Bruce McLaren Quotes

100 Bruce McLaren Quotes (McLaren Quotes)

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[On McLarens] Our cars could out-accelerate, out-brake, and out-corner everything else – including the Ferraris.
Bruce McLaren

On the straight we were 20mph faster than anyone else.
Bruce McLaren

There is no average reason for a driver being a good driver, just as there is no average reason for a person getting involved in racing.
Bruce McLaren

There’s never been anything like this!
Bruce McLaren

There’s no way we can use all this horsepower.
Bruce McLaren

[On being ahead of others in motorsport] It