Charlie Kimball Quotes

The fast, flowing parts, the high-speed corners, that's where a Formula One car is at its best - changes of direction, pulling high g-forces left and right.

People ask how hard it can be sitting down for work during a 500-mile race? Well, without power steering or power brakes, holding onto 650 horses in a car that has nearly 3,000 pounds of downforce and can produce up to 4Gs vertically and laterally can be extremely tough - even sitting down.

You get such a visceral thrill driving a race car. You think you've driven, and then you're like, 'Oh, I was doing something for 20 years that I didn't realize I hadn't experienced the real version of.'

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.

I don't know how to drive a car.

To understand the intensity of driving an F1 car, you have to be in it. When you're driving a 750hp machine at 200mph, the noise and the vibrations are incredible. The G-force when you take big corners is like someone trying to rip your head off. You hit the brakes, and it feels as if the skin is being pulled off your body.

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.

People get excited around me and behave differently than they would normally. I don't feel different from anyone else, except that I drive a racing car round in circles faster than somebody else.

One of my biggest problems this season was with the clutch at the start of the race. I hate to risk the car.

When you walk the track and you see a corner and realise you were going round it at 160mph, you wonder who could be so stupid to take a corner at that speed. But in the car, you don't even think about that.

I've always been attracted to cars, and driving is a completely measurable experience: if you qualify last on the grid, you're the slowest, and if you qualify first on the grid, you're the fastest. So no one can say you're slow if you're fast and no one can say you're fast if you're slow.

You are going in one second the length of a football field. That means you brain is receiving information from your body what the car is doing physically, bumping, balance, performance.

You don't have to worry about whether the car is set up right or not, you know it is, and it's down to you. Ultimately, that's what every driver wants.

If I get into a car on a circuit, I drive as fast as I can; that's it!

All cars have a natural gait, a speed at which they're happiest. The Corniche is perfect at around 65-70mph. I did a ton in it once, which was completely horrible. Apparently, it'll reach 120mph, but not with me in it.

From GP3 to Formula 2, it's obviously a step, but it's only a step on driving I would say. Here from Formula 2 to Formula 1, it's a huge step on driving because we have nearly 400 BHP more, with a lot more downforce. So it's a completely different car.

They say you only go around once, but with a muscle car you can go around two or three times.

I think very clearly the philosophy is to build a competitive and very quick car!

I just try to see what happens when you put your feet on the accelerator.

If your car takes 95 and you put 87 in it, it's gonna run sluggish, right? A lot of people don't realize what you put in your body affects your mechanics, and you're gonna run sluggish.

Sometimes people are looking for, 'What's the next Tesla car? What's this really cool, super-specific thing that people are going to want?' But I try to be just like a Ford truck. They sell a lot more Ford trucks than they do Tesla cars.

We are pushing the limits on the chassis and the engine sides a lot in order to have a competitive car, and this is why we are winning races, but also, if you push the limits at a certain stage, you find them.

Bobsledding is like sprinting with NASCAR. You get to push these 400-pound sleds as fast as you can down a hill and hop in. How could you not enjoy that?

People say a two-man sled is like driving a racecar, and a four-man is like driving a truck. And it feels that way.

People who are digital native, they want to have real-time performance feedback. They want to understand where they are, what might happen, what their future is. And they want to understand that quickly in a very direct conversation.