Well, there is no danger of this ever happening because it really isn't up to NASCAR officials.
NO true enthusiast would ever adopt any of those things you mentioned. The reason we race IS the feedback, the G's, the mud, the smell of burning methanol, the dirt... and of course, the risk. Take them away, and you take away that insane and addictive rush, the high... may as well hop in the Volvo, turn on the air and go on a 3 hour trip on the interstate.
Racing generates the one drug that can't be bought outright with cash. It's the dirty little secret that non-racing folks don't quite grasp. If you do it even once, you will forever want more of it and you will spend your fortunes trying to get it.
“Well, there is no danger of this ever happening because it really isn’t up to NASCAR officials.”
So a driver could have air conditioning, really good power assisted steering, better g-force minimization etc. (and it somehow didn’t cut down on performance by weight or power train drain) if he wanted to and the technology was available? But he would reject all those things, even if it would help get better finishes?
I guess my point is that at some point the cars technology will do away with a lot of the things that make racing so extreme, if it is allowed to. They will always have driver skill and strategy, but I’m not sure about exhaustion/endurance being as high a factor. I mean do the drivers have it better now or in the 50’s and 60’s as far as risk and endurance go? The cars are faster now, safety is better though, I assume. The same thing with other sports. The players are in better shape in general than ever, but also wear better helmets, pitch from lowered mounds, warned more often and so on.
Freegards
“Racing generates the one drug that can’t be bought outright with cash. It’s the dirty little secret that non-racing folks don’t quite grasp. If you do it even once, you will forever want more of it and you will spend your fortunes trying to get it. “
That’s what it all boils down to and the thing that any n0n racer or even casual fans of race-oriented sport, mechanized or not, can’t really understand until they actually experience it. It’s not a slam on them, just the facts.
My first ‘real’ racing experience came on snowmobiles back in the 80s when a 50 horespower 340 cc machine was pretty quick and a 440cc Yamaha SRX could be tweaked to within an inch of it’s life at 125 HP. Today, That’s recreational stock stuff. But we had fun regardless because 100 mph in ice with your eye level about a foot off it in the turns is not for the faint-hearted.
It’s really hard to describe that ‘rush’ when you really think about it. When you have a practically non stop adrenaline rush like that, it’s sensory overload. You perceive a thousand little things all at once and thanks to the ‘clarity of mind’ that adrenaline forces on the brain as a part of what it does, you ‘understand it’ and process it.. that ‘feedback’ refereed to earlier.
I say this tongue in cheek, but it’s true. A dog has a few thousand times the sense of smell as a human. What do you think he’s doing when he sticks his head out the window at 80 mph on the freeway? He’s getting that sensory overload I’m talking about.
The body itself is operating in a far higher state of capability and reacts with the ‘rattlesnake on crank’ quickness that another poster refereed to. And depending on the sport, that mental and physical state that TV commentators call “the zone” can last for the duration of the race, whether a few laps or a few hours. This is a level of physical performance far above your ‘average’ and you are very much mentally aware of it. Feels pretty damn good!
Then, when it’s over, you are physically and mentally drained and you are then flooded with another rush of natural endorphins as the brain preps the body to deal with the physical and chemical exertion you and ‘it’ just placed on the system overall.
There is not one other experience on God’s green earth, nor one drug available that replicates all that. If you ever wondered why people will do things like go spend fortunes for the ability to hit 200 mph for 5 hours, go broke and then struggle to build back up to do it again or pound themselves into wrecks, risking broken bones (and getting them quite often) and even killing themselves on dirt bikes/mountain bikes and in other forms of motorsports, now you have a better idea.
But until (in the general sense) you actually do it, you will never really understand it.
The casually bandied about term “Adrenaline junkie” is a very real “addiction” in it’s own way to many.