Best Quotes in Motorsports

prisonermonkeys
"If in doubt, flat out."

It could only be Colin McRae.
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He should have said "If in doubt, get out"... it would have saved the life of a child and McRae's friend...

Anyhow, here's Derek Warwick on the subject of Rene Arnoux;

"He's just a total bloody idiot. Always was, always will be."
 
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I skimmed through this and didn't see it. Hope it's not a repost but this is my favorite and one I believe in..

"You should know that by being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. Being a racing driver means you are racing with other people and if you no longer go for a gap that exists you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win and the main motivation to all of us is to compete for the victory, it is not to conserve for a fifth or sixth place."

Ayrton Senna

 
BlkSTIG
I skimmed through this and didn't see it. Hope it's not a repost but this is my favorite and one I believe in..

"You should know that by being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. Being a racing driver means you are racing with other people and if you no longer go for a gap that exists you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win and the main motivation to all of us is to compete for the victory, it is not to conserve for a fifth or sixth place."

Ayrton Senna

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Said after intentionally taking Prost out of a race.
 
BlkSTIG
Oh it's going to be this kind of a crowd here?
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If you think Ayrton was a hero, you might want to step forward 21 years. Had Senna been around and done half the things he did, oh how the pits of cyber hell would open for him. He was a great driver, but a very naive and reckless one too.
 
"It isn't that difficult. You just press the accelerator to the floor and turn left." Bill Vukovich on the Indy 500. Ironically, he's in the fatalities statistic now.
 
Angel
If you think Ayrton was a hero, you might want to step forward 21 years. Had Senna been around and done half the things he did, oh how the pits of cyber hell would open for him. He was a great driver, but a very naive and reckless one too.
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I don't think he's a hero neither were most of the greats but you can't judge someone 21 years in the past. You've read too far into the post. Let's keep it to the quotes vs whether they were right or wrong in their context.
 
BlkSTIG
I don't think he's a hero neither were most of the greats but you can't judge someone 21 years in the past. You've read too far into the post. Let's keep it to the quotes vs whether they were right or wrong in their context.
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I think why someone said something is just as important as what they said.
 
BlkSTIG
I don't think he's a hero neither were most of the greats but you can't judge someone 21 years in the past. You've read too far into the post. Let's keep it to the quotes vs whether they were right or wrong in their context.
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He is a great but the quote was an excuse in my eyes as he interpreted taking out Prost for going for a gap. This was to alleviate the drama which may unfold after the clear intention of taking out Prost.
 

Kyle Busch on G-W-C Finish in the 2011 Daytona 500 " I told you all speedweeks, It don't Matter how long you can push because its going to be a G-W-C"
 
A Senna quote which really does belong here is "A special hello to my dear ... our dear friend Alain."

He'd said this over the in-car radio when doing a lap of Imola for a TV feature in 1994 (IIRC) and I just love the quote because it shows how their relationship changed towards the end, not that you'd have guessed from the recent "documentary" SENNA.
 
"I have never driven that quickly before in my life and I don't think I will ever be able to do it again."
"Nürburgring was my favourite track. I fell totally in love with it and I believe that on that day in 1957 I finally managed to master it. It was as if I had screwed all the secrets out of it and got to know it once and for all. . . For two days I couldn't sleep, still making those leaps in the dark on those curves where I had never before had the courage to push things so far."

-Juan Manuel Fangio on the 1957 German Grand Prix
 
2007 Daytona 500 , quote from fox crew was something like:

"You know whats gonna be hardest phone call to make monday morning? Hey we finished 2 seconds behind the winner of the Daytona 500! We were 21st..." :lol:
 
Mild profanity.

Murray Walker: "[Arnoux] says the reason I'm going so slow these days is that I'm used to turbo cars and these normally aspirated cars are a very different kettle of fish to drive. He says."

James Hunt:

 
"You heard the announcement from the public address system. There's not a sound. Men are taking off their hats. People are weeping, over three hundred thousand fans, here; not moving; disbelieving. Some men try to conquer life in a number of ways. These days of our outer space attempts, some men try to conquer the universe. Race drivers are courageous men who try to conquer life and death, and they calculate their risks. And in our talking with them over the years, I think we know their inner thoughts in regards to racing: they take it as part of living. No one is moving on the race track. They're standing silently. A race driver who leaves this earth mentally, when he straps himself into the cockpit, to try what for to him is the biggest conquest he can make, is aware of the odds; and Eddie Sachs played the odds. He was serious and frivolous. He was fun. He was a wonderful gentleman. He took much needling and he gave much needling. And just as the astronauts do perhaps, these boys on the race track ask no quarter and they give none. If they succeed they're a hero, and if they fail, they tried. And it was Eddie's desire, I'm sure, and will to try with everything he had, which he always did. So the only healthy way perhaps we can approach the tragedy of the loss of a friend like Eddie Sachs is to know that he would have wanted us to face it, as he did: as it has happened, not as we wish it would have happened. It is God's will, I'm sure, and we must accept that. We're all speeding towards death at the rate of sixty minutes every hour. The only difference is that we don't know how to speed faster, and Eddie Sachs did. So as since death has a thousand or more doors, Eddie Sachs exits this earth in a race car. And knowing Eddie, I assume that's the way he would have wanted it..."
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IMS Radio's Sid Collins live, impromptu eulogy to Eddie Sachs after the announcement of Sachs' passing during the 1964 Indianapolis 500.

Collins later received over 30,000 letters from fans asking for a transcript of the eulogy.
 
Ari Vatanen had an accident on the Manx Rally in the 1980s while driving a Ford Escort. Terry Harryman was his co-driver at the time, and following the crash, he was asked at what point he knew that he was going to have an accident.

Harryman replied "scrutineering" - Vatanen had a reputation for crashing Escorts; he wrecked enough to fill a car park.
 
There have been many stories about the tyres on Jim Clark’s car lasting four races. This is true, but also the brake pads lasted three times longer than those any other driver. Derek Wild used to say that you could put all the gearboxes on the bench in front of him in random order and he could tell which gearbox came out of Jim’s car as it showed less signs of wear. The point is that the standard of preparation was no different between Jim’s car and the number two car. It was just that the man was very ‘soft’ on his car and so he tended to last the race distance as a result.
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From a book about Clark's world title seasons. Tyres and brakes lasting multiple races? Amazing.
 
Liquid
From a book about Clark's world title seasons. Tyres and brakes lasting multiple races? Amazing.
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It's true about Clark winning 4 races on the trot with the same set of tires. The Dunlop R5 (?) tires were very hard and durable, and he had a tiny 1.5 liter engine with only 175(?)hp and not enough torque to peel a grape.

But I disagree that the #2 at Lotus ever had a car as well prepared as Clark's.
 

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