphere that was inculcated by "alpha males" such as the Jimmy Bryans, Jack McGraths, Roger Wards and Johnnie Boyds and more, not to mention a demigod named Vukovich and the true Last of the Gladiators, A.J. (go look at the crowd reaction, when he took the lead at Indy for the final time in '82. He was the Last, as well as arguable, vs. Vuke, on the Greatest).
These days, think of Danica Patrick, for all her excellence (and I'm not taking away from it, in the regular way of thinking about it), trying to be compared to those men, those males. Sarah Fisher, or Lyn St. James....no, they didn't have equipment like Rahal's given Patrick. But have any of them had the kind of fire that radio-listeners claimed Rick Mears had, (only) when he was strapped into the car? Jack Arute claimed he was like a psychopath sometimes, the intensity he said he could hear. And Mears was one of the greatest of all time.
To those who are going to accuse me of being sexist (like was raised about Jenson Button, possibly for realistic reasons), I'd like to point out that I'd love to see Danica win it, now that she's not a rookie (had enough of them for a good while). Another first for the Great Indy, first time a woman would win in "primary-class" competition. If she wins elsewhere, just fine too.....another nail in CART's coffin, so that IndyCar can take over a given Long Beach, or elsewhere. I am in support of Danica.
But does she have the "gruesome" fire in her blood? The craving that Al Unser, Jr., no matter if people here are or aren't fans of his, spoke of? "There comes that time, when money doesn't matter, living doesn't matter...."...only winning. Ambition, barbarous gladiator competition, whatever you wish to call it. He DIDN'T let off the gas, himself, in 1989. He and Emmo had it. My sister once said that dying is not a price worth paying to try for that Race, and we got into a big argument about it, because I certainly begged to differ.....guess I have it, too.
And even if Danica does, is that the massively rare exception, an indicator of what kind of orientation the sport literally must have in it?
I ask all these things because of the age-old demanding question at this place, as to which guys (or gals, the question being asked) deserve rides. Which guys have not just talent, but the obsessive It that makes the DePalmas, Shaws, Vukovichs and Foyts.
Anyone who comes on and half-yells at me that I deserve so and so for being some stuck-up sexist so-and-so, after I just elaborated some of the explanation on, I reserve the right to let have it with both barrels.
Are male auto racers superior to female ones, at core level?
*Weathers whatever immediate rage comes from a lot of people, including likely all the women on this board, and then proceeds to name where he got such an idea.*
Ever read a book by Brock Yates, called Against Death and Time?...It's my favorite volume, on racing, period. In it, he identifies what people in the 1950s thought of the men who raced the "cast-iron chariots", who in turn were being killed, sooner or later, by a greater ratio than 50% of those who competed. Responses, in turn, were mixed.
People like one of the writers for LIFE decried to sport as appealing to the basest instincts in humanity, in his article "Motorized Lemmings?" Clark Gable, in turn, hung around the "real men" at Indy, and made it a point to be a regular there. Women like Rudi Valley, Jean Greer (sp?), and Barbara Briton were likewise all regulars, women that Yates claims, openly so, were automatically attracted to the atmosphere that was inculcated by "alpha males" such as the Jimmy Bryans, Jack McGraths, Roger Wards and Johnnie Boyds and more, not to mention a demigod named Vukovich and the true Last of the Gladiators, A.J. (go look at the crowd reaction, when he took the lead at Indy for the final time in '82. He was the Last, as well as arguable, vs. Vuke, on the Greatest).
These days, think of Danica Patrick, for all her excellence (and I'm not taking away from it, in the regular way of thinking about it), trying to be compared to those men, those males. Sarah Fisher, or Lyn St. James....no, they didn't have equipment like Rahal's given Patrick. But have any of them had the kind of fire that radio-listeners claimed Rick Mears had, (only) when he was strapped into the car? Jack Arute claimed he was like a psychopath sometimes, the intensity he said he could hear. And Mears was one of the greatest of all time.
To those who are going to accuse me of being sexist (like was raised about Jenson Button, possibly for realistic reasons), I'd like to point out that I'd love to see Danica win it, now that she's not a rookie (had enough of them for a good while). Another first for the Great Indy, first time a woman would win in "primary-class" competition. If she wins elsewhere, just fine too.....another nail in CART's coffin, so that IndyCar can take over a given Long Beach, or elsewhere. I am in support of Danica.
But does she have the "gruesome" fire in her blood? The craving that Al Unser, Jr., no matter if people here are or aren't fans of his, spoke of? "There comes that time, when money doesn't matter, living doesn't matter...."...only winning. Ambition, barbarous gladiator competition, whatever you wish to call it. He DIDN'T let off the gas, himself, in 1989. He and Emmo had it. My sister once said that dying is not a price worth paying to try for that Race, and we got into a big argument about it, because I certainly begged to differ.....guess I have it, too.
And even if Danica does, is that the massively rare exception, an indicator of what kind of orientation the sport literally must have in it?
I ask all these things because of the age-old demanding question at this place, as to which guys (or gals, the question being asked) deserve rides. Which guys have not just talent, but the obsessive It that makes the DePalmas, Shaws, Vukovichs and Foyts.
Anyone who comes on and half-yells at me that I deserve so and so for being some stuck-up sexist so-and-so, after I just elaborated some of the explanation on, I reserve the right to let have it with both barrels.
Comment