Racing History Quotes

I don't understand why everybody can't remember how exciting the Daytona 500 has been over the years when Richard Petty and David Pearson and Darrell Waltrip ran just the three of them racing for the win. Why do you have to have 40 cars in a pack to say it's exciting?

I can't remember what made my dad take us karting for the first time, I can't remember really. I was into motorsport by then and I knew everything, and every driver, it was around 2009, 2008. That's when I first properly knew about Formula One. Those were the days.

I started when I was seven years old so I was on 50, 60 cc Suzuki and then I went up to a Yamaha 125 and then my sister was 16 and she was racing a Harley Davidson 750.

My last race was at Le Mans in 2000, my first race was in 1959, so I dodged a lot of bullets along the way, I can tell you that.

I used to watch MotoGP quite a bit, I liked MotoGP. I had a motorbike before I had a go-kart and before I had a motorbike I had a quad bike but I was too dangerous, and before I did quad biking I did horse riding, so it's been a long journey.

[Andrea De Cesaris is] the man who has won more Grands Prix than anybody else in the history of Grand Prix racing without actually winning one of them.

I won F4, and I won F3 - F3 by, I believe, the biggest margin in history and as one of the youngest drivers in history. I'm just pointing out facts. I'm not bragging or anything.

Sir Gordon Richards was the most successful jockey - flat or jumps - there's ever been: champion jockey for 26 years. He set a record of 269 winners in the season 55 years before I broke it. That was my greatest achievement.

There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. It was the day they built the second automobile.

When I was in high school, my uncle, who went to the races quite a bit, got me interested. Then when I went to college at Southern Illinois University, just a few hours from Louisville, we used to go to the Kentucky Derby, and I got to see Secretariat and Riva Ridge win.

To be a part of TT history is a massive achievement. It is one of, if not the greatest races on two wheels, if not on four.

Maybe I am the driver who got the most close to the championship in history.

I've been at the front a couple of times and won back in 2002, but I haven't been in that position too many times over here in the United States, so we'll see how it goes.

Victorian racehorse owners frequently named their horses after murderers. That was so astonishing. Can you imagine the equivalent today, with a horse named, say, Boston Strangler, running in the Kentucky Derby? This was a new discovery. The Victorians didn't think it was odd, so no one ever mentioned it particularly.

Ayrton and I shared a lot of incredible races, where he was first and I was second and vice-versa. I think it's fair to say I am the only racer in Grand Prix history who wasn't intimidated by him, and I think that was great for the fans - it did make us have a few close calls, though!

I feel that I'm in good company behind the wheel of the Williams FW08C. It was the first F1 car to be driven by the great Ayrton Senna, and it won the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix.

You know, when my dad was a racing fan in Australia he would follow Jack Brabham and sometimes only hear if he won two days after a race - when the result finally appeared in his newspaper. These days I can tweet something and it's all over the world in seconds.

I think there's a lot of deep-rooted history in England with racing. Lots of Formula One teams are based there. Formula One is obviously a huge sport over in England and Europe.

Times change, things move. F1 used to have customer cars years ago. You could buy a car from March or from Ferrari and go racing.

I believe to have been one of the rare drivers to have returned to Ferrari.

When I first started in Formula 1, I tried to ignore the fact I was the first black guy ever to race in the sport. But, as I've got older, I've really started to appreciate the implications.

You don't get that opportunity everyday to do Le Mans with Porsche, a brand that has so much tradition and history. So I just grabbed the opportunity while it was there.

I'm hugely proud to be able to work with Ferrari - such a great team and huge amount of history, especially combined with my dad. I'm really proud to be able to be part of it. All our hearts are very red.

I’d love to have an opportunity to tie the greats in Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr.

I'd like to be remembered as an important component of the Ferrari team.