Car Racing Quotes & Sayings

I love to feel a racing car around me, to feel the way it holds me.
I love to make it do all that it was built to do, and then a little bit more. — Stirling Moss

Formula 1 is a huge international phenomenon even if an otherwise car racing obsessed American public has always found Formula 1 to be a little weird. — Rachel Maddow

It was not until I started racing for car manufacturers that I found a car I could really get attached to. I am the son of a car dealer, so up until then, cars just came and went. — Allan McNish

Sometimes you have to bring back only the steering wheel so the car owner will know that you're giving it all you have. — Mario Andretti

I never was a cheerleader. I'm an athlete. I'm probably not coordinated enough to be a cheerleader but that doesn't matter. I've always wanted to compete. And if I compete, I want to win. I was born competitive and that's in my blood. Whatever car I'm in, whatever series I'm running, whatever track I'm racing I want to be a factor. I want people to know that Shawna Robinson was there. — Shawna Robinson

Auto racing began 5 minutes after the second car was built. — Henry Ford

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass
a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited ... — Stephen Dobyns

The gap between the two cars is 0.9 of a second, which is less than one second — Murray Walker

The appeal of the Riverside 500 was based on that overall spectacle of witnessing a mob of brightly colored, bellowing automobiles gamboling over the countryside like a herd of runaway steers. Stock car roadracing is in fact like a mechanical stampede, and we personally think it's maybe the neatest form of motor racing known to man. It's definitely the greatest spectacle in roadracing. — Brock Yates

We are racing down Main Street. Arthur is right on the tail of a blck sedan with tinted windows that won't pull over. He slams the horn.
"Arthur," I say.
The car doesn't yield.
"Arthur," I say.
He hits the horn again, still close on the car's bummper.
"Arthur, our turn was back there. — Peter Canning

When I was 15, my parents left town for a month. They hid the keys to the car, but I found them. That month, I drove my stepdad's Thunderbird Super Coupe into Manhattan every day, and I would crank Cypress Hill as I flew around the city, racing the taxis. — Danny Masterson

There was a day when you could identify a NASCAR Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge and they actually looked like "stock cars." Now they are pod machines, slick on the outside but still powered by the same Neanderthal carbureted pushrod V-8s that have been under their hoods for half a century. If this is real auto racing, then the WWF ought to be part of the Olympics. — Brock Yates

The greatest thing about form and convention is that it saves you from having to reinvent the wheel. Now, whether you mount the wheel to a horse carriage or a Formula One racing car, make it plain or give it spinning rims, those are all craft decisions. But the fact of the wheel remains: it will turn if you set it down. That's what I mean about the beauty of the gifts genre can offer. — Chris Abani

Every time my cameras go out on a movie, we learn something new and then we take what we learn and we put it into the next generation of the cameras so we're constantly improving. It's kind of like building a race car, racing it, then running back to the shop and working on the engine some more and tinkering with it to improve it. — James Cameron

There's enough Ferraris here to eat a plate of spaghetti. — Jackie Stewart

A racing car is an animal with a thousand adjustments. — Mario Andretti

I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the '50s and '60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother's Morris Minor. I drove it around my father's farm. But my favorite car is still a McLaren F1, which I have had for 10 years. — Rowan Atkinson

A writer without reviews is like racing car without an engine - shows lots of potential but it's never going anywhere.

Lillian White — Lillian White

On Memorial Day, I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation, and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program. — Danica Patrick

And there's no damage to the car. Except to the car itself. — Murray Walker

The builder of the best racing car is not necessarily its best driver. — Hans Selye

It is amazing how may drivers, even at the Formula One Level, think that the brakes are for slowing the car down. — Mario Andretti

Since I was kid, what's drawn me to racing is the feeling inside of me, the passion I have for the sport, the feeling I have while competing and doing what I do in a car, on a bike, whatever it's been. — Jimmie Johnson

Yeah, our car was really good even after the crash. I told you before the race that if we had good track position at the end I thought we could finish good. It was a really good day for our Linksys car. Just a fun day racing. — Jamie McMurray

I've loved car racing all my life. I watch NASCAR regularly, and drag racing because we have Raceway Park in New Jersey. I think I got it from my father. — Queen Latifah

The Showdown is a great way to bring attention to these historic Virginia tracks where many NASCAR drivers cut their teeth in stock car racing, including myself. Tracks like South Boston and Langley are the heart of the sport and draw a great crowd to our Showdown events. — Denny Hamlin

