Manisha Unleashed
Do Racing Drivers Need to Be Athletes?
Challenging the old idea that racing drivers are “just sitting in a car”
There is one comment racing drivers hear surprisingly often:
“But you’re just sitting in a car.”
Technically, that’s true.
We are sitting down.
Unfortunately, we’re sitting inside a racing car while braking, accelerating, cornering, fighting heat, managing tyres, processing information and trying to make decisions at high speed — sometimes for hours.
So perhaps “just sitting” doesn’t quite describe it.
This week’s Unleashed Truth asks a simple question:
Do racing drivers really need to be athletes?
My answer is absolutely yes.
But the interesting part is understanding why.
Because racing fitness isn’t about looking athletic.
It’s about making sure your body doesn’t become the reason you have to slow down.
“The Car Does All the Work”
This is probably the biggest misconception.
The engine provides the acceleration.
The brakes slow the car.
The tyres generate the grip.
Power steering may reduce steering effort in some categories.
So what exactly is the driver doing?
The answer is:
Operating all of those systems while the car is doing everything possible to exhaust them.
Imagine performing a complicated task requiring tiny, precise movements while someone repeatedly pushes your body sideways.
Now put on a helmet and fireproof clothing.
Turn up the temperature.
Increase your heart rate.
Make every mistake potentially expensive.
Then ask yourself to maintain complete concentration.
That’s closer to racing.
Your Heart Doesn’t Think You’re Sitting Down
One of the strange things about motorsport is the contrast between appearance and reality.
Watch from outside and the driver seems relatively still.
Inside the car, the body is working constantly.
Your heart rate can remain elevated.
Your muscles are stabilising your body.
Your neck is supporting your helmet against cornering loads.
Your core is working.
Your legs repeatedly operate the pedals.
Your brain is processing enormous amounts of information.
And depending on the car and conditions, you’re dealing with significant heat.
The body doesn’t care that you’re technically sitting down.
It knows it’s working.
The Neck: A Racing Driver’s Most Obvious Muscle
If you’ve ever seen photographs of elite racing drivers, you may have noticed something unusual.
Their necks.
There’s a reason.
Your head already has weight.
Now add a helmet.
Then start cornering hard.
As lateral acceleration increases, the effective load your neck must resist rises dramatically.
And it doesn’t happen once.
Corner.
Straight.
Brake.
Corner.
Change direction.
Accelerate.
Repeat.
Lap after lap.
A driver whose neck begins to fatigue may struggle to keep their head properly positioned.
That isn’t simply uncomfortable.
It can affect vision, concentration and ultimately performance.
That’s why neck training is such a recognisable part of racing-driver fitness.
Braking Is Physical
Another surprise for people who haven’t driven serious racing machinery is braking.
In a road car, braking requires relatively little effort.
In many racing cars, particularly high-performance single-seaters and prototypes, braking can require substantial pedal force.
Now imagine doing that repeatedly.
Not randomly.
Precisely.
The pressure needs to be correct.
The initial application needs to be correct.
The release needs to be controlled.
And you’re doing it while the car is decelerating violently.
A tired leg doesn’t simply mean discomfort.
It can mean inconsistent braking.
And inconsistent braking means inconsistent lap times.
Core Strength Matters More Than People Realise
A racing driver doesn’t want to use the steering wheel as something to hold onto.
Your hands have another job.
They need to steer.
That’s where core strength becomes important.
The stronger and more stable your torso is, the better you can resist the movement of the car without introducing unnecessary tension into your arms.
This matters because driving quickly requires sensitivity.
If you’re desperately gripping the wheel simply to stabilise yourself, you’re making it harder to feel what the front tyres are doing.
Good physical conditioning allows you to be strong without becoming tense.
That distinction matters.
Then There Is the Heat
This can be brutal.
Race cars aren’t designed around air-conditioning and comfortable leather seats.
Depending on the category, the cockpit can become extremely hot.
You’re wearing fire-resistant underwear.
A race suit.
Gloves.
Boots.
Helmet.
Possibly additional safety equipment.
Then you’re surrounded by machinery producing heat.
Now race.
Heat increases physical stress.
You sweat.
You lose fluid.
Concentration can become more difficult.
Fatigue increases.
And dehydration can affect both physical and cognitive performance.
That’s why hydration isn’t something you think about five minutes before climbing into the car.
It begins before the race weekend.
Fitness Is Really About Consistency
This is perhaps the most important point.
You don’t train simply so you can survive the race.
You train so that lap 40 looks like lap 4.
Imagine two drivers with identical natural ability.
At the beginning of the race, they’re equally fast.
After 20 minutes, still equal.
Then fatigue begins.
Driver A’s braking point moves slightly.
Their steering becomes less precise.
Their reactions slow.
Small mistakes appear.
Driver B remains physically comfortable and mentally sharp.
The difference might initially be only a tenth of a second.
Then another.
Then another.
Across an entire race, that becomes significant.
Fitness doesn’t necessarily make the racing car faster.
It prevents the driver from becoming slower.
Endurance Racing Takes This Even Further
This is one reason endurance racing fascinates me.
In a 20-minute sprint race, you can push yourself extremely hard knowing the finish is coming quickly.
Endurance racing changes the equation.
At races such as Le Mans, drivers must manage physical and mental performance across an extraordinary period.
You may drive during the afternoon.
Then at night.
Then again in the early morning.
Your normal sleeping pattern disappears.
You have to eat.
Hydrate.
Recover.
Rest.
Then climb back into the car and immediately perform at racing speed.
That requires a different type of athletic preparation.
You aren’t simply training to drive.
You’re training to recover and drive again.
For someone whose ambition is Le Mans, that matters enormously to me.
Mental Fitness Is Physical Too
People often separate physical and mental performance.
