Anonymous wrote:Jeez... you guys know very little about IRL. IRL has better drivers. Also, the are vastly different from CART cars, i.e. the engine package. CART uses a Turbo V-6 while IRL has a normally-aspiraited V-8. The difference is 100 more hp infavor of CART. CART has the quicker cars, but IRL has the better drivers. Furthermore, IRL has differnet auto makers, unlike CART, which only allows the Ford-Cosworth engine.
The cars, series, or even the type of track doesn't determine how you asess the skill level of the driver. Heck, if you believe for one second on that logic, then Jim Clark was a dud.
NOT
Jim is arguably one of the three greatest racers of all time, period. Most of his racing was done on what we now consider underpowered cars. He also raced at Indy.
As far as oval racing, they spend a lot of the time right on the razor edge. In fact, to be the quickest, you basically have to be in an unstable car, and driving it within a millimeter of trouble. And in the IRL, they race wheel to wheel, two, even three wide for many, many laps. That does take skill and courage. Richard Petty, the famous NASCAR racer, had his car set up to be very loose, and to be able to run a higher line than what most run. That made his car very tricky and unstable, yet with that setup, he was usually the quickest car at the end of the race. That takes a huge amount of driver skill.
Just because a driver is in a certain series, don't assume his skill level is less than a driver in another series. If Fangio had followed the same career path today, as he followed in his great post WW2 career, he would have never made Formula One, because he entered that series well into his elder years (relative to other active drivers).
Please, respect all racers, and don't dis them just because they race in a series you don't have much interest in.
