“So, here is the point where the fact that you have never driven a racecar at speed, is glaringly obvious. I love ya man, but you’re clueless in this respect.”–PJ
Sez you.
A car at the limit is a car at the limit. My Ramcharger with fat tires and big sway bars is not as fast as my Corvette in mph through a given turn. But they both have a break-away point, same as a faster-still racecar.
Now, to your point, short track guys are at 10/10ths, and you cannot get there on the street without tearing your junk up, and I have done plenty of that. Note that there is plenty of crashing on short tracks, and plenty of single car spins.
Realistically, you drive at 7-8/10ths on the street because if you guess wrong at the braking point or the turn tightens up, or etc., you wind up at 9 or 10/10ths. It is close to that on a road course, perhaps routinely one is at 8-9/10ths, as you cannot remember each turn PRECISELY (as you do at say, Citrus), and there may be sand or gear oil on the track (etc.) that wasn’t there the lap before.
But the rain throws all that out the window, and then one has to guess at his NEW braking point, which may change each lap. You know, same as on the street. And you either correctly guess long before the turn, or you crash when you get there. Like some did and some did not.
It separates the men from the boys. Again, I have confidence that you would be all over it.
And JOE has both the confidence and the experience of having BEEN all over it. I was there, no doubt watched him in the rain, and it was no cakewalk.
Still, as previously said, ALL OF THAT IS A MOOT POINT, since it was the weenies in the tower that made the call.
And you know, the last time they sent them out a bunch of them guessed wrong, cracked up, and they stopped them. The RIGHT call would have been to have waited, done that for the last 45-60 minutes, and if they ran one lap under “green” and then a bunch of caution laps repeatedly, so be it.
As it was, they made essentially the same call, incurred the same torn up equipment, but they had a lousy end to the race.