In racing, they’re closely connected.
When your body becomes tired, your brain doesn’t remain magically unaffected.
Decision-making can deteriorate.
Reaction times can change.
Concentration becomes harder.
And racing requires constant decisions.
Where is the car behind me?
What’s happening ahead?
What did the engineer just say?
How are the tyres behaving?
Is the track changing?
Where is the grip?
Should I attack this car now or wait?
What happens at the next braking zone?
A racing driver’s brain never really switches off while the car is moving.
Physical fitness helps protect that mental performance.
Reaction Training
Reaction speed is another area people associate with racing drivers.
But reaction training isn’t simply about seeing a light and touching it quickly.
Real racing reactions are much more complicated.
You need to recognise information.
Interpret it.
Choose the correct response.
Then execute that response accurately.
A car moves unexpectedly.
Do you brake?
Steer?
Accelerate?
Hold your line?
The fastest physical reaction isn’t always the correct one.
That’s why racing drivers need decision speed, not merely reflexes.
Strength Versus Weight
This creates an interesting challenge for racing drivers.
We need strength.
But simply becoming as muscular as possible isn’t necessarily useful.
Extra body mass can be undesirable in motorsport.
So driver fitness tends to focus on functional performance.
Strength-to-weight ratio.
Core stability.
Neck endurance.
Cardiovascular conditioning.
Mobility.
Reaction.
Recovery.
The goal isn’t:
“How much weight can I lift?”
It’s:
“Can my body perform everything required inside the car without compromising my driving?”
That’s a very different definition of fitness.
Does Every Racing Driver Need the Same Fitness?
No.
And this is important.
Different motorsport disciplines place different demands on drivers.
A Formula One driver faces enormous cornering and braking loads.
An endurance driver needs exceptional stamina and recovery.
A rally driver needs strength, coordination and the ability to perform while the car is constantly moving beneath them.
A GT driver may spend long periods inside a hot cockpit.
Karting is surprisingly physical because there is little isolation between the driver and machine.
So the training programme should match the car.
You train for the job you’re going to perform.
Just like any other athlete.
Can You Be Too Fit?
Possibly — if you’re training for the wrong objective.
A racing driver doesn’t need the body of a heavyweight powerlifter.
Nor does every driver need to train like a marathon runner.
Fitness should support performance.
That means understanding what the car demands and building a programme around it.
For me, that includes a mixture of:
Cardiovascular endurance
Core strength
Neck conditioning
Functional strength
Reaction work
Mobility
Hydration and nutrition
Recovery
And importantly, the programme needs to fit around driving.
The objective is always the same.
Become a better racing driver.
Not simply a better gym athlete.
What Happens When Fitness Isn’t Good Enough?
This is where the stopwatch becomes very honest.
Perhaps nothing happens for the first few laps.
Then your braking becomes slightly inconsistent.
Your shoulders tighten.
You begin holding the steering wheel too firmly.
Your head feels heavier.
You stop breathing properly through difficult sections.
Your concentration drifts.
Then comes the mistake.
Maybe you miss an apex.
Perhaps you lock a brake.
Maybe you’re slower reacting to traffic.
None of these things necessarily look like fitness problems.
But fatigue may be sitting underneath all of them.
That’s why preparation matters.
Young Drivers Should Start Training Early — Carefully
I don’t mean putting an eight-year-old into an extreme gym programme.
Children need age-appropriate training.
But young drivers can develop good habits.
General fitness.
Coordination.
Mobility.
Healthy eating.
Hydration.
Sleep.
Reaction exercises.
Playing different sports.
As they become older and the cars become faster, their training can become increasingly specialised.
The mistake is waiting until someone reaches a powerful racing car before deciding:
“Maybe we should work on fitness.”
By then, physical preparation should already be part of their identity as a driver.
The Athlete Nobody Sees
There is something unusual about racing compared with many sports.
In athletics, you can see the athlete working.
You see the runner sprint.
You see the cyclist climbing.
You see the boxer fighting.
Motorsport hides the athlete inside the machine.
The car gets most of the attention.
We hear the engine.
We see the speed.
We admire the engineering.
The driver is almost invisible.
But underneath the helmet, there is a human being working extremely hard to control everything.
That’s why the phrase “just sitting in a car” makes racing drivers smile.
Come and try it.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s my Unleashed Truth.
You can probably drive a racing car without being particularly fit.
But you cannot consistently extract everything from a serious racing car if your body starts failing before the car does.
That’s the difference.
Professional racing isn’t about being capable of completing a few laps.
It’s about producing maximum performance repeatedly.
Under pressure.
In heat.
While fatigued.
Without losing precision.
Fitness is therefore not something separate from driving ability.
At a certain level, it becomes part of driving ability.
So, Are Racing Drivers Athletes?
Yes.
Absolutely.
They may not look like traditional athletes while they’re competing because the machinery surrounds them.
But the physical preparation, cardiovascular conditioning, specialised strength, reaction training, nutrition and recovery required at high levels of motorsport make athletic preparation essential.
The car may provide the horsepower.
The driver still has to control it.
And if you’re fighting exhaustion, dehydration or physical weakness, it doesn’t matter how talented you are.
Eventually the stopwatch will find you.
Now It’s Your Turn
So here’s this week’s Unleashed Truth question:
Are racing drivers genuinely athletes?
Is racing as physically demanding as traditional sports?
Does the combination of strength, endurance, heat, reaction speed and concentration justify calling drivers elite athletes?
Or do you still believe:
“They’re just sitting in a car”?
If that’s your answer, I have a racing suit and helmet waiting for you.
Let’s see how you feel after the chequered flag. 😉
— Manisha Kelkar
Manisha Unleashed | Motorsport Mania
UNLEASHED TRUTH
Asking the questions motorsport doesn’t always want to answer.