I tend to feel the same way but there are often safety reasons. You can't have a popular sport where the winners are the ones who push themselves closest to dea

I tend to feel the same way but there are often safety reasons. You can't have a popular sport where the winners are the ones who push themselves closest to death. g-forces causing harm to drivers: https://what-if.xkcd.com/116/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/116/ Smaller events also have to allow the competitors to focus on a smaller range of capabilities so they can actually find competent players. Robot and drone competitions come to mind where the equipment is often standardized so they're only testing skills or programming, not being-the-best-at-everything which would end up as "throwing the most money at it".