| 1 | "There are but three true sports--bullfighting, mountain climbing, and motor-racing. The rest are merely games." - often attributed to Ernest Hemmimgway |
| 2 | "I did not win - I merely finished first. The just and deserving winner is Nuvolari, the greatest racing driver in the world." – Clemente Biondetti, quoted in Pritchard, Anthony. A Century of Grand Prix Motor Racing, pp. 63. ISBN 1-899870-38-5. |
| 3 | "It doesn't matter if you're in a wheelchair or have healthy legs. If you have the will to do something, you can get it done. I race the same as anyone else does; I just don't use my feet. And, I never give up." - Evan Evans, the first paraplegic competitor to win a professional off-road racing title, Evan Evan's Racing |
| 4 | "You win some. You lose some. You wreck some." – Dale Earnhardt. The Book of Stock Car Wisdom: Common Sense and Uncommon Genius from 101 Legends of the Track. Walnut Grove Press. ISBN 978-1887655125. |
| 5 | "Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal." – Alan Kulwicki. The Last Lap. Macmillan, pages 346. ISBN 0-02-862147-6. |
| 6 | "The important thing about being first into the first corner is that everyone can then have their accident behind you" - Frank Gardener, quoted in "Race and Rally car sourcebook", p. 90 |
| 7 | "It is air resistance that finally prevents a road vehicle...from going beyond a certain maximum velocity...Only three things cam improve this situation: more power, bodywork with a lower co-efficient of drag, or a smaller frontal area" - Alan Staniforth, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 8 | "One or two [race car designs] inspired that most unnattractive of human reactions - 'It's going to win - let's get it banned" with instand resort to the relevant small print rather than to the drawing board to compete" - Alan Staniforth, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 9 | "In no time at all, club racing drivers discovered the cornering forces it could generate ripped the 12 gauge front wheels clean over the nuts", Alan Staniforth, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook, pg. 134, explaining why early minis needed beefier wheels than were originally issued |
| 10 | "Show me the code" - Linus Torvalds |
| 11 | "Many spend their lives criticizing others from the sidelines. That's the easy route, the well traveled path, but it is seldom fulfilling. The people who put down the TV remote and begin to do things will live a much richer life." - Joey Maier |
| 12 | "Get the job done, 'stead of talkin' 'bout it" - Cowboy Troy |
| 13 | "...there will be plenty of Stratos lovers happy to argue that when the standard pair [of headlights] were joined by four auxilliaries to create a positive phalanx of light right across the front of the car, it became purposeful and aggressive rather than ugly" - Staniforth, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook, pg. 138 |
| 14 | "The intention is to demonstrate that an effective formula racing car can be built by the enthusiast of limited means working in his garden shed." - Jack French, writing in the 750 Club's magazine. (Quoted in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook) |
| 15 | "Estimate how long and how much, then triple it. You won't be far wrong." - Jack French, writing in the 750 Club's magazine. (Quoted in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook) |
| 16 | "...a pair of much sought afterter 16 inch wheels, only made by the Austin factory for the Persian Army, and organization which could hardly have realized that its special equipment gave perfect gearing when teamed with the correct back axle for the Silverstone Club Circut" - Jack French, writing in the 750 Club's magazine. (Quoted in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook) |
| 17 | "There were never any 100 mph Austin Sevens then, but...I've looked across into the other man's cockpit and seen his speedo reading 100 mph...but I was passing him at 75!" - Jack French (Quoted in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook) |
| 18 | "A hacksaw blade used 'lumberjack fashion' with a man at each end would not immediately strike a chord as a tuning device - least of all in the field of aerodynamics." - Commentary on Mike Forest's 750 race car, a heavily chopped Austin seven (Race and Rally Car Sourcebook) |
| 19 | "This method is cheap, simple, it works and is condemned by the makers" - Mick Forest writing about shock absorber modification in the 750 club magazine. (quoted in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook) |
| 20 | "Negative tuning: keep it simple and light" - Mike Forrest |
| 21 | "First they turned the engine round back to front so they could take a chain drive from the gearbox...Alert engineers will have perceived that without some precaution the car would end up going backwards in four gears and forward in only one...turning the axle upside down cured this" - Alan Staniforth on the design of the 1973 Warren/Reliant racecar. |
| 22 | "Nobody normally loves winners or innovators. If it should happen it has to be for their transcendentally lovable characters rather than their victories or pioneering creations." - Staniforth on the 0mag2/Reliant race car |
| 23 | "In the manner of many sparetime projects, it proceeded erratically over the next 3 1/2 years. As it progressed, Ray kept a note of the sources of many of the parts used. It made a strange directory of motorsport: F1, F2, F3, FF, Reliant, Morris Minor, Mini, VW, Imp, commercial tanker, combine harvester, redundant coffee table, and a cup from a dolly's tea set." - Staniforth on the 0mag2/Reliant race car |
| 24 | "Only the old faithfuls - chassis stiffness, good handling, reliable power, decent (though certainly not brand new) tires, and fearsome driver determination - held their position unshaken" - Staniforth on the redesign of the car that would become the Marrow Mk1 |
