Episode 7: The Driver's Body

Introduction

If you visit the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, somewhere along the tour, you can climb into a cockpit mockup of an Indianapolis 500 car.

The cockpit is smaller than you think. The seat is molded to fit one specific driver, but the museum version is a generic shell. Your shoulders touch the sides. Your knees are above your waist. The steering wheel is closer to your chest than it is to your feet. Your head sits just below the line of the aeroscreen.

Now imagine that you cannot move. You are strapped in with a six-point harness, the kind that crosses over both shoulders and both hips and between your legs. You have a HANS device attached to your helmet, tethered to the harness, so your head can only move a few inches in any direction. You are wearing five layers of Nomex from your neck to your wrists to your ankles. It is going to be hotter than your school gym in late August inside this cockpit, even with the engine off.

Now imagine the engine is on. It is a 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6, six inches from your back, producing 650 to 700 horsepower. The vibration goes through your seat into your spine. The noise even with earplugs is loud enough to damage your hearing without protection.

Now imagine you are going to do this for two hours and forty-five minutes, at speeds between 180 and 240 miles per hour, going around an oval, taking four corners a lap, two hundred laps. That is eight hundred corners. In each corner, your body experiences four times the force of Earth's gravity, pushing your head to one side. You will lose between five and seven pounds of body weight in sweat during the race. Your heart will average 170 beats per minute for the entire duration. You will press a brake pedal with 135 pounds of force per stop, dozens of times. You will steer a car with no power steering, fighting the wheel through every corner.

That is the job.

This episode is about what it actually takes, physically, biologically, to do this job. The science of how a driver's body responds to racing. The training that makes it possible. And the Indiana programs that are building the next generation of athletes who will do this work.

Four G's, Eight Hundred Times

Let's start with G-forces, because they are the part of racing that most listeners have never actually experienced.

A G is a unit of force, measured relative to Earth's gravity. Right now, sitting still, you are experiencing one G. That is your normal weight. If you jumped off a low diving board and felt that brief moment of weightlessness in the air, you were experiencing zero G. If you stood at the top of a roller coaster as it dropped, at the peak of the first big dip, you might briefly experience three or four G's. That feeling of being pushed down into the seat. That is gravity, multiplied.

Now consider what happens when an Indy car enters a corner. The car is traveling at, let's say, 220 miles per hour. The corner is, let's say, 9 degrees of banking. The car has to change direction. Newton's second law says that to change direction, you have to apply a force. The downforce we talked about in Episode 4 is one source of that force. The tires grip the track because of downforce, and the friction of the tires against the track is what pulls the car around the corner.

The car changes direction. The driver does not, automatically. The driver's body, especially the driver's head with their helmet on, wants to keep going straight. It is the same physics as a passenger in a car that takes a fast turn and feels themselves pressed against the door.

In an Indy car, the force is much, much greater. At a typical Indianapolis Motor Speedway corner at race speed, an IndyCar driver experiences approximately 4 G's of lateral force (Flow Racers, 2023). That means the driver feels like their body weighs four times what it normally does. A 170-pound driver suddenly feels 680 pounds, all pushing sideways.

It is not constant. The driver experiences the 4 G's as a transient force, lasting only a few seconds per corner, then briefly releasing on the straight, then repeating in the next corner.

There are 4 corners on the IMS oval. The Indianapolis 500 is 200 laps. That is 800 separate corner events per race. 800 times of 4 G's of lateral force on the driver's body. Most of the force lands on the neck (holding the head against the helmet's inertia), the core (holding the torso against the seat), and the legs (bracing).

This is why driver's necks are so often photographed as visibly muscular. A driver's neck is doing the work of stabilizing about 12 pounds of head plus helmet against forces of 48 pounds (4 G times 12 pounds) hundreds of times per race. To put that in context: imagine standing up while wearing a hat and having someone yank that hat sideways with 48 pounds of force, 800 times in a row. That is what a driver's neck experiences.

Braking is similar but different. When a driver hits the brakes hard, the car decelerates at up to 4 G's (Motorsport Prospects, 2025). The driver's body is thrown forward. The harness restrains the torso. The HANS device protects the neck. But the act of pressing the brake pedal with the right foot has its own physical demand, which we will get to in a minute.

For now, the takeaway is this: 800 corners per race, 4 G's of lateral force per corner, 12 pounds of head plus helmet to stabilize against 48 pounds of effective force, every single time. The driver's body is doing real physical work.

The Hundred-and-Thirty-Degree Office

Heat is the second big physical demand of racing.

