I am involved in a field where it is necessary to measure a driver's response time to different stimuli.
A thumb rule followed by most experts in the field is to assume a driver reaction time of upto 1.5s in standard driving conditions (clear road, daylight etc). There is also
research to back this up.
However, when I searched for human reaction time, I came across many articles citing that the average reaction time is
0.2s for F1 drivers.
This confused me a lot because the assumptions made by experts in my field are nowhere near what is measured for F1 drivers. Are f1 drivers really that much faster than normal drivers in terms of reactions? or are reaction times calculated differently for F1 drivers compared to standard drivers?