But my passion is racing cars. It's what I like to do in my off time. — Mark-Paul Gosselaar

The racing driver's mind has to have the ability to have amazing anticipation, coordination, and reflex. Because of the speed the car goes. — Emerson Fittipaldi

And that just shows you how important the car is in Formula One Racing. — Murray Walker

You know, I was pretty comfortable where I was at. We had cars that could win races (at Roush). I know (Joe Gibbs Racing is) expecting me to perform and do my job. Before this year, I can't remember the last time I've ever been nervous at all inside of a race car. — Matt Kenseth

I think I was always realistic - well, not the Percy thing, that was ridiculous - but I never dreamed of being a racing car driver or anything. — Alan Titchmarsh

Nothing's ever too fast. Maybe sometimes on the road some people are too fast if they don't know how to control the car, but in racing, the faster and more power and grip, the better it is. — Heikki Kovalainen

Long practise in driving a racing car at a hundred miles an hour or so gives first-class training in control and judging distances at high speed and helps tremendously in getting motor sense, which is rather the feel of your engine than the sound of it, a thing you get through your bones and nerves rather than simply your ears. — Eddie Rickenbacker

Gone are the days when you could lie on a beach between races and still be in good enough shape to compete. Gone are the days when simply wearing a brand on your firesuit was enough to justify the marketing expense of an Indy Car. Racing an Indy Car is only about a quarter of my life as a racing driver. — Charlie Kimball

You don't get a mix of ovals and road/street course racing with this level of competition and speed anywhere other than Indy Car, and I think that's why it has remained a popular choice for so many young drivers. — Charlie Kimball

Fifteen minutes, a myriad of cups, kleenexes and freshly-vacuumed floor mats and seat cushions later, Kay had the interior of the limousine looking ship-shape. Inching backward out of the car on her knees, she caught a glimpse of one last bit of trash she'd missed hiding under the driver's seat. Lowering her chest to the floor, she stretched her arm under the seat as far as it would go. She grabbed the item and pulled it out and raised herself up from her crouched position. She took one look at the used condom swinging from her fingers, screamed and flung it across the top of the front seat, where it stuck to the air conditioner vents on the dash. She knelt there staring at the thin latex mess, a million scenarios racing through her mind. — Delora Dennis

I would have probably stolen cars - it would have given me the same adrenaline rush as racing. — Valentino Rossi

And this is the third place car about to lap the second place car. — Murray Walker

The driver of a racing car is a component. When I first began, I used to grip the steering wheel firmly, and I changed gear so hard that I damaged my hand. — Juan Manuel Fangio

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now - that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality. — Eckhart Tolle

As the son of a racing car designer and mechanical engineer, I was exposed to motorsports from day one. — Charlie Kimball

What's behind you doesn't matter. — Enzo Ferrari

I can't blame the drivers for making the move, and I can't blame the owners for being upset. Keep in mind, this ain't like the real world where you work somewhere and you can stay 40 years. Being able to see where you are going just a few years ahead is a pretty cool deal, and it doesn't happen too often in any sport, much less stock car racing. — Ken Schrader

When I turned 16, I got my driver's license like the rest of my classmates, but I also got an extra present: a two-day practice session in a Formula Ford: my first open-wheel racing car and the first step on the ladder toward becoming a professional driver. — Charlie Kimball

It is not always possible to be the best, but it is always possible to improve your own performance. — Jackie Stewart

I feel comfortable around every driver out there and each driver is in charge of their own car, but you feel very secure racing the competition out there. — Kurt Busch

The makeup of the drivers has changed a lot with so many young drivers coming and a lot of the legends moving on. Compared to when I started, it's gone through a lot of changes. The cars have changed a lot and the approach to racing. There are a lot more employees. It's become a much bigger business and more corporate. — Matt Kenseth

I am a racer. I'm not a race car driver. I am a racer. I race. That's what I do. I don't go on vacations. I don't take my family on vacations because I don't have a family. My family is the racing family. — Tony Stewart

What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world? Create two timelines - 6 months and 12 months - and list up to five things you dream of having (including, but not limited to, material wants: house, car, clothing, etc.), being (be a great cook, be fluent in Chinese, etc.), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots overseas, racing ostriches, etc.) in that order. If you have difficulty identifying what you want in some categories, as most will, consider what you hate or fear in each and write down the opposite. Do not limit yourself, and do not concern yourself with how these things will be accomplished. For now, it's unimportant. This is an exercise in reversing repression. Be sure not to judge or fool yourself. If you really want a Ferrari, don't put down solving world hunger out of guilt. — Timothy Ferriss