A modern IndyCar cockpit is a small enclosed space. The engine is right behind the driver. The exhaust is right under the driver. The aeroscreen, introduced in 2020, sits above the driver and blocks much of the airflow that used to cool the cockpit through the open top. (Flow Racers, 2023). On a sunny day with outside temperatures around 85°F, cockpit temperatures during a race can reach 120 to 140°F (Motorsport Prospects, 2025). On the hottest days, drivers have reported temperatures even higher.

Combine that heat with five layers of Nomex fire-resistant clothing (which we covered in Episode 6) and a helmet, and you have an environment where the driver's body cannot easily release heat. The body's primary cooling mechanism is sweating. Sweat evaporates from the skin and carries heat away. But if the skin is covered by five layers of fire suit, the sweat cannot evaporate efficiently. The driver continues to sweat. They lose fluid. But the cooling is reduced.

Here is what happens to the body during a 2 hour 45 minute Indianapolis 500 in those conditions.

First, fluid loss. A typical driver will lose 5 to 7 pounds of body weight during a race, almost entirely from sweat (Flow Racers, 2023). Some drivers have reported up to 5% of body mass lost (Flow Racers, 2023). For a 170-pound driver, that is up to 8.5 pounds of fluid. A gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds. The driver is sweating out approximately one gallon of water.

Second, electrolyte depletion. Sweat is not just water. It contains sodium, potassium, magnesium, and other electrolytes that the body needs for muscle function and nerve signaling. As the driver sweats, those electrolytes are lost too. If they are not replaced, muscles can cramp, nerves can fire erratically, and mental focus drops.

Third, core body temperature rises. Normal human core temperature is about 98.6°F (37°C). During a race, core temperature can rise to 102°F or 103°F (39°C). At 104°F, heat exhaustion begins. At 105°F and above, the risk of heat stroke (which can be fatal) becomes serious. Drivers train specifically to tolerate higher core temperatures than the average person, but they still operate close to the edge.

Fourth, mental fatigue. The brain runs hot. When the body is overheating, the brain's ability to make fast, accurate decisions degrades. Reaction times slow. Judgment narrows. This is part of why fatigue accidents tend to happen late in races: not because the driver is slow physically but because the driver's brain is slow.

Modern IndyCars include a small drink bottle mounted near the driver's helmet, with a straw the driver can reach with their tongue. The drink is typically an electrolyte solution. A typical driver will consume 24 to 32 fluid ounces during a race (Flow Racers, 2023). That is 2 to 3 cups. Nowhere near enough to replace the gallon of sweat lost. The driver finishes the race partially dehydrated. This is intentional. Partial dehydration helps the driver avoid the need for a bathroom break.

Let me say that again. Drivers are partially dehydrated by design, because there is no opportunity to relieve themselves during a 2 hour 45 minute race. That is the level of physical control required to do this job.

Where the Power Steering Is Not

The third big physical demand of racing is strength.

Modern Indianapolis 500 cars do not have power steering. None of them. Every steering input the driver makes is direct, mechanical, with no hydraulic or electric assistance. That choice is deliberate. Power steering would add weight, would add a potential failure point, would mute the feedback the driver needs to feel from the front tires. So the steering wheel is connected directly, through a steering shaft, to the front wheels.

What this means in practice is that turning the steering wheel at 220 miles per hour requires real, measurable force. At highway speed in a normal passenger car, you can turn the wheel with one finger. In an IndyCar, the driver is using both arms, both shoulders, and the entire upper body to wrestle the car through every corner.

It gets worse on the brakes. Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti once described the demands of IndyCar braking. According to a published analysis in Motorsport Prospects, an IndyCar driver applies up to 135 pounds of force to the brake pedal in a single hard braking event (Motorsport Prospects, 2025). 135 pounds.

To put that in context: if you stood on a bathroom scale with one foot and pushed down with the other foot as hard as you could, you would have a hard time generating 135 pounds of force with one leg. An IndyCar driver does it dozens of times per race, with the right leg, with the foot at an awkward angle, while the rest of their body is being pulled sideways by 4 G's of cornering force.

Let's break down where the strength is needed:

Arms and shoulders: for steering against the lateral G-force in corners. A driver's bicep, forearm, and shoulder muscles must hold the steering wheel against the car's tendency to want to go straight. Imagine doing dumbbell curls with 30-pound weights for 2 hours 45 minutes, with no rest, in 130-degree heat. That is the demand on the arms.

Neck: for stabilizing the head against the lateral G-force. We covered this in Segment 1. Neck muscles must support 12 pounds of head plus helmet against 48 pounds of lateral force, 800 times per race.

Core (abdominals, obliques, lower back): for transferring force between the arms, the legs, and the seat. The core is the structural center of every movement. In an IndyCar, the core is constantly engaged.

Legs: for braking with the right foot (135 pounds per stop), for throttle modulation with the right foot (precise small movements), and for bracing the body against G-forces (legs push against the floor and the chassis to keep the body stable). The left leg is largely a brace, since modern IndyCars have a clutch only at the start (the rest of gear changes are paddle-shifted with the right hand).

Grip: for holding the steering wheel against vibration, force, and sweat-slippery gloves. Grip strength is a often-overlooked but critical part of driving.

The total time a driver spends actively braking and steering during a race is significant. The driver's muscles are under load for the vast majority of the race duration. There is no "rest period" the way there might be in a slower form of motorsport.

This is why every modern IndyCar driver lifts weights, trains the neck specifically, and pays attention to muscular endurance, not just maximum strength.

The Heart of an Athlete

The fourth big physical demand of racing is cardiovascular.

The driver's heart rate during an Indianapolis 500 averages between 150 and 180 beats per minute, for the entire duration of the race (Popular Science, 2019; Flow Racers, 2023). The peak heart rate, typically during the start of the race or during a stressful late-race situation, can reach 180 to 190 BPM.

To put this in context: a typical adult resting heart rate is 60 to 80 BPM. A typical adult's maximum heart rate is roughly 220 minus their age. For a 30-year-old driver, that maximum is around 190 BPM. So a driver who is averaging 170 BPM and peaking near 190 BPM is operating very close to their maximum heart rate, sustained, for almost three hours.

There is one sport that produces a comparable cardiovascular load: triathlon. Specifically, the running portion of an Olympic-distance or Ironman triathlon. The metabolic state of an IndyCar driver during a race is similar to the metabolic state of a triathlete deep into the run leg (Flow Racers, 2023).

There is one critical metric used to compare athletic cardiovascular capacity: VO2 max. This stands for "maximum volume of oxygen." It measures how much oxygen the body can extract from the air and deliver to the muscles per unit of time. Higher VO2 max means the body can sustain physical effort for longer without fatigue.

VO2 max is measured in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. A typical sedentary adult has a VO2 max of about 35. A trained recreational athlete is in the 40s. Elite endurance athletes (marathoners, cyclists, triathletes) can reach the 70s or higher. The all-time record, set by a cross-country skier, is over 96.

Where do race car drivers fall? According to F1 fitness expert Steve Poole, working professionally with Formula 1 drivers, away-from-the-track training produces VO2 max scores typically in the range of 55 to 65 for elite drivers (Popular Science, 2019). That puts them firmly in the elite-athlete range. Higher than most recreational athletes, lower than the best endurance specialists.

This is why race car drivers are athletes in the actual scientific sense of the word. The cardiovascular demands of their sport require cardiovascular adaptation. They are not just steering a car. They are sustaining a near-maximum heart rate for hours while their body is also dealing with heat, dehydration, G-forces, and muscular load.

What does the cardiovascular system actually do during a race?

First, it pumps blood faster to deliver oxygen to working muscles. Especially the neck, arms, and core, which are doing constant work.

Second, it pumps blood to the skin to release heat. As the core warms, more blood is shunted toward the skin to try to dump heat. This is a problem, because that same blood is also needed by the working muscles. The body has to balance these demands.

Third, it pumps blood to the brain to maintain mental function. Reaction time, decision making, and visual processing all require steady oxygenated blood flow to the brain. If blood pressure drops (which can happen with dehydration), brain function degrades.

This is why drivers train cardio constantly. Running, cycling, rowing, swimming, ski machines, anything that elevates heart rate for sustained periods. Most professional drivers do cardio workouts 3 to 5 times per week, with sessions typically 45 to 90 minutes long (Flow Racers, 2023).

The heart of an IndyCar driver is not a regular heart. It is the heart of an elite endurance athlete, trained over years to do something most cardiovascular systems could not handle.

How a Driver Trains

So how do drivers actually train? Let's look at one specific example.

Josef Newgarden is a two-time IndyCar series champion and a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner (2023 and 2024). He trains with a coach named Jeff Richter. In March 2025, Newgarden brought a version of his workout to the South by Southwest conference in Austin and invited members of the public to try it. The Associated Press covered the event (WISH-TV, 2025).

