Drivers Quotes

“Often things happen to race cars in the heat of the race. A square-toothed gear in a transmission may break, suddenly leaving the driver without all of his gears. Or perhaps a clutch fails. Brakes go soft from overheating. Suspensions break. When faced with one of theseproblems, the poor driver crashes. The average driver gives up. The great drivers drive through the problem. They figure out a way to continue racing. Like in the Luxembourg Grand Prix in 1989, when the Irish racer Kevin Finnerty York finished the race victoriously and later revealed that he had driven the final twenty laps of the race with only two gears! To be able to possess a machine in such a way is the ultimate show of determination and awareness. It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.”

“Often things happen to race cars in the heat of the race. A square-toothed gear in a transmission may break, suddenly leaving the driver without all of his gears. Or perhaps a clutch fails. Brakes go soft from overheating. Suspensions break. When faced with one of theseproblems, the poor driver crashes. The average driver gives up. The great drivers drive through the problem. They figure out a way to continue racing. Like in the Luxembourg Grand Prix in 1989, when the Irish racer Kevin Finnerty York finished the race victoriously and later revealed that he had driven the final twenty laps of the race with only two gears! To be able to possess a machine in such a way is the ultimate show of determination and awareness. It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.”

“The system we have built refuses to recognize people. Only credit cards are recognized. Drivers' licenses are recognized. But not people. People haven't any use for faces anymore, it seems. They are busy looking at your credit card, your driver's licence, your social security number. If a driver's licence is more reliable than the face I wear, then why do I have a face?”

“Beside the brand-ambassador elements of the modern racing driver, the evolution of the athlete has mandated that as drivers, we are very committed to fitness.”

“There are no drivers like Formula One drivers. They are engineers, in a way. They are driving manual cars one-handed at 200 miles per hour around streets in Monaco. These cars use the ultimate in technology.”

“It takes more than driving to become an IndyCar driver. Gone are the days when drivers show up Friday morning and go home Sunday night. We're all integral to our partnerships, commercially, motorsports. We're as much champions in the boardroom as we are on the racetrack.”

“The taxi driver is someone who spends all day driving in city traffic (an activity that provokes either heart attack or delirium), in constant conflict with other human drivers. Consequently, he is nervous and hates every anthropomorphic creature.”

“There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.”

“To truly motivate others 1) discover what their motives, desires & drivers are 2) genuinely connect with and support them from the heart.”

“To measure market needs, I would watch carefully what customers do, not simply listen to what they say. Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group. Thus, observations indicate that auto users today require a minimum cruising range (that is, the distance that can be driven without refueling) of about 125 to 150 miles; most electric vehicles only offer a minimum cruising range of 50 to 80 miles. Similarly, drivers seem to require cars that accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than 10 seconds (necessary primarily to merge safely into highspeed traffic from freeway entrance ramps); most electric vehicles take nearly 20 seconds to get there. And, finally, buyers in the mainstream market demand a wide array of options, but it would be impossible for electric vehicle manufacturers to offer a similar variety within the small initial unit volumes that will characterize that business. According to almost any definition of functionality used for the vertical axis of our proposed chart, the electric vehicle will be deficient compared to a gasolinepowered car.This information is not sufficient to characterize electric vehicles as disruptive, however. They will only be disruptive if we find that they are also on a trajectory of improvement that might someday make them competitive in parts of the mainstream market. The trajectories of performance improvement demanded in the market—whether measured in terms of required acceleration, cruising range, or top cruising speed—are relatively flat. This is because traffic laws impose a limit on the usefulness of ever-more-powerful cars, and demographic, economic, and geographic considerations limit the increase in commuting miles for the average driver to less than 1 percent per year. At the same time, the performance of electric vehicles is improving at a faster rate—between 2 and 4 percent per year—suggesting that sustaining technological advances might indeed carry electric vehicles from their position today, where they cannot compete in mainstream markets, to a position in the future where they might.”

“It's sad that you don't see drivers being real people.”