It's a risk thing too, i don't think it's just physical exertion. F1 drivers could literally die if they make a mistake. Not so much a problem in a sim

"The danger? Well, of course. But you are missing a very important point. I think if any of us imagined - really imagined - what it would be like to go into a tree at 150 miles per hour we would probably never get into the cars at all, none of us. So it has always seemed to me that to do something very dangerous requires a certain absence of imagination."

Or someone else making a mistake like in F2 recently where a crash lead to a death and severe injuries. Car that slammed (survived) into car that stopped (dead) at 300kph had zero seconds to react. Full speed over a blind crest into a stopped car.

But if you don’t go full speed over a blind crest, you won’t be in even the top 10.

Takes a special kind of person.

I wonder if technology could fix that, some sort of HUD display that signals a crash on a part of the track. Could update faster than it takes for the safety crew to get out there.

At 300kph you cover 83m per second. Almost a full football pitch.

In this instance the cars were less than a second apart. A HUD won’t help, human reaction times just aren’t fast enough. Doubt even automatic braking would stop in time.

This is a good thing, as it allows you to learn where the limits are without dying, and discover that there is more that you can do without having to risk significant pain to find out. Breaking the mental barrier to discover the true limits is important.

A personal anecdote, my bouldering skills (no rope technical rock climbing) improved tremendously once I started top-roping (climbing much higher walls with a safety rope), as the rope gave me the confidence to try moves I never would have without the safety rope.