Race Car Drivers

"To my mother, Elizabeth Basler Rickenbacker, with love and appreciation; her inspiration throughout life never failed me. To my wife, Adelaide Frost Rickenbacker, whose constant confidence, love and dedication have always supported me through failure and success."

"It seems only yesterday, in 1934, that Eastern Air Lines was a struggling little company pioneering in a new and untried field. It became a giant in the industry. We built it through hard work, dedication and faith in the future of America. This kind of faith in the future of America is being expressed everywhere you look. It is based upon the one eternal trith on which our nation is founded. The future promises that men and women, free to dream and free to work to make their dreams come true, can accomplish anything. There can be no limit to the creative imagination with which a beneficient God has endowed mankind."

"As the dinner progressed, it became clear that, of all those present, only Vansittart believed that the Germans would dare to precipitate another war. All the others disagreed so bluntly and positively that, after only a few minutes of conversation, I realized that it was pointless to continue the discussion. "Rickenbacker," I told myself, "just be a country boy. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open, and you might learn something." What I learned was that the British leaders of that period were more interested in petty bickering and attempting to keep themselves in power than they were in even learning about German aims, much less preparing to defend against them. At that time in Britain, pre-preparedness was considered warmongering. Winston Churchill, one of the few eminent Britons who believed in preparedness and who made his militant voice heard at every opportunity, was very much in disfavor at the time. So was Anthony Eden. It was a government of compromise and self-delusion. In their internal political fights the English leaders had forgotten the outside world."

"The Prime Minister's car picked me up at the Savoy Hotel, It appeared to be European-royalty day at the Chequers, with all the deposed kings and queens of the Continent present. After a pleasant luncheon, Churchill and I moved outside and sat under a large oak tree. He asked me about Russia, but, when I started to give him my observations, he interrupted me in a bantering tone, questioning my statements as though I had been sold a bill of goods. "Mr. Prime Minister," I said, "you invited me here, and I was pleased to come. If you don't care to listen to what I have to report, then I would really prefer to leave, for I am behind schedule and have plenty to do. And if you aren't busy, you oughyt to be, as I would imagine you'd have plenty to do too." "Oh, I'm sorry, so sorry," he said. "Please do continue." I did, and this time he listened attentively. I concluded by imploring him to work for a better understanding between him and Roosevelt on the one hand and Stalin on the other. I recommended that Britain and the United States be realistic with Stalin and establish a firm and just agreement before the war was ended, with positive understanding and respect on all sides. "If this isn't done," I said, "Russia will demand ten times more after the war than she will ask for today. By sincerely holding out the olive branch of peace today, you will get credit on the books of history for eliminating the possibility of another great war within the next 25 years." Discussing other areas of the war, Churchill said that, when victory in Europe was secure, he would send his armies to the Pacific to give the Americans abundant help against the Japanese. "Mr. Churchill," I said, "when the Germans capitulate, the English people will be through with war. You will probably no longer be prime minister." It is sad, but that is exactly what did happen."

"When we arrived home, we found the situation in the United States no better. In vain did I attempt to describe to our military leaders the true situation in Germany. My reports were completely at variance with those coming in from our social-climbing lounge lizards, who were too busy going to cocktail parties to do their jobs."

"Our American doughboys were pushing in on both sides of the salient. We could see them moving forward. Their bayonets were fixed, and they were using them. They stormed the trenches, fighting with cold steel and rifle butts. From my comparatively safe place in the sky, I watched them with admiration. I have always maintained that American infantrymen were the heroes of the war and that Alvin T. York, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, was the greatest hero of them all."

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."

"“Since I was very young, I’ve looked up to Lewis Hamilton. He was, for me, the only, call it ‘identifiable’ role model that I had in my career, so he held a special place in my heart and you know, I have always been motivated to do as well as he’s done, and hopefully be that identifiable role model to someone else, thanks to him.”"

"It’s definitely challenging as a young female driver trying to overcome those physical barriers,"

"The biggest problem is there’s never really enough funding for a woman to complete all the steps, It’s opportunity, what team you’re in, the funding you have and so forth. I was expecting someone to come up when I saw one or two drivers come up that had a fair amount of talent, but they never quite got to where they needed to go."

"People aren’t always going to enjoy change, change is most often met with resistance, but it has been good. There’s been a lot of support which has surprised me … You’re going to face that criticism, but it doesn’t change the way I feel. I love motorsport and I feel grateful to be there … keyboard warriors … but … everyone I work with … has been great."

"It’s a sport that should be available to men and women to compete equally. There’s very few sports where that’s the case."

"My interest and passion is to continue to break new ground in motorsports. I’ve been proactive over the last year in thinking about what I want to do in my career and how I can accomplish those things."

"There weren’t many girls or people of color. I didn’t feel like I fit in, and the idea of being compared with my counterparts was frightening.“If little girls turn on the TV, they’ll see my face … If I was wearing a helmet, they probably wouldn’t.” (Talking about being visible as a woman in motorsport, and how being without the helmet matters for visibility.)"