Why would any guy want to be only friends with a girl? It's like agreeing to be near a chocolate cake and never eat it. It's like sitting in a racing car but not driving it. Only wimps do that. — Chetan Bhagat

A racing horse is not like a machine. It has to be tuned up like a racing car. — Christopher Poole

Indy car racing is much more aggressive. — Emerson Fittipaldi

To achieve anything in this game you must be prepare to dabble in the boundary of disaster. — Stirling Moss

You get around people who see us away from the track, and it's a pretty big contrast. You're still competitive, and you still want to win everything, but I think in the car, we're focused and passionate all the time. We get outside the car, and we're a lot more relaxed and easygoing, enjoying things away from racing. — Tony Stewart

But to personally satisfy my own adrenalin needs, I've been racing cars a little bit, which has been fun. — Picabo Street

Going to car racing school was phenomenal. — Michelle Rodriguez

The perfect racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls into its component parts. — Ferdinand Porsche

We were racing at circuits where there were no crash barriers in front of the pits, and fuel was lying about in churns in the pit lane. A car could easily crash into the pits at any time. It was ridiculous. — Jackie Stewart

I lean on a lot of drivers. I have a dirt racing background so I gravitate towards asking for advice from drivers who also dirt race, people like Clint Bowyer since dirt racers seem to have a similar driving style and like the car set up similarly. — Austin Dillon

What I have always liked best is when he talks about having no memory. No memory of things he'd done just a second before. Good or bad. Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember. Which is why drivers compulsively record their every move, their every race, with cockpit cameras, in-car video, data mapping; a driver cannot be a witness to his own greatness. This is what Danny says. He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. The great champion Julian Sabella Rosa has said: When I am racing, my mind and my body are working so quickly and so well together, I must be sure not to think, or else I will definitely make a mistake. — Garth Stein

I have a lot of great racing memories growing up in Europe as a young boy - playing with car parts on my dad's desk, watching the races on Sunday afternoons to try and spot him on TV, even having the chance to go to Formula 1 races where he was working. — Charlie Kimball

The best classroom of all times was about two car lengths behind Juan Manuel Fangio. — Stirling Moss

A fantastic analogy for the power of focus is racing cars. When your car begins to skid, the natural reflex is to look at the wall in an attempt to avoid it. But if you keep focusing on what you fear, that's exactly where you'll end up. Professional racers know that we unconsciously steer in the direction of our focus, so with their lives on the line, they turn their focus away from the wall and towards the open track. — Tony Robbins

In the last three years of racing I've met as many women fans as men fans, and in NASCAR it's the same thing. My wife loves cars, but the difference is she doesn't have 20 years of understanding the background of them. She basically drives them and uses her gut feelings as to which is best. — Tim Allen

If lightning strikes while you're in the car it's your fault. — Doc Bundy

Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racing car not called a racist? — Steven Wright

I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn't hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away. — Gary Oldman

We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners. — John Shelton Reed

A child is nothing like a racing car ... Souping up babies doesn't work that way. The child is what she is. There is a certainirreducible if elusive core. Pushing, pulling, stretching, and shrinking will not really change it. There may be spectacular interim results. The baby may say the alphabet before she walks, master two-times or even ten-times table at three. In the long run, however, this forced precocity tends to be irrelevant ... Whatever gains there are become unimportant. The losses can be irrevocable. — Stella Chess

Then you have to answer to your car owner, you have to answer to the sponsor, you have to answer to all these folks why you're not racing. But that's the only way it will ever stop. — Greg Biffle

I horse ride. I find it is the best way to maintain my fitness and stay physical. I have to practise anyway for my equestrian front. I do dressage and schooling too. I also do physical training where I work on my neck and upper body strength. Racing is a high endurance sport and you are in the car for a long time so this area is crucial. — Liz Halliday

I once bought an old car back after I sold it because I missed it so much and I had forgotten that it never ran. It was a British racing car. You know, because I just wanted it back. I could only remember what was good about it. — Connie Chung