| 25 | "The design also easily permits almost vertical front coils, a strong natural defence against falling rate, nose dive, understeer and kindred evils." - Staniforth on the Marrow Mk1 |
| 26 | "The fact that 'apart from lack of speed, terrible handling and distinctly poor cooling' it was perfect sent him back to the drawing board" - Staniforth on the Myatt Mk1 |
| 27 | "we had to be very careful to keep the total rear axle movement controlled or it moved so much the joints locked up and shattered" - Mick Harris quoted by Staniforth, Race and Rally Car suspension, pg. 169 |
| 28 | "stiffness in a chassis is everything - you cannot make it too stiff." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 29 | "build in all the driver protection you can. If he needs it, he needs it badly." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 30 | "Paint chassis with one coat of decent enamel like Humbrol without undercoat. This will show cracks and you can also refinish welds or repairs nicely." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 31 | "use captive nuts wherever possible, either welded on or Rivnuts. They will save endless time and trouble in awkward places." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 32 | "If the car is working leave it alone and don't mess things about. If you do alter things, keep notes and alter to a plan with an aim." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 33 | "Aerodnamics are not always from the wind tunnel. The reason we run a short nose is because it would not fit in the garage with a longer one." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 34 | "Work and thought are vital before you pick up the hacksaw or metal shears." - Team Mick and Dick" in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 35 | "all things being equal, the car with the lowest c of g [center of gravity] will win." - Gordon Murray, chief designer of McLaren, quoted in Race and Rally Car Sourcebook, pg. 170 |
| 36 | "The new chassis was not only meticulously triangulated (of course) but built from round cold drawn tube. Though much more laborious and awkward at joints, it is both lighter and stronger than the generally used resistance welded square tube" - Staniforth, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook, pg. 170 |
| 37 | "You can have a non-standard rocker cover with your name on it as long as it does not improve the performance in any way" - Staniforth on the strict rules governing formula ford racing |
| 38 | "Invariably things get more complicated and you sort it out and simplfy it again" - Bob Marston |
| 39 | "It was an odd mixture: a John Cooper tubular chassis, gearbox internals designed by Porsche and made half in Germany and half in the Vandervell toolroom, Rolls-Royce cranccase with four of the rightly fabled Norton "double knocker" (or twin cam) motorcycle engines converted to water cooling bolted on top, ferrari suspension parts, homemade disk brakes to an American patent, and the body by an English panelbasher."- Staniforth on the Vanwall formula 1 cars |
| 40 | "Any rear wheel steering, even a few thou, and boy have you got problems! A driver can correct to some degree for movements - flex, bump steer - at the front, but at the rear it makes it extremely difficult for him." - Ron Tauranac on the Brabham BT26, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 41 | "Asking the front wheels of a car to do their normal job of steering while handling, let's say, more than 170 brake horsepower, is like asking a man to wire a plug while juggling...penguins, while making love...to a beautiful woman, while on fire, on stage, in front of the queen. It's all going to go wrong." - Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear, Series 13, Episode 4 |
| 42 | "Rigidity is far more important than being clever with the geometry of the suspension. Whatever you hope to achieve with that, it is ridiculous to then have the pick-ups moving about. It cannot work" - - Ron Tauranac on the Brabham BT26, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 43 | "Nowadays, of course, geometry is far less important as suspension movement is becoming so small." - Ron Tauranac on the Brabham BT26, Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 44 | You made a running car out of what were two large unusable assemblies of metal. I call it success. - user "Type Q" on GRM message board. (Quoted in the December 2008 issue) |
| 45 | "In addition to bottles and cans, why not recycle entire cars?" - Tim Suddard in the December 2008 issue of Grassroots Motorsports |
| 46 | "It's not what's on the outside,
It's what's under the hood" - Kazzer, Pedal to the Metal |
| 47 | "It doesn't matter what you drive,
It's that you drive what you got" - Kazzer, Pedal to the Metal |
| 48 | "Press the petal to the metal a little more. [That's] when it's scary...But one thing for sure, keep my foot on the floor." - Kazzer, Pedal to the Metal |
| 49 | "Even Michael Schumacher can't break the laws of physics...much" - Gerardo Bonilla, MSCC autocross school |
| 50 | "Before any noise, heat, or speed, the blood, sweat, and oil must mingle" -B.S. Levy |
| 51 | "Basing your opinion of an entire class of vehicles on a British sports car is like basing your opinion of women on Courtney Love" -Cory Farley |
| 52 | "The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic - the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done." - Theodore Roosevelt |
| 53 | "People need to spend more time in the garage and less time on the computer. If he was battling a rusty Datsun, this never would've happened." - GRM message board userpete240z in this thread.