"I never looked back in the race, It’s one of those things, it’s hard to explain … It happens once in a lifetime. You say to yourself: ‘If I get into this corner first and lead the race I’m going to win."

"As a young girl, you don’t look at it as, I can do this, because there’s no one doing it, I’m a big believer of having more women, not just as drivers but mechanics and engineers"

"F1 was always my goal and although I planned to be there as a driver, I got there in a different shape and form which is fine. That was the most mind-blowing thing to me"

"The Indy 500 made me realize that life and racing careers are too short not to go for it"

"In my era, there were so few women that were racing at my level, You never really thought about yourself as: ‘I’m a woman in this race.’ You don’t think of yourself as something else. I was always the underdog because I never had funding and I was always given these cars to drive without any practice — I was always thrown in the deep end. For me it was always a concentration of what I was doing in this race car."

"I want to be a part of this next step of getting more and more females in the door. And even if I don’t make it, hopefully there’s a whole crop of young talent that’s coming through that I can help."

"I panicked, and thought I will have so many regrets if I don’t keep chasing my racing career. And just like that, W Series dropped out of the sky. That was the beginning of a whole new chapter."

"As a young girl, you don’t look at it as, ‘I can do this,’ because there’s no one doing it"

"Don't let anyone tell you, you can't do it. If it's something you want to do and pursue, don't stop until you have reached your full potential. It takes a lot of hard work and determination to make your way up the ladder, so never give up."

"It (karting) helps me to keep driving fit, seeing as it's extremely physical. In the end, nothing quite compares to the real thing though, and I can't wait to go back real Racing again"

"Racing has always been a part of the equation. If we not at the racetrack competing, we are watching some form of motorsport on TV. To become a professional racing driver is and always has been the ultimate goal."

"Being chosen as one of the top 18 women around the world to compete in the W Series was the most memorable highlight of my career. I finished the season 10th overall in the championship."

"Driving an 800bhp car is something I, like many other racers, have always dreamt of but I didn’t think I’d ever have the opportunity to do it, so when the team at Renault UK contacted me I jumped at the chance. It was definitely very different to the rally cars I’m used to but was an amazing experience. I could feel myself getting more and more comfortable with the single-seater and being able to speak to Jolyon, driver to driver, also helped when the nerves did kick in."

"After racing and facing the challenges of competing in a male-dominated sport together for many years I was so happy that my friend Pauline was able to share this latest milestone and give me that extra boost. It just goes to show that anyone can fulfil their dreams at any age if they put their mind to it and always follow their passions"

"Rosemary is a truly inspirational racer and woman who so strongly embodies our guiding principle of passion for life, so it was a privilege to help her achieve her dream by driving a Renault Sport Formula One™ Team car as part of our 40th anniversary celebrations. It was great to see her out on track, pushing herself to get everything she could out of the experience."

"It’s not very often you unearth a story like Rosemary's, she's a remarkable woman, a tremendous athlete, and embodies the kind of passion for life we can all learn a lesson or two from. I think this piece of work will resonate with hearts and petrol heads alike."

"I think it [The W Series] will be a revolution and I am sure that thanks to F1, it will show more people the female talent we have. It will show that it’s perfectly normal and that girls are just as competitive as men. At the moment, it is irrelevant to me whether I race against men or women or both. Nothing changes for me."

"One day in Modena I was entering a restaurant when I recognized Ferrari sitting at one of the tables. As I passed I tried to greet him, but he turned his head away and pretended to be talking to the person next to him. He was ignoring me! I used to have contact with Adolfo and Omer Orsi of Maserati, Renzo Rivolta of ISO, even Alejandro de Tomaso. But Ferrari never spoke to me again. He was a great man, I admit, but it was so very easy to upset him."

"Now, finally, the news is confirmed, the rumors fact. Enzo Ferrari died the evening of August 14, and while that may be trite, it is also true that an era ushers away with him. He was the first, and also the last, of the great autocrats of auto racing. Red cars will continue to be built in the little town near Modena, but other hands, perhaps susceptible to influences beyond a pure love of racing cars, will be in control. For that Ferrari undoubtedly had. Thirty and 40 years ago he began producing road cars, disliking intensely that the majority were ordered by rich dilettantes, people attracted by the kudos of the name, probable incapable of driving a Ferrari properly. There was no Fiat money there in those days, and the road cars were seen as an evil necessary to pay for the racing program. It was an attitude that persisted to the end of the old man's life."

"Competition among Ferrari drivers was always encouraged. The Ingegnere- he hated being called Commendatore- especially relished chargers in the red cars. Recrimination was always on the cards for a man who settled for a safe second, never for one who had destroyed a car trying to be first."

"My heart has always beat a little faster for Ferraris, and there is no distinction in that. Captivation by them is almost irresistible. All that charisma, magic, call it what you will, has plundered the emotions of racing fans as no other cars ever have, or ever will. Paint a race car red, and already you are halfway there. But the rest is less easy to pin down, a hodgepodge of remembered sights and sounds; black on yellow Prancing Horse sheilds on the cockpits of Ascari, Hawthorn, Lauda, Berger; exposed gear lever gates, "PROVA MO" stencil marks. And the mystique, of course, began with the enigma from whom the cars took their name. A man of contradictions, on occasion chillingly ruthless, yet capable of surprising sentimentality."

