What makes car racing a sport?

Dear Sports Fan,

What makes racing a sport? And why do Formula One drivers get paid so much?

Thanks,
Sarah

Dear Sarah,

The question of what constitutes a sport will be a recurring one on this website as it is in bars and around water-coolers all over the world. In a recent post I made the only partially tongue-in-cheek comment that I consider baseball to be only nominally a sport. There is some combination of physicality, objective standards of winning, and tradition that defines an activity as a sport. In this case the element that is probably making you question whether car racing is a sport is the physicality. Certainly the objective standard for winning is clear. Whoever gets over that line first wins! As far as tradition goes, there were chariot races back in ancient rome and organized running races even before that.

I have to admit that I have been somewhat dubious of how physical the sport of racing is and how physically talented the drivers need to be. Crazy, true, but world-class athletes? I never thought so until I read this article on espn.com a few days ago. It all starts, as so much does these days with a tweet. A young NFL wide receiver named Golden Tate^[1] tweeted about famous race-car driver Jimmy Johnson:

“Jimmy Johnson up for best athlete????? Um nooo … Driving a car does not show athleticism.”

During the slow summer sports season, this sparked a small controversy. Embeded into the ESPN article is a clip from their show Sports Science where they did some tests on driver Carl Edwards^[2] and found that he tested very well when compared to other athletes in terms of cardiovascular fitness, reaction times, and mental focus. I came away from reading and watching with a bit more appreciation for drivers, especially because even if all they have to do 99.9% of the time is turn left, they still have to do it at 200 miles per hour and the .1% when they have to do other things like avoid a crash ahead of them while talking to their crews about whether or not to get new tires is WAY beyond what a normal person could do.

As far as why Formula One drivers get paid so much… it seems like it has something to do with sponsorships. According to this long discussion on ferrarichat.com^[3] even to make it into Formula 1 as a driver, you need to have some serious financial backing. There seems to be a history of “gentlemen drivers” in Formula 1 who we’re more rich guys who drove than drivers who wanted to become rich. In the last 10 to 15 years the money seems to be driven by the 500+ million people who watch Formula 1 on television and scantily clad women — a well known symbiotic relationship. It’s not all sunny though, there have been several bancruptcies of Formula 1 teams lately. Like many sports it feels like the value is largely habit and I worry about it collapsing sometime.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer