Prompted hands-free drinking improves simulated race car driving in a hot environment

ABSTRACT

Race car drivers are often hypohydrated during a race. The FluidLogic drink system is a hands-free, prompted drinking system that is hypothesized to increase the likeliness of drivers’ consuming fluids and thereby mitigating hypohydration. To test the hypothesis, 20 elite professional race car drivers participated in a 2-day cross-over study in which they drove on a race simulator in an environmental chamber that was heated to regulation cockpit temperature (38°C). Drivers used either the FluidLogic drink system or a standard in-car water bottle system (Control) on one of each testing day. The results indicated that there was consistent fluid consumption with the FluidLogic system, while the Control condition elicited fluid consumption in bolus doses. The Control condition was associated with moderate (0.5%) increased core body temperature (P < 0.05) and substantial (3.3%) increased urine-specific gravity (P < 0.001) as compared to the FluidLogic condition. Driving performance metrics indicated that lap times during the Control Condition were 5.1 ± 1.4 (4.1%) seconds slower (P < 0.05) than the FluidLogic Condition, due to driving errors that occurred in the high-speed corners. Based on these results, prompted hands-free drinking can mitigate hypohydration and performance loss in automobile racing drivers.

KEYWORDS:

• Automobile racing
• FluidLogic
• driver science
• motorsport
• hydration
• thermal regulation

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank all members of the Spartan Motorsport Performance Lab at Michigan State University with a special thank you to Lindsey Ammons, Andrew La Sorsa, and Evan Rabban. Additionally, the authors wish to thank Kelly Jones (Racecraft 1), Frank Rico (Ricmotech), and Marc Miller for engineering the simulator for the present investigation. The authors also wish to thank Catherine Gammon for her support in the execution of the project. The investigation was funded by a grant from Rainmaker Solutions LLC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Rainmaker Solutions LLC.