Here’s a guy who went to Spec Miata as his first exposure to racing other cars from a sim:
https://www.mazdamotorsports.com/2018/02/21/john-allen-trans...
To put into perspective how insane that is, at High Performance Driving events (non competitive events where you get to drive around a track), you might expect someone to move to the advanced group where you’re still not allowed to pass in turns, and have to be pointed by after multiple years!
Some places would actually require you to take a year's worth of events just to get into a group where passing is allowed at all without an instructor in the car
This guy went straight into full on Spec Miata with purpose built cars and full on passing for his first event!
That would be like someone playing baseball for the first time in Minor League Baseball, it takes some extremely real and difficult to develop skill to do so even if it isn’t MLB...
My only question is what percentage could make the jump if given time and training. And if we’re already giving people time and training as a basic assumption then the skills they already had are irrelevant for that question.
Aka 30% of the population could do either, but only 10% could do both. (Percentages picked from thin air.)
Flying is extremely skilled focused, but you also need to pass an eye exam. The bar for airline pilots is low enough most people could do either, but with fighter pilots it’s less useful. With them people fail out of high g training before setting foot in a fighter, or have hay fever, or are to short or to tall, or etc etc.