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Part 2
"Race fans, I had inferred from my one trip to the Brickyard 400, fell into one of two categories: tattooed, shirtless, sewer-mouthed drunks, and their husbands."
- Steve Ruchin
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"... the lead is now 6.9 seconds. In fact it's just under 7 seconds."
- Murray Walker
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"If someone said to me that you can have three wishes, my first would have been to get into racing, my second to be in Formula 1, my third to drive for Ferrari."
- Gilles Villeneuve
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"And now, excuse me while I interrupt myself."
- Murray Walker
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"There are seven winners of the Monaco Grand Prix on the starting line today, and four of them are Michael Schumacher."
- Murray Walker
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"With two laps to go then the action will begin, unless this is the action, which it is."
- Murray Walker
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" Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games."
- Earnest Hemingway
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"I'd like to say I'm ready to kick ass and show the guys how it's done. But I'm not here to prove anything about being a woman. I'm here to drive a race car and try to win a race."
- Lyn St. James
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"Nobody remembers who finished second but the guy who finished second."
- Bobby Unser
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"Aerodynamics is for those who cannot manufacture good engines"
- Enzo Ferrari
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“You're not a racing driver, you're a f***ing idiot!”
- Ayrton Senna yelling at Jordan’s Eddie Irvine after the 1993 Japanese Grad Prix
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“When I raced a car last it was at a time when sex was safe and racing was dangerous. Now, it’s the other way round.”
- Hans Stuck
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“If you don't cheat, you look like an idiot; if you cheat and don't get caught, you look like a hero; if you cheat and get caught, you look like a dope. Put me where I belong.”
- Darrell Waltrip
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He couldn't drive a greasy stick up a dog's arse - anon
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"When the flag drops, the bull**** stops" is usually attributed to Sir Jack Brabham. The first part of that phrase was the title of his autobiography.
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"Frankly Murray, that's bullsh*t" James Hunt (live on the BBC in the 1980s - subsequently edited from the recorded highlights!)
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Couple of my Aussie faves:
Recalling many years later, the legendary '72 ATCC Bathurst race on Easter Monday, when his efforts to beat Pete Geoghegan saw Allan Moffat remove his seatbelts and perch himself on the side bolster of his Mustang seat, due to the oil from the car in front rendering his windscreen opaque... and return to the pits post race with the front spoiler scarred from where the car impacted the road as it landed after cresting the second hump on Conrod at nigh-on 170mph, with a lap record under his qualifying time, set on the last lap IIRC, Moffat said: "I did things that day I never dreamed I'd do".
**** Johnson, mid-race on national TV in 1983, of a car that his team hadreconstructed overnight from an unsorted donor, with the driveline from the car he'd destroyed udring qualifying the previous day: "This thing's such a dog, we should've left it chained to the fence."
Same man, of his car 12 months previous, when it glazed bores and ate rings all week, gulped a full imperial gallon of oil over the course of the race, and was ultimately excluded for an alloy inlet manifold:"...as the day went on, all the horsepower sort of dribbled out the exhaust pipe".
Frank Gardner, on the gestation of the Porsche 917:
"Late one Friday in 1969 the telephone rang. Hello Frank, this is Husche (von Hanstein). We would like you to drive our new car at the Nurburgring 1,000 kilometres this weekend. I said I was busy and recommended he call Brian Redman. 'Brian has had a crash, and is in hospital.' Jo Siffert was my next suggestion. 'Jo has had a crash and is in hospital.' 'What the bloody hell is going on there?' Our new car is not easy to drive, Frank' - and he wasn't kidding!
"Porsche came to us because there was a shortage of drivers but the money was good so David Piper and I decided to take it on.
"These first cars had alloy tubular chassis, which was gas-filled to detect cracks. There was a big guage in the cockpit, which measured the gas pressure. If the guage zeroed, they said it meant that the chassis has started to crack, and they said I should drive home 'mit care'. I told them, 'If the needle zeroes I'll park the ******* there and then and walk back, pick up my Deutschmarks and go home'.
"The chassis flexed so much that the position of the gearchange was never the same twice in a row. You'd reach out for the lever and it wasn't there anymore. I was asked to drive it at Le Mans, the money was great too, but I told them 'I never wanted to be the quickest bloke in motor racing - just the oldest- and that Porsche was going to interfere with my plans.
"Then there was the engine. You had about 300 horsepower at 5000 revs, and then between 5000 and 6000 you picked up another 300! So it was a bit of delight, really, and it was on narrow nine-inch rims all round. The computer had said that nine-inch rims would make the car very quick in a straight line, but the computer wasn't strapped in the bloody seat up in the Eifel mountains, where you tend to get the odd corner...
"David did one lap at the Nurburgring and said he was too young to die. It snowed and poured, the car was snapping sideways and aquaplaning at the same time. It was one of the few times I extended my concentration levels above and beyond what I possessed, but we finished 5th".
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Murray Walker "Well, Mike, how do you feel after winning your fourteenth TT?"
Mike Hailwood: "Tired"
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Brian Jones interviewing Mika Salo over the PA system during an F3 meeting at Brands (must have been around 1988/89). The race was on the GP circuit and Brian said "I hear that you can take Hawthorns flat in the cars now"
Mika replied "Yes but you have to have -how you english say- the big balls" at which point Brian said "er Yes Thank you Mika" and moved on very quickly
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Eddie Irvine:"I got punched by Ayrton Senna after my first race, crashed in my second, wrote off four cars in my third, and got banned from my fourth. People are going to think I'm some sort of nutter"
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Whilst on the theme of testicular magnitudem I give you Johnny Rutherford, Bathurst 1977, on the topic of the Mt Panorama circuit, which he was seeing from behind the wheel of a Ron Hodgson Torana:
When you leave the pits, you've got balls like melons... when you get back down off the Mountain, they're like raisins
Another anecdote with a great line in understatement from the same race, and on the topic of the Rutherford/Guthrie Torana: the two imports complained loudly and at length during practice about the car they were given, about its lack of handling, grip and brakes... lead driver in the other team car, Bob Morris (the man who had won the previous year's Great Race in a Hollywood finish), got a bit impatient with the whole thing, and jumped into the offending vehicle to give his assessment.
He proceeded to reel off a string of quick laps, well within poofteenths of those of his own car (which was well up toward the pointy end of the timesheets) and siginifcantly faster than the best efforts of the Americans. Alighting from the vehicle, his retort was brief, and to the point: "There's not much wrong with that car".
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'you're not coming past me you arrogant kraut'.
Alan Jones when asked by Murray Walker what was going through Jean Alesi's mind when he shut the door on Micheal Schumacher.
The BBC susequently edited this out of the evenings highlights program and AJ wa snever invited back to co commentate. Shame really.
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'Murray moments' when he interviewed Bernie Ecclestone:
Murray: It's been seventeen years since you bought McLaren. You've had some good times and some bad times - what do you remember most?
Bernie: I don't remember buying McLaren!
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On Phil Hill in a rainstorm at the 12 hours of Sebring, speaking with Jo Bonnier:
JB: "When you passed me, I was horrified. You were laughing. I didn't see how you could stay on the road at such speed. What were you laughing about?"
PH: "It amused me the way the rain was running down your beard. You looked so uncomfortable."
from The Cruel Sport; Grand Prix Racing 1959-1967, by Robert Daley.
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From Redman on rejecting a Ferrari F1 drive: "I was racing their F2 car and then I got off in qualifying and said "This is as quick as I can go". "You are only 10th !!"they screamed, "get out and drive quicker!!" . I pushed, drove like a maniac and managed 4th within a 1/10 of a second of the top time. After that they said "you do Formula Due now and by the end of the year you move to Formula Uno". But I said no because I thought if I drove for Ferrari with this mentality I would have been dead by the end of the year."
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"People are mushy" - Paul Hawkins on the merits of where to crash on the Targa Florio.
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From Graeme86 as told to me today
I would add another great motorsport quotation from Laz at
Lakeside 2009:
"Your girlfriend has bigger balls than you and she hasn't got any"
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