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| 54 | "If it was more simple, there wouldn’t be engineers in racing!" - Matt Ferratusco |
| 55 | "Talking smack about what is or isn't a 'real' motorsport doesn't hold an candle to driving a car 'in anger'....even if it's just around cones in a parking lot." - Joey Maier |
| 56 | "Learning by my mistakes burns that knowledge in for good." - Kirk Hanning, May 2009 issue of HotRod Deluxe |
| 57 | "What people don't understand is that anything a 'high-end' builder can do, they could do with a little bit of practice...They just tried to do it and you haven't" - Kirk Hanning, May 2009 issue of HotRod Deluxe |
| 58 | "There's something about the yowl of a straight six that stirs the blood" - Richard Hammond, Top Gear, Season 1 Episode 6 |
| 59 | "When you start to modify a project, each component that is changed will possibly affect something else. Don't be surprised when it takes longer and costs more to make an improvement than originally thought. After all, if it was easy, wouldn't the original engineers have done it in the first place?" - Classic Motorsports |
| 60 | "Racing is the great evil, sometimes. It can possess us with a feaver in which we sacrifice great street cars on the bonefire of racing vanity." - Peter Egan, Road and Track, May 2008 |
| 61 | "...our behavior on the track helps create the racing environment we will live in. If I play dirty, I will get that back later. We reap what we sow." - Randy Pobst, Sportscar magazine |
| 62 | "This was the 1st time I built a car from scratch and it was a real struggle, but it was worth it. The amount of pride you have when you drive a car you worked so hard for is amazing; And I can safely say, I did not just assemble this car, I built it." - Chris Casny, pg. 16 of the July 2009 issue of Rod & Custom |
| 63 | "My life is so much richer actually doing this, instead of simply dreaming about it that I don't care about my mediocrity. Even being a mediocre racer makes me much more than a mediocre person, simply because I'm a racer, instead of a watcher." - Friedgreencorrado quoted in the June 2009 issue of GRM |
| 64 | "The level of welding talent required for a vehicle that, if sensible designed, will stick together for you is not ultra-high. There is no need for the sort of expertise that will force-arc North Sea gas piping against the clock, with an immediate high speed Xray film check, or hang bits together for Concorde." - Alan Staniforth, pg. 14 of Race and Rally Car Sourcebook. |
| 65 | "They lie generally in the 60-80 bracket for comfortable road cars, 80-100 for firmer and more sporting machinery, 100-125 for non-ground-effect racers, and creep towards 175 in certain applications....as current F1 would appear to be operating at 200-500 CPM, the spine jarring ride is not too difficult to imagine." - Alan Staniforth discussing wheel frequencies, pg. 63 of Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 66 | "...the standard approach is a front frequency 10 or 20 CPM lower than the rear." - Alan Staniforth discussing wheel frequencies, pg. 63 of Race and Rally Car Sourcebook |
| 67 | "It's not fun to do this. Your wife leaves you, she's in bed with the milkman, and you're, 'oh, where's my front suspension unit.'" - Jeremy Clarkson on the assembly of a caterham 7, Top Gear Season eight, episode 7 |
| 68 | "I would rather staple my ears to a horse than ever do that again, especially with James May". - Jeremy Clarkson on the assembly of a caterham 7, Top Gear Season eight, episode 7 |
| 69 | "It was a very simple recipe: three parts e-type jaguar, two parts corvette, and a sprinkling of Japanese reliability. Fabulous car." - Jeremy Clarkson on 240z, Top Gear Season 4, ep 8 |
| 70 | "So, in essence, it's the 'Rover swap,' but with a few more cubic inches and a cast iron block with aluminum heads — just like the original OHC "Twin-Dolomite" boat anchor.
No 8 foot long single row Simplex timing chains or any other English-engineered tomfoolery (at least under the hood!)" - jalopnik |
| 71 | "It's that part of the brain that makes you frightened; that's what racing drivers don't have. They don't have imagination. They're not thinking, 'what if a wheel falls off now,' 'what if, I push the brake pedal and nothing happens.'" - Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear, Series 7, Episode 6 |
| 73 | "...a car can be a tool but it can also be so much more. It can be a heart-starter, it can be a drug, it can be a piece of art, it can stir your soul..." - Jeremy Clarkson, Times Online |
| 74 | "Thanks to ever-increasing safety, emissions, and comfort standards, the average new car is a lumpy pile of bloated meh." - Jalopnik |
| 75 | "Impractical, hard to get parts for, too big, too noisy and too
expensive. Gotta have it!" - 914Driver in GRM thread "Why do I want this?" |
| 76 | "It's male genetics. The more ridiculous the proposition is, the more
we are drawn to it. " - mndsm in GRM thread "Why do I want this?" |
| 77 | Nis14: "I have realized that we have a very expensive hobby....my life would be completely different if I wasn’t into cars. I would dress better, have a nicer place, etc."
