@sii-la: I've always called F1 drivers the racing equivalent of fighter pilots because you do really need to be very intelligent. High spatial awareness is a given since F1 car's don't offer very good visibility for the driver, which makes things like defending one's position in a track even more difficult because your visibility isn't great but you still need to manage your positioning of the car to make it difficult for an opponent to overtake you while simultaneously analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the car behind you e.g. if your opponent is using soft tires that have better grip but don't last long, or medium tires that have worse grip but last longer.
All while driving an incredibly fast and light car with unconventional aerodynamics but also having to be familiar with the specific track you're on so you know what to do in certain parts of the track. Sometimes defending your position instead of wasting your ERS for a senseless overtake is better, other times it's better to follow a slower driving line to optimize braking and manage fuel consumption and so on. Beyond that, an F1 steering wheel features a lot of buttons, switches etc. for the driver to control things like engine mapping which manages the power delivery of the engine, the DRS to manage power distribution in the rear tires when entering and exiting a turn, the break balance, multi-function switches to control the chassis etc., so an F1 driver will be performing a ridiculous amount of tasks from the steering wheel alone, all while almost constantly driving well over 300 km/h (as much as 200 mph, sometimes over it) down the straights and tight corners of a track for as many as 70 or so laps.
It's even more work considering F1 drivers must always have a decent amount of technical and engineering knowledge to be giving constant and exact feedback to the engineering team about the car's behavior versus how they want it to behave so that the car can be corrected for any mistakes made during setup (this is one of the things that separate the great F1 drivers from the rest, knowing how to setup their cars). All in all, it's a lot of information for an F1 driver to process while accounting for potential changes in conditions. Any normal person would be overloaded by the volume of information F1 drivers are exposed to. And most ordinary people can't even properly start an F1 car, much less drive one properly at the high speeds and high stress conditions F1 drivers are always exposed to. And that's to say nothing of the physical demands of F1 racing. F1 drivers are exposed to lateral g forces during sharp turns and corners that normal people aren't, several times per lap for over 70 laps, so they lose weight from fluid loss.
The body needs to be very well trained to handle these stresses. Hitting corners where the g force on the head and neck can be up to 5 g is why F1 drivers do a lot of neck strengthening exercises. Your heart is also put under a lot of stress because save for pit stops to very quickly change tires, there are no breaks on race days. It's up to (sometimes over) 70 laps of a very long race that demands a lot of endurance from the cardiovascular system, especially because your heart rate will be through the roof. Your arms need to be strong, and your legs even more-so to generate the brake pedal pressure needed to stop an F1 car from going 200+ mph in heavy breaking areas (though the g forces they're exposed to help in this regard).
And because the power to weight ratios of F1 cars are unconventional, they only generate good downforce when going very fast, meaning that F1 drivers drive a lot faster than normal people when taking corners because in a normal car, you decelerate when taking a corner. So F1 drivers also have to train out the voice in their mind telling them they're going to crash and die every time they corner at higher speeds than normal people do. Overall, it demands a lot from the mind and the body.
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