I have one quote I very often read to myself, from a very good friend: 'Forget the people around you now; remember the little boy who was racing in go-karts, what you were dreaming of and what he wanted to achieve one day and what was his goal. Race for him.'. I fell in love with the sport, I love racing. The amount of satisfaction I get just going around in a Formula 1 car makes me smile. So if it is a bad day then you tend to come out and say it's horrible and you don't enjoy. But if you had to pick between that and doing nothing, you would always pick that. — Sebastian Vettel

Speeding around his own private racetrack in his own Formula One racing car. Some — David Walliams

Calling upon my years of experience, I froze at the controls. — Stirling Moss

I'm a car fanatic and each morning I wake up with a smile on my face, whether I'm commentating on the Formula One or at Silver Hatch racetrack in Roary the Racing Car. — Murray Walker

We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath...a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. — F. T. Marinetti

Someone I talked to who covered auto racing for a lot of years said she believed there was a 60 percent chance that Junior qualified with a car not quite up to code and people looked the other way because there's no points involved [with the pole]. — Tony Kornheiser

Racing is what I live for, and it makes my world go around. Having said that, without the support of the diabetes community, I may not have gotten back into the race car after my diagnosis in October 2007. — Charlie Kimball

The car goes where the eyes go. — Garth Stein

The GTO is such an important car because it's a racing car and a touring car and that's pretty unusual. — Nick Mason

I'm a casual F1 racing fan. I'm probably more of a stock car, NASCAR guy. — Robin Zander

When you are fitted in a racing car and you race to win, second or third place is not enough. — Ayrton Senna

In these days of high-tech video games, it's remarkable that kids once got incredibly thrilled while pushing little metal racing cars around a cardboard track: The toy car was yours, and you invested it with importance and enhanced it with fantasy and pitied it because it was small, like you were. Such games were weapons against the ennui of endless Saturdays. — Roger Ebert

I take my camera pretty much everywhere and try to get the most diverse photos possible, since I get to travel to all the greatest cities in the country and see iconic architecture and things like that. I also like racing photos - like motorcycles, cars, stuff like that. — C. J. Wilson

Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down. — Dave Barry

The winner ain't the one with the fastest car. It's the one who refuses to lose. — Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Driving a stock car does not require much handling ability, at least not as compared to Grand Prix racing, because the tracks are simple banked ovals and there is almost no shifting of gears. So, qualifying becomes a test of raw nerve - of how fast a man is willing to take a curve. — Tom Wolfe

Well, good afternoon, sunshine. How are you feeling?"
"Like something the cat dragged in, then dragged back outside to leave in the rain, and mud, then the lightning hit it, and burned it, and the cat came back to tear it into pieces, before burying it. — Kimberly Montague

Straight roads are for fast cars, turns are for fast drivers. — Colin McRae

Racing a thoroughbred grand prix car in front of a home crowd will be a surreal and mighty experience. — Nigel Mansell

Oh yes. It's not when you brake but when you take them off that counts. Most people don't understand that. — Jackie Stewart

Why should any guy want to be only friends with a girl? It's like agreeing to be near a chocolate cake and never eat it. It's like sitting in a racing car but not driving it. — Chetan Bhagat

And suddenly I realized that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. — Ayrton Senna

Just hang on, Malcolm, I pray as I press down on the gas and the car leaps forwards, racing into the night. I'm coming. And I've brought the cavalry with me. — Pittacus Lore

Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate to take compromises with a racing car. The more standard a car is, the more compromises you have to take. — Michael Schumacher

I spread my arms wide like a minister in front of his flock.
"My pulpit is the well of the courtroom. I preach to the twelve apostles, the gods of guilt."
Valenzula casually looked at me.
"Yeah, well, whatever. It's still pretty low and you should be ashamed of your ass. Almost as low as you racing out here ahead of me and hiding in there, telling her not to answer the door."
I nodded. He had it all figured out. I signaled him off the hood of the car.
"Well, Val, Ms. Roberts is now my client and I am authorized to accept the subpoena from Fulgoni on her behalf."
He slid off the car, dragging the wallet chain looped from his belt to his back pocket along the paint.
"Oh, geez, my fucking bad. I hope I didn't scratch it, Reverend. — Michael Connelly

Simply racing a Formula 1 car is an achievement. — Sebastian Vettel

My father was a racing driver, his name is Don Halliday. I grew up with it all around me. I have always been into fast, dangerous sports, even as a child. As soon as I got in a car I knew it was for me and that I would enjoy racing and competing. My mother was also involved in Solo One. She always said I was like my father and would want to compete one day. — Liz Halliday