nedR

One of the points of racing is to find out creative solutions to such engineering problems, which may later filter down to road vehicles. Example of technologies which had their origin in formula 1 include traction control, KERS, automated manual transmissions.

>racing such a computer-controlled car without a good way to interface with them seems untenable.

Seems like a nice challenge for the hacking community, and again racing might provide the right narrow focus and motivation to get the job done.

Yes and No depending on the sport.

1. Chess is a game traditionally considered to be strongly co-related to IQ (which is strongly heridetary), but a survey of Grandmasters find that they have generally average IQ. What they did have a lot of, was years of experience and dedication, and also probably very good memories.

2. Basketball is a game where height (which is also strongly heridetary) is very important (the average height of a NBA player is 6' 7"). What are the odds of a man who is 5' 7" becoming a great world-class player? Sure, you could name some guy who fought all odds to rise to the top. But the key word here is odds, and genetics plays a huge role in stacking up the odds.