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Not exactly quotes by Drivers but related to F1 and Famous Drivers.
By tradition the Italian racing driver in action is an excitable character given to shouting, gesticulating, waving his fists, baring his teeth and in general giving way to his emotions. Tazio Nuvolari filled this role splendidly.
The Farmer's Son - Cyril Posthumus
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
We must picture it as best we can: the low, low Lotus 25, Clark’s hands encased in black driving gloves and holding the wheel with such sensitivity, such lightness of touch. Jim Clark did not beat the Nürburgring into submission. He caressed it into surrender, seduced from it every secret it had.
Grand Prix Showdown - Christopher Hilton
At Monza, Stewart was in the act of buckling his helmet when he broke down, wept in a corner, did get into the car, wept again. He could taste the salt of his own tears. Out there as he circled Monza’s broad acres he became a racing driver again. He spent a few laps examining the Parabolica, searching for clues as to what might have happened — then drove the fastest lap he had ever driven at Monza.
Grand Prix Showdown - Christopher Hilton
To be honest, there was no such thing as cornering technique in the ground effect era. “Cornering” was a euphemism for rape practised on the driver. . . When you came into a corner you had to hit the accelerator as hard as you possibly could, build up speed as quickly as possible and, when things became unstuck, bite the bullet and give it even more. In a ground effect car, reaching the limit was synonymous with spinning out.
— Niki Lauda
Gilles has gone, and with him the light of genius in Grand Prix racing. In time, of course, another star will emerge, but it will never twinkle with the same intensity again. We are back to normality once more. The impossible cannot happen.
With some irony, Senna pointed to the sky each time he passed the line, reminding officials, and anybody else, that in Monaco in 1984 when the situation was the other way round, they had stopped the race. He won it the hard way, juggling his fuel consumption, his lead and the weather perfectly. Ayrton Senna, the boy from Brazil, was World Champion, and he had done it in some style.
Ayrton Senna: A Tribute - Ivan Rendell
Some will say, perhaps, that the 1991 World Championship was settled by the events at Montréal or Spa or Estoril, where apparently certain victories gave Nigel Mansell the slip. It was not. In reality, the World Championship was won — and lost — in the first four races, all won by Ayrton Sennna. Won, moreover, by a car which should not have been winning.
Senna was 34, which means that, by F1 standards, he did not die young, just hard and a very long way from home. Senna transcended the tiresome debate about whether race drivers are really athletes because he was something far rarer in this world than an athlete — he was a genius. Senna could take a 1,100-pound F1 car and transform it into a living, breathing thing; a throbbing dance partner in his dangerous pas de deux. Niki Lauda said simply, ‘He was the best driver who ever lived.’
Schumacher remains the most complete driver in F1 today. Apart from the dazzling car control, Michael rules his Italian team with a psychological rod of iron, taking as much responsibility for technical decisions as he does for capitalizing on them during the race. . . . Jackie Stewart believes that the man who eventually eclipses Schumacher is not yet even in F1. He could be right. | 
7th September 2006, 00:37
