Should stock car drivers be considered athletes? Some people say no -- most often supporting their view by pointing out that many of us drive cars and don’t find it physically challenging. However, racing a stock car with an average interior temperature of 120 degrees for 500 laps at speeds that can border on 200 mph takes superior hand-eye coordination, depth perception, courage and physical fitness. Those factors lead me to give a resounding endorsement of stock car drivers as athletes.

SUPPORTING
MY VIEW
The American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of an athlete is "a person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility and endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise or sports, especially those performed in competitive contexts."

Let's take apart that definition and scrutinize stock car drivers to see whether they fit the bill as athletes.

“A person possessing the natural or acquired traits,…”
Just as Barry Bonds possesses a natural talent for hitting a baseball and has refined that talent with experience, NASCAR’s top-level drivers have natural or acquired traits for racing cars that most of us are without.

Those traits include a lack of fear, an exceptional feel for controlling a car at excessive speeds, and exceptional hand-eye coordination.

These skills have been refined through their years of racing, beginning with go-karts as children and advancing up the different levels of the sport.

“…such as strength, agility and endurance necessary for physical exercise,…”
While I was never really good at physics in school, I have driven a stock car on a few occasions and I can vouch for the physical demands on one's body when racing.

A 3,400-pound stock car doesn’t drive like your SUV, it’s a brute.

At the speeds today’s stock cars attain, a driver is constantly wrestling the machine.

The moments he’s not pushing or pulling against the wheel and working the pedals are brief.

While all that is going on, the G-forces of the cornering speed are pulling a drivers’ head, torso and legs to the right -- the opposite way the rest of him is trying to go.

His ribs and shoulders are jamming against his seat and restraints and that's a feeling like taking a hit from a linebacker every minute for a few hours.

In racing schools like the Richard Petty Driving Experience, most people are sweating and have an elevated heart rate after just a few laps of driving.

A stock car driver must be able to handle these forces and stresses over three to four hours of competition.

That requires exceptional conditioning and a special level of endurance that few of us can boast.

The conditions compound the physical requirements on a driver.

He will be in a car designed for speed, not comfort.

The cockpit temperature will rise to over 120 degrees, and to reduce any aerodynamic “drag,” the car is designed to make air flow around it, but not inside it.

This puts a premium on cardiovascular fitness.

A driver must be able to process oxygen into his blood more efficiently than most of us and also must be able to do it in heated, stressful conditions for hours at a time.

“…especially those performed in competitive contexts.”

There can be no question drivers are by nature competitive.

Like other elite athletes, their desire to win and rise to the top of their field is a prime motivation in their daily lives.

All of the training, endless testing and practicing are done for one moment: the glorious one when victory in a race is achieved.

TRAINING COMPARISONS
Most drivers are on a vigorous training program.

Former Winston Cup champion Dale Jarrett trains six days per week to prepare for the competition of racing.

“I lift weights and do cardio Monday through Friday, then Saturday do an additional day of cardio” says Jarrett, who like many of his racing peers, was an outstanding multi-sport athlete in high school.

Jarrett was a quarterback, forward in basketball, shortstop and outstanding golfer.

Jarrett is a friend and business partner of quarterback Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers and he has compared training notes with the future NFL Hall-of-Famer.

Jarrett says he and Favre seek different results from their workouts, noting that for racing he needs his back to be strong for the time he spends in the driver's seat, while Favre needs for his legs to be strong.

Favre is careful about how his arm is worked out while Jarrett’s concern for cardio conditioning is a top priority.

MENTAL STRENGTH ALSO NEEDED
One often overlooked aspect of racing a stock car is the relentless need for concentration at a high level.

A basketball or football player needs to be mentally sharp to execute plays and react to game situations quickly and effectively.

A stock car driver can never let his concentration waver.

One mental lapse -- be it a missed braking point or daydream-induced “drift” of lanes -- can cause a crash, which will likely result in hitting a wall at well over 100 mph -- not a safe or pleasant experience.

DIFFERENT DEMANDS IN A DIFFERENT ERA
In NASCAR’s earlier years, especially the 1950s and 1960s, drivers were not considered very athletic, and I would agree with that assessment.

Today, however, times have changed and now it's a different story.

This generation of stock car racers compares very favorably with elite athletes in other sports.

These drivers may not run a 4.5 in the 40-yard dash or be able to hit 50 home runs in a baseball season, but could a baseball player or a football player last 500 miles in a race car?

The strength, agility and endurance demonstrated by stock car drivers in a competitive context are without question of exceptional quality and prove their athleticism.