Bruce McLaren Quotes
100 Bruce McLaren Quotes
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[On the cost of a Cosworth-Ford engine] Seventy five hundred pounds.
Bruce McLaren
[On running two cars in a season and the number of engines he has to buy] We’ve bought five for this year and at each race, I imagine the engine we’ll use will require a rebuild costing around three, four hundred pounds on average.
Bruce McLaren
[On why he races cars in the light of the high cost and danger.] It’s very difficult to explain. Every racing driver starts racing because he enjoys driving cars, or somebody he know seems to be having a lot of fun at it, or his father or uncle has done it. And so he tries it, and the first few times he likes it. After that, if he finds he’s any good at all which obviously someone going to be a grand prix driver discovers fairly early he wants to do a little bit better. He generally gets a liking for winning, for beating people, which is probably something in an athlete’s or a racing driver’s nature - a competitiveness.
Bruce McLaren
[On why he gets into a race car which could kill him and drive it week after week, year after year?] In a word, that’s a very hard question to answer; I think you probably do it either out of a desire to be successful, or to beat people - to beat your competitors - or from simply what’s normally described as ambition. Really, it’s just a question of what you get started in.
Bruce McLaren
[On the kick of driving being related to the kick of driving professionally in competition] Very definitely, it definitely does. Because the only thing that created Chris Amon, Denis Hulme, and myself is that fact that we used to do just exactly that.
Bruce McLaren
[On himself, Chris Amon and Denis Hulme] It’s a fact that most of our early driving was done on dirt roads, loose shingle roads, and from this at a very young age was developed a fairly considerable skill which helped us tremendously and in fact turned us into competent race drivers.
Bruce McLaren
Let’s get concrete. As you’re approaching a slow turn at high speed at the end of a straight where you’re doing a 170mph and the unexpected happens, you lose your brakes, a wheel comes off, the steering goes dead. This has happened to me many times.
Bruce McLaren
[On when the unexpected happens] You are thinking very clearly and carefully and doing a lot of things in a very short space of time to endeavour to minimise the accident.
Bruce McLaren
[On a high stress situation] Depends on the situation. If you still have control of the situation or there’s a chance of your retaining control, you probably don’t get very scared. In the event of, say, a wheel coming off and having no control, then obviously you’re apprehensive but you’re not frozen. You’re still in complete control of yourself. You’ve got your head down, you’re bracing yourself against whichever way the car is going to hit whatever it is it’s going to hit. You know, you’re ultra-alert even though you’re probably nervous.
Bruce McLaren
I can only think of one instance when I had a wheel come off the car at Daytona on the banking in a Ford GT. And the thing spun around a few times on the banking and I’m quite sure the hair on the top of my head stood up. But I was able to function. At the same time, I was getting snuggled well down into the seat belts and pushing myself back in the seat, waiting for it to hit.
Bruce McLaren
[On losing a wheel while doing about 185mph] The car just spun, hit the wall a couple of times, then hit the bank down at the bottom once or twice and came to rest.
Bruce McLaren
[On what he did the moment he realised he had lost a wheel in a Ford GT40] I tried to hold the slide for as long as possible. It was an outside wheel, so that the car started to turn. And the automatic reaction from years of training is obviously to start correcting the slide, which I did. On the other hand, I knew it was on the banking. Obviously the thought occurred to me right away that being in the middle of a banking, it wasn’t too bad a situation, since normally when a car spins on a banking it’s reasonably safe.
Bruce McLaren
[On his initial reaction after he analysed why had lost the wheel.] My reaction after it was over was purely one of annoyance at the bad engineering that let it happen.
Bruce McLaren
[On his adrenalin pumping when the car came to a stop] I felt perfectly normal. I unstrapped myself fairly quickly. You jump out fairly quickly in case the thing is going to catch fire. That’s an automatic reaction, or ought to be automatic. And then, generally you forget to switch the switches off. I probably went back and switched the switches off. And then probably my next move was to look and see where the axle broke
Bruce McLaren
[On first the next time he drove a Ford GT40 after having lost a wheel] Obviously being reasonably sensible about my racing, I made sure that that particular area of the car was actually changed. Generally, most drivers would take this approach, particularly someone in the position of myself or Brabham, people who build their own cars.
Bruce McLaren
You get runs of good luck and bad luck. While you are using basically the same people, the same techniques, the same knowledge, and the same amount of effort, some months you can’t go wrong and other months you can’t go right.
Bruce McLaren
There is no average reason for a person getting involved in racing.
Bruce McLaren
There’s no doubt about the imponderable of luck.
Bruce McLaren
There’s no such thing as good luck.
Bruce McLaren
It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one's ability…
Bruce McLaren
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