4cylndrfury: "Nice things are meaningless if you cant chirp third through the esses on the way home from the store"
GRM Board |
| 78 |
"I never even mentioned how good it feels just to just take one of these machines in your hands, go out by yourself, and just do it." - friedgreencorrado |
| 79 | "Why watch the world go by when I can participate in it?" - friedgreencorrado |
| 80 | "WIthout motorsports, most of the best memories of my life would be missing." - friedgreencorrado |
| 81 | "'Normal' people treat me differently after they discover I'm a racer. There's an almost automatic level of respect...when I walk in the room. Even now that I autocross, people see the videos, watch the cars slide around, and wonder out loud, '..how do you do that?!?'" - friedgreencorrado |
| 82 | "...our hobby is more than just something fun we do to take up time. Being a "car person" isn't a lifestyle, it is a life. If you have ever seen an elderly man's eyes light up when talking about a car you know what I mean. Cars get under your skin and deep into your bones." - Brian Medford |
| 83 | "Why does a man mate a 2.5-liter, 156-hp Alfa V-6 to a Harley-Davidson four-speed and install it in an off-the-shelf frame? Why does he then put two Weber downdrafts in the vee and route the velocity stacks through the tank?....No one knows, and the mystery is part of the appeal — some things are meant to be accepted and marveled at, not understood. Answers just diminish their impact." - Sam Smith |
| 84 | "Motor sports are something I'd rather do than sit and watch. Even at the 'junior woodchuck' amateur level, doing something beats sitting on the couch and watching other people do it" - Joey Maier |
| 85 | "The price of convenience is loss of control, loss even of understanding. And we wonder: How far can we trust what we cannot follow?" - Engines Of Our Ingenuity |
| 86 | "It is more fun to drive a slow car fast than to drive a fast car slow." - Abner Perney |
| 87 | A bad day at the racetrack beats a good day at the office |
| 88 | Better to be a racer for a moment then a spectator for a lifetime. |
| 89 | Hands OFF the steering wheel when a meeting with the tire wall is imminent. |
| 90 | You can't make a racehorse out of a pig. But if you work hard enough at it you can make a mighty fast pig. - Bob Akin |
| 91 | "It's been said that there is no new way to build a '32 Ford--that everything tasteful, and distasteful, has already been tried." - Christopher Campbell, HotRod, May 2009 |
| 92 | Straights are for fast cars. Turns are for fast drivers. |
| 93 | A meteorite hitting your car is an accident; anything else is driver error. |
| 94 | Nothing good has ever been written about the full rotation of a racecar about its roll axis. - Carroll Smith |
| 95 | "Slow in, fast out!"
"Fast in, backwards out!" |
| 96 | "Don't try to impress me, because you won't. Don't try to scare me, because I already am. " - Unknown track day instructor with a novice |
| 97 | "You know, race car driving is like sex. All men think they are good at it." - Jay Leno on Top Gear |
| 98 | "Racing makes heroin addiction look like a vague longing for something salty" - Peter Egan |
| 99 | Possibly true story:
Jackie Stewart practicing for one of his first Grands Prix has the throttle stick going into the Curva Grande at Monza. Later at the press conference, he describes knocking the car into neutral, a big spin..."Just incredible I didn't hit anything. I thought it was all over, for sure."
The reporters sit there in awe until, from a corner of the room, Jim Clark asks softly: "So, Jackie, you ordinarily back off there?" |
| 100 | "Again, it comes down to what parameters of the Z06 you want to 'beat'. Top speed? Big course laptimes? Small course laptimes? Autocross? Cross-country cruising? Define what you're going to build, then build it. This goes for both bench racing and real racing." - Keith Tanner |
| 101 | "I started this car as an exercise, to see how much of it I could build myself." - Dave Eltzholtz discussing his home-fabricated replica of a model T phaeton in Hemmings Motor News, April 2010, pg. 42 |
| 102 | "Some people ask me why build the car, why drive it all over, and I tell them it's like mountain climbing - you climb the mountain because it's there - except sometimes you have to build the mountain you want to climb." - Dave Eltzholtz discussing his home-fabricated replica of a model T phaeton in Hemmings Motor News, April 2010, pg. 42 |
| 103 | Point: "Those purists out there still clinging to your six-speed manuals, please go home. Your black-and-white TV is on the fritz." - Dan Neil
Counterpoint: "Dan Neil dings the Porsche Boxster Spyder and anyone who chooses a row-your-own six-speed over Porsche's PDK automagical tranny, claiming it's faster. Basically it's the same argument for ditching violins for electric guitars in orchestras because they're louder." - Matt Hardigree |
