Mr. Lyons decided to try the same fitness test that the drivers performed. How did he do? When he got off his exact comment was, "Lets just say that I finally stumbled off the thing with a new respect for the prowess of certain people who sit strapped to a seat for a living".
Another article by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) in December of 2002 states: "Racecar Driver's Physical Demands are Comparable to Elite Athletes".
Training: (Sport Specific/Are Drivers Athletes): There are many benefits of exercise, such as muscle strength, increased cardiorespiratory fitness and a reduced risk of death associated with disease, and most people think of fitness and training in these broad terms. However, your fitness level is specific in terms of the activities you perform.
For example: If you put a pro football player in a kart at Tunica, let him run about 20 laps and at the end I bet you he will be very tired. The next day he may even feel muscles hurting that he never thought he had. The reason for this is that football player's train for powerful short burst and with heavy weights. He may have a strong neck for absorbing violent impacts on the football field, but when you put him in a kart on a track with 2-3 lateral g's through the turns for 20 laps, he will be hurting afterward. It is also a fact that the more muscle you have the harder it will be for you to hold that heavy muscle up in a 2g turn.
What an experienced trained kart driver has over a pro football player is muscle strength and endurance in the specific environment of kart racing. Have you ever seen a muscle head flying an f-16? No, they would not be able to support that large amount of muscle. The same is true for the football players environment, if a kart racer went out on the field during Monday night football to play linebacker, he better have at least played some collage ball.
To get to the point, there are many different ways to train (Mode, Intensity, Duration, Frequency) and each sport requires a different approach to achieve the physical benefit required for that sport. Yes, I said sport, racing is a sport and drivers are athletes; they are athletes in a different environment with Sport Specific requirements.
Lance Armstrong could not win the 100-meter dash, and the fastest sprinter in the world wouldn't be able to win the Tour De France. Yes, I am comparing world-class athletes to Kart racers and the reason for this is simple. Each world-class professional athlete developed his or her talent at the lower levels within their sport. Studies performed by Human Performance International, Inc on F1 and Nascar drivers show they have the cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2 max) comparable to that of Olympic athletes. Kart racing is where most of today's world class pro drivers start. So if all smaller divisions of sports like Little League Baseball and football are considered sports then so is Kart Racing. The heat of a 1200 degree exhaust header on your back, the concentration you must maintain, the intensity of a 2g turn, the duration of a race, the muscles you use (both gross muscle movements and fine muscle movements) and the hand eye foot coordination all combined together make Kart drivers athletes.
So believe me, if you are a race driver you are an athlete, and that makes racing a sport. Anyone who disagrees is simply not informed and/or ignorant.