Does an F1 driver lose strength as they get into their thirties and fourties?

[Bill Boddy]

As a complete aside - Sir Steve Redgrave won his last Olympic gold medal in rowing (pretty full on muscle wise I reckon) at the age of 38 and then he said "Never again!!"

He had also said that four years earlier.

 

[ecclestoned]

I heard that once you become 30 your testosterone level drops 1% every year.
So that means a drop of 12% with Schumacher, which could be the reason why he lost some speed thru time.

Corinna still looks happy

 

[FB]

Just to follow up on my Astronauts post, thanks to the power of Wiki I can can tell you that the youngest Apollo astronaut was Charles Duke at 36 years and 6 months and the oldest was Alan Shepard at 47 years and 2 months. I appreciate this may not be as physically demanding as driving an F1 car for 2 hours but there must be a reason why NASA tends to use older people.

Anyway, you slow up as you get older it's all part of the process. Some slow up more than others, some, like me, never got up to speed in the first place

 

[Cookinflatsix]

Astronauts must also be scientists. In fact I thnk it's more accurate to think of them as accomplished scientists taught to steer a space vessel as opposed to pilots able to conduct experiments. Space passengers have been much older, as the physical demands of the trip and subsequent weightlessness ca be prepared for. The actual piloting is not that physical with everything being fly by wire

 

[Fenderman]

... and indeed the biggest problem for astronauts is muscle wasteage in missions of long duration due to the low demands on, and of use of the muscles in zero G. Also an astronauts internal organs change without the challenges of gravity. As a further aside it is interesting that although there are many theoretical solutions creating artificial gravity has thus far eluded space scientists. Methinks I'm straying too far toward the ISS thread so I'll stop now. Sorry.