Why Can't Formula One Drivers Excel In NASCAR?

I’ve been a big Formula 1 fan especially when Michael Schumacher was dominating. I seldom miss a race back then and had been so fanatic that I would wake up in the wee hours of the morning to watch the U.S. Grand Prix, a time that is not too friendly to some race fans in the Philippines like myself.



  I‘ve always been into the impression that these drivers are the best of the best, reaching the pinnacle of motor sports and therefore, I concluded that they can simply excel in any form of auto racing series. Any race fan will remember Nigel Mansell winning F1 WDC in 1993, then moved to CART the next year to win the series.  And we all heard about the golden days of Mario Andretti where he would easily adapt to any form of racing he goes to and win races, be it F1, Indy, or stock cars.


I’ve never been a NASCAR fan. I thought it’s just way to boring to watch stock cars that aren’t stock at all racing for 500 or so miles in an oval. It’s something that puts me to sleep while watching it on a Sunday afternoon. What’s in it with a racing series that got stocked in the 50s era using old school technology push rods and carburetors without the use of telemetries? What’s so cool about a race car that is comparatively cheaper than an F1 steering wheel?

Well it changed everything when someone “big” from F1, the guy that I constantly didn't like because of his attitude, quit the pinnacle of motor racing to move to a primitive series. Juan Pablo Montoya made an announcement in Chicagoland. He is moving to NASCAR.  

It all started with intrigue on my part that I started watching NASCAR. Why? I want to see what an F1 star would do in NASCAR thinking, it’s time to prove to the world, especially to those message board NASCAR  aficionados who think they know it all, that the F1 boys can kill any NASCAR driver in any given race track at any given time. Montoya will just dominate those poor inferior wanna-be race car drivers.

I was so wrong.......And what merely started as an intrigue, later on got me hooked up to NASCAR. My reason? I was waiting for Montoya to excel…not because I liked him, I just wanted to prove something… well, it didn’t happen. He was a consistent mid fielder, almost always outrun by his team mate Jamie McMurray.

 And then there was Jacques Villeneuve  the 1997 F1 world champion who barely qualifies in some NASCAR races, Red Bull Racing’s Scott Speed, well, a mediocre in F1 just as he is in NASCAR,  Renault’s Nelson Piquet Jr, another midfielder in NASCAR’s Craftman Truck Series, Max Papis, whose name you barely hear being consistently one of the series’ backfielder, and of course the latest addition to the list, 2007 world champion Ferrari driver turned rally car driver before going back to F1, Kimi Raikonnen, who made a series of comical errors with his bad-mouth, frustration-driven, Finish-accent-hilarious comments when he finished the race 4 laps down.



So why can't they excel? I don’t know. Is it because there are too many racing lines in an oval? Are they too dependent on technology? Are they afraid to pass, not in the pitlane, but in the race itself? Is it the H tranny?  Or the tin tops? Or maybe because they’re not seeing the front tires while running wheel to wheel with other racers.  Have we really lost the Mario Andrettis and the Dan Gurneys today?

With the different time zone from this side of the shore where I now live, and with the retirement of Michael Schumacher my interest in F1 slowly dwindled ....and with the Pinoy Ginebra mentality, it looks like I  I am now a converted Montoya fan, a.k.a. NASCAR’s biggest disappointment....Left NASCAR to go back to open wheel...with only 2 wins, both on the road course....but never had one on an oval. 

So why can’t they excel? Well, that is still a big question mark to me.






by the way...get well soon Michael!