Your favourite racing-related quotes

Kenyeres

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Dec 10, 2007
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I think the title is obvious, post motorsport quotes!

"Nobody remembers who finished second but the guy who finished second."- Bobby Unser

"The crashes people remember, but drivers remember the near misses."- Mario Andretti

"You win some, lose some, and wreck some."- Dale Earnhardt Sr.

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough" - Mario Andretti

"He crammed 80 years of life into 46." - Murray Walker on the late James Hunt

Murray Walker : "And the lead car is unique, except for the one behind which is identical"
 
"There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles.
It was the day they built the second automobile."
 
1982 FIA Season Review (Clive James):

"The Renault was fast on the straights, but Rosberg was making straights out of the curves..." (Dijon)
(recurring joke about French unreliability)
"The big question was whether the Brabham would last. Same question did not arise in the case of the Renaults, since it was well-known that they wouldn't."

"A lot depends on Carlos (Reutemann)'s mood. If he feels like winning, then he goes like the Argentine air-force. If he feels unhappy, then he fades away like the Argentine army."



Murray:

"AAAAAND LOOK AT THAT!!!!!!!"

"And he's going through! OUCH! OH MY GOODNESS! This is fantastic! They meet... and that means to say that Prost has won the World Championship! Alain Prost, World Champion of 1989!"

"Well, let us not forget that David Coulthard, in these appaling conditions... OH GOD! Michael Schumacher hits David Coulthard and is out of the Belgian GP!!! [...] And Damon Hill is in the lead!!!!!!!!"

"Oh... hello-hello? That's Riccardo Patrese, going up to tell the officials what the time of day is!"

"Michael Schumacher leads Damon Hill by 4 tenths of a second or so, because it's moving... AND THAT'S NOT FOUR TENTHS OF A SECOND! Look at it! That's Michael Schumacher..."



One driver quote; guess who said it:

"On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'Okay, this is the limit'. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high."
 
One driver quote; guess who said it:

"On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'Okay, this is the limit'. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high."

Ah Senna :( He knew his stuff.

My favorite is not in the real world, but in a movie.

"Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting. " -Michael Delaney (Steve McQueen) in Le Mans
 
"To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one's ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone." - Bruce McLaren
"I look back on those days now and think to myself, 'Jesus, what was that all about? Why did we put ourselves through all of that?' Sometimes it seemed like a bad dream." - Alain Prost on his rivalry with Ayrton Senna
"If Chris left motorsport and began to work as a gravedigger, then people would die no more" - Mario Andretti about Chris Amon's legendary bad luck
"Unfortunately, racing is also this..." - Mario Andretti after the death of Ronnie Peterson
"Im dedicate this race to the people that made me lose the 1989 championship. This is racing: some races end right after the start, others six from the end" - Ayrton Senna, about 1989 and '90 Suzuka
"After you've had Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna as team-mates you don't give a **** who the next bloke is" - Damon Hill
"Jean Todt's system will never succeed, not even with Michael Schumacher" - Niki Lauda, 1995
"We make history - you only write about it" - Ron Dennis to journalists
"We were not racing Kimi, we were basically racing Fernando" - Ron Dennis, China 2007 of course
"You will always believe you can become the best - but you must never believe you have done so" - Juan Manuel Fangio
Interviewer: Mika, Jean Alesi said that going through Eau Rouge flat out is like having an orgasm, what do you think about it?
H?kkinen: I think Jean is sh***ing his pants and mixing up those feelings.
" If is a very long word in Formula One - in fact, IF is F1 spelled backwards" - Murray Walker
"This would have been Senna's third win a row if he'd won the two before" - who else but Murray
"Ukyo Katayama is undoubtedly the best Formula One driver that Grand Prix racing has ever produced" - Murray again
Reporter: "Nelson Piquet, running for a win today?"
Piquet:"No. Today I want to be eleventh"
"We thought we would give you something heavy to throw at us" - Ron Dennis presents a model Mercedes to Fernando Alonso before his 100th Grand Prix in Istanbul, 2007
 
One quote that always amused me:

"Just like the olden days: from the pub straight to the stage". Stig Blomquist, when asked what he thought of having to face the Col de Turini stage at 3 am in the morning, mid-90s.
 
" Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are merely games."
- Hemingway
"Aerodynamics is for those who cannot manufacture good engines"
- Enzo Ferrari
"I am not motivated by recognition, I just do things I like doing - racing, shagging, eating and drinking."
- David Coulthard
"You need great passion, because everything you do with great pleasure, you do well. "
- Fangio
"You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood."
- Senna
"A weekend isn't a weekend unless you're in a flame-retardant suit."
(no idea who said it, but I?d love to know)
"Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting. " -Michael Delaney (Steve McQueen) in Le Mans

definitely still the best one...
 
Murray: "And here beside me, as you can see, are the two Williams drivers, each with four wins to their credit, and one of whom is most likely to win the world championship. But, which one? Championship leader, Nigel Mansell, (who plucks something from Murray's head) or second, Nelson Piquet.

Piquet: "That's enough!" (covers Murray's mouth)

[youtube]P-EK7nZDYww[/youtube]
 
John Watson in the commentary box, Buenos Aires, 1995:

"What ARE these guys doing? You'd think they left their brakes in the pits when they got into the car."

(after a multi-pile-up in the first two corners on Lap 1 which brought the red flag)
 
From the movie 'Grand Prix':

"The danger? Well, of course. But you are missing a very important point. I think if any of us imagined - really imagined - what it would be like to go into a tree at 150 miles per hour we would probably never get into the cars at all, none of us. So it has always seemed to me that to do something very dangerous requires a certain absence of imagination. "

"When I see something really horrible, I put my foot down. Hard! Because I know that everyone else is lifting his. "

"I don't think there's one of us who doesn't ask himself at least once in the middle of a race, "What the hell am I doing here?" Of course, when it's over, we conveniently forget that we asked ourselves that question. I think about it and a lot of reasons I don't know. Maybe to do something that brings you so close to the possibility of death and to survive it is to feel life and living so much more intensely."
 
All from the great man himself.

"And there's a dry line appearing in the tunnel!"

"Nigel Mansell - the man of the race - the man of the day - the man from the Isle of Man"

"Heinz-Harald Frentzen. The man with all the luck, and it's all bad"

"I don't make mistakes. I make prophecies which immediately turn out to be wrong"
 
Murray : And there are flames coming from the back of Prost's
car as he enters the swimming pool!
James Hunt: Well that should put them out then!
 
interviewer: you haven't used these intermediate tyres, nobody's used them...

mika hakkinnen: ............... you're right............

interviewer: .......... okay good luck....

-------

interviewer: Mika, can you describe your tyres from the race

mika: well, they're round and black, and there's four of them.

(not an exact quote, the second one, but it's something like that).
 
Plenty of my favourite are from Clive James:

"So it was Lauda Vs de Cesaris, de Cesaris had the advantage of youth, Lauda had the advantage of experience, some said he had the advantage of brains"

"Some say de Cesaris is a secret French spy, others that he is an incurable featherhead, everyone agree's however that he makes his presence felt"

"Giacomelli overtook Rosberg by the novel method of forgetting to break for the next corner and dropkicked Arnoux out of the race, Arnoux hardly laughed at all"

Think I'm going to watch the 1982 season review again now!
 
The 1982, 1984 and 1986 reviews are worth watching just for Clive James' commentary, especially any time he mentions Andrea de Cesaris. Even those with no interest in motorsport will be glued to the screen wondering what he'll say next...

Reviews in the late eighties were narrated by Tony Jardine, who would occasionally throw a Clive James impression into the mix.

The anti-Clive was the 1983 review which even the most ardent F1 nut will find infuriating to watch. Some bloke named Brian who thinks "Prost" rhymes with "roast", constantly and rudely interrupted by a shrieking woman with the world's most ridiculously overblown New York accent, did not make for irritant-free viewing.

We need Clive James back. I don't have the 2002 or 2004 season reviews, but he could easily make the tidal wave of Schumi dominance interesting.
 
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