"I had deluded myself - as fathers often do - that our attentions would help [Dino] to regain his health. I had convinced myself that [Dino] was like one of my cars, and so I made a table of the calorific values of the various food he had to eat - types of food that would not harm his kidneys - and I kept an up-to-date daily record of his albumins, of the specific gravity of his urine, the level of urea in his blood, of his diuresis, etc., so I would have an indication of the process of the disease. The sad truth was quite different: my son was gradually wasting away with progressive muscular dystrophy. He was dying of that terrible disease which no one has ever been able to understand or cure, and against which there is no defense, aside from genetic prophylaxis (i.e. a medication or a treatment designed and used to prevent a disease from occurring)."

"Ferrari's love of his cars was an abstract thing. For the actual machinery there was no sentiment whatsoever. Millionaires across the world may devote themselves to collecting Ferraris, but the Old Man hadn't a sliver of interest in what he saw as museum pieces. The future was the thing, and the cars were routinely broken up once their useful purpose had been served. The classic shark-nose cars dominated the 1961 season, for example, but not a single example survives. At any given time, however, his passion for the current cars was the major force in his life."

"Among musicians, I had a true friend, Maestro Cantelli. He was a young man of particularly noble sentiments."

"Il secondo è il primo dei perdenti. (The runner-up is the first of losers.)"

"They are cars which the sporting client can use on the road during the week and race on Sundays."

"Still, the lure of Ferrari was always very real. "When I first went there," Stefan Johansson said, "and saw Mr. Ferrari, I was as nervous as if I'd been meeting royalty. Even if I don't get the drive, I thought at least one of my dreams has been fulfilled." He had that effect on people, this immaculately dressed old man with the ever-present sunglasses. At Ferrari press conferences, we always felt like schoolboys again, waiting for Morning Assembly, and it saddens me deeply to realize we shall not do it again. Racing people across the world will be feeling as I do, now that the greatest of their gods is gone."

"His death has deprived us of a great champion - one that I loved very much. My past is scarred with grief; parents, brother, son. My life is full of sad memories. I look back and see the faces of my loved ones, and among them I see him."

"When you've got dyslexia and you find something you're good at, you put more into it than anyone else; you can't think the way of the clever folk, so you're always thinking out of the box. So you sometimes can be considerably better at what you latch onto than anybody else. It saved my life, because I had been humiliated and frustrated."

"I would have been a much more popular World Champion if I had always said what people wanted to hear. I might have been dead, but definitely more popular."

"If you don't cheat, you look like an idiot. If you cheat and don't get caught, you look like a hero. If you cheat and get caught, you look like a dope. Put me where I belong."

"Banging fenders on a short track at Wilkesboro, god, we've got expensive cars and it costs a lot of money to do that today. But it's kind of like a pay back [to the fans]. And we got to always be thinking about what we're giving back [to fans] and not what we're taking all of the time. I don't want to see us get into a situation where it's take take take from the fans, from the sponsors, from everybody. One day we'll wake up and they won't be there anymore and our old friends [sponsors] will be gone too. So we got to maintain that fan base and we've got to maintain that grass roots level of racing that we all love to make the sport continue to grow and flourish."

"Boogity, boogity, boogity – let’s go racing, boys!"

"Since I'm old, instead of taking the booing, I want to tell you, I'm doing the very best I can. I mean, If you're a real fan, you know that I'm not just like my job is not to sign autographs, right? My job is to drive a car and to tell the crew chief what's going on. I don't appreciate the booing... It hurts my feelings. I'm a fucking person; you know what I mean? I'm a person, too. I have feelings. When you boo me, it hurts my feelings. Please just be supportive fans. I'll do everything I can. When I came from over here, my car was over there. I can only do so much. I have to get in the car. So please understand that."

"Many of the medical men who have denounced the practice of vivisection as inhuman, fallacious and dangerous have been among the most distinguished in their profession. Rather than a minority, they ought to be called an élite. And in fact, opinions should not only be counted — they should also be weighed. The first great medical man who indicated that vivisection is not just inhuman and unscientific, but that it is unscientific because it is inhuman was Sir Charles Bell … At the time the aberration of vivisection began to take root in its modern form, he declared that it could only be practiced by callous individuals, who couldn't be expected to penetrate the mysteries of life."

"It is difficult to become familiar with animals without becoming fond of them, provided one doesn't wish to domineer them. I have never heard that love for animals has changed to hate, but many cases where the opposite happened. Many hunters, obliged to observe the animals while stalking them, in time grow increasingly reluctant to kill them, and finally wish to become wardens in the national parks, to help protect them. Very few vivisectors seem to be hampered by this natural evolution that leads to the love and respect of the animals through a deeper knowledge of them."