The Newgarden workout is a cross-fit-style circuit. Here is what the AP described, based on what Jeff Richter ran the group through:

Weight lifting (compound lifts: squats, deadlifts, presses)
Rowing machine and ski machine for cardiovascular work
Core stretches and balance exercises
Burpees and broad jumping (explosive power)
Neck-specific work to simulate G-force load
All done as a non-stop circuit with only a few seconds rest between exercises

The whole routine lasts about 35 minutes. The participants in Austin (a fitness coach, a biotech entrepreneur, a TV actor, a journalist) reported being completely wiped out, comparing it to boxing or cross-fit classes (WISH-TV, 2025).

Newgarden himself does this kind of workout multiple times per week, year round. During the season, the workouts are tuned to maintain race-ready fitness. In the off-season, the workouts build strength and endurance for the year ahead.

What does the science say about why drivers train this way?

A 2025 analysis by Motorsport Prospects identified three essential fitness focus areas for racing drivers:

Area 1: Muscular strength and endurance. Drivers do compound lifts (deadlifts, squats, bench presses) to build raw strength. They do neck-specific exercises using harnesses and isometric holds. They do shoulder and forearm work for steering and grip strength. The goal is not maximum bench press. The goal is the ability to sustain force for 3 hours without failure.

Area 2: Cardiovascular fitness. Drivers do running, cycling, rowing, and other elevated-heart-rate exercises for prolonged periods. The goal is to push VO2 max into the 55-65 range and to develop the ability to recover quickly between high-effort moments.

Area 3: Heat tolerance. Drivers train in hot environments, sometimes wearing race suits during training, to acclimate the body to heat stress (Motorsport Prospects, 2025). Some training facilities have environmental chambers that can simulate cockpit temperatures. Heat acclimation works because the body, exposed to repeated heat stress, learns to sweat earlier, sweat more efficiently, and maintain lower core temperatures during exertion.

There is also a fourth area not on most published lists: mental training. Race car drivers, like fighter pilots, undergo training in stress management, visualization, and reaction-time exercises. The cognitive load of making split-second decisions while the body is under physical stress is intense, and that cognitive capacity must also be trained.

Modern drivers also use racing simulators extensively. A simulator does not replicate physical G-forces, but it does replicate the visual and cognitive demands of driving at race pace. Many drivers spend more time in a simulator each week than they do in the actual race car.

The result of all this training: a modern IndyCar driver is, by any reasonable scientific measure, an elite athlete. The era of the slightly-out-of-shape race car driver from the 1960s and 1970s is over. Today, drivers train like Olympic athletes train, because they have to.

Indiana Builds the Athletes

Now let me talk about Indiana, because this episode connects to a set of careers and programs that most Indiana high school students have never been told about.

If you are interested in the science of how the human body responds to physical demands, the science of athletic training, the science of nutrition and recovery, the science of sports medicine and physical therapy, Indiana has some of the best programs in the country.

Ball State University, in Muncie, is home to the Human Performance Laboratory. The HPL was founded in 1965. It is one of the longest-running and most respected applied exercise physiology research labs in the United States (Ball State University, 2025). Ball State offers a PhD in Human Bioenergetics, a Master's in Exercise Physiology, and a Master's in Clinical Exercise Physiology, all centered on this lab. The HPL runs research on cardiovascular response, muscle physiology, heat acclimation, nutrition, and the kind of questions IndyCar drivers ask their trainers every day.

Indiana State University, in Terre Haute, offers MA and MS degrees in Kinesiology with an Exercise Science concentration. The 30-credit-hour program covers exercise physiology, biomechanics, exercise testing, motor learning, strength conditioning, and human performance (Indiana State University, 2025). Students prepare for certification through the American College of Sports Medicine or the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

Indiana Tech, in Fort Wayne, offers a B.S. in Exercise Science. The program was launched in 2016. It prepares students for the ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist exam or the NSCA Strength and Conditioning specialty (Indiana Tech, 2025). The Indiana Tech Exercise Science lab is in the Zollner Engineering Center.

Purdue University, in West Lafayette, has a Department of Health and Kinesiology with concentrations in exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor behavior, athletic training, and clinical exercise science. Purdue also has a Sports Medicine program that trains athletic trainers and physical therapists who work with athletes at every level.

Indiana University Bloomington has the School of Public Health, which includes the Department of Kinesiology with bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs across exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor learning, and sport psychology.

And of course, IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis, which we covered in Episode 6, runs the Motorsports Medicine Fellowship for emergency medicine physicians who want to specialize in motorsports.

Indiana has more high-quality exercise science, kinesiology, sports medicine, and athletic training programs per capita than almost any state in the country. The pathway from an Indiana high school to working with IndyCar drivers, NFL players, NBA players, Olympic athletes, or any other elite performer is real.

What kinds of jobs does this pathway lead to?

Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialists (CSCS) working with college and professional teams (typical salary: $55,000 to $90,000 to start, higher with experience)
Athletic trainers (certified by the Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer; required at every NCAA athletic program and most high schools)
Physical therapists working in sports medicine clinics (requires a Doctor of Physical Therapy, typically 3 years after a bachelor's degree)
Exercise physiologists working in clinical settings, research, and elite sports
Sports nutritionists (certified through the International Society of Sports Nutrition)
Sports physicians (medical doctors with a sports medicine specialty)
Motorsports medicine specialists (very small field; the IU fellowship trains them)

For Indiana high schoolers who play sports, who are interested in biology or chemistry, who like the idea of helping athletes perform their best and recover from injuries, this is a real career path with real demand and real Indiana programs that can launch it.

Wrap-up

Here is what I want you to take away from this episode.

The human body is capable of extraordinary things when it is trained properly. An Indianapolis 500 driver, at race pace, is performing at the level of an elite athlete. Not metaphorically. Literally. Their VO2 max is in the elite-athlete range. Their heart rate is sustained near maximum for nearly three hours. They are doing the equivalent of a continuous strength workout in 130-degree heat while making thousands of decisions per minute.

The cliché that race car drivers "just sit and drive" is one of the most factually wrong assumptions in sports. The opposite is true. Sitting in a position where you cannot move, while G-forces try to pull you sideways, in 130-degree heat, with no power steering, doing 800 corner events per race, is one of the most physically demanding things a human can do.

But here is the deeper point. Everything we talked about today (the G-forces, the heat tolerance, the cardiovascular fitness, the strength endurance, the mental focus under load), all of it is science. It can be measured. It can be trained. It can be taught.

And there are Indiana programs, at Ball State, at Indiana State, at Indiana Tech, at Purdue, at IU, at IU School of Medicine, that are teaching this science right now. Some of the world's best research on exercise physiology, applied to motorsports, applied to football, applied to clinical settings, applied to your grandmother's cardiac rehabilitation, is happening in Indiana laboratories. Some of the best sports medicine clinicians in the world were trained at Indiana schools.

If you are an Indiana high school student who likes biology, who likes anatomy, who is in a sport, who has watched the Indy 500 and wondered what the drivers are actually doing inside that car: there is a path for you. The path runs through your biology class, your chemistry class, your high school athletic trainer, and into a college program that will turn you into the next person who helps a driver perform at their physical limit and recover safely afterward.

The human body is amazing. The science of pushing it to its limits is a real career. Indiana is one of the best places in the country to learn it.

Sources

Ball State University. (2025). Human Performance Laboratory. Retrieved from https://www.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/hpl

Ball State University. (2025). Exercise Physiology Master's Program. Retrieved from https://www.bsu.edu/academics/collegesanddepartments/kinesiology/

Flow Racers. (2023, June). Is IndyCar a sport? Are IndyCar drivers athletes? Retrieved from https://flowracers.com/blog/is-indycar-a-sport/

Flow Racers. (2023, June). Race driver fitness training (with workout exercise plans). Retrieved from https://flowracers.com/blog/race-driver-fitness-training/

Indiana State University. (2025). Kinesiology: Exercise Science (MA, MS). Retrieved from https://indianastate.edu/academics/academic-program-finder/

Indiana Tech. (2025). Exercise Science, B.S. Retrieved from https://academics.indianatech.edu/programs/exercise-science-bs/

Motorsport Prospects. (2025, February 3). 3 essential fitness focus areas for racing drivers. Retrieved from https://www.motorsportprospects.com/

Popular Science. (2019, August 22). How elite drivers train to endure the punishing conditions of pro racing. Retrieved from https://www.popsci.com/f1-racing-driver-athlete-training/

WISH-TV. (2025, March 18). Josef Newgarden's intense workout routine for IndyCar. Retrieved from https://www.wishtv.com/sports/motorsports/indycar-driver-workout-routine/

Journal Star. (2025, March 17). IndyCar's Josef Newgarden shows importance of a workout. Retrieved from https://journalstar.com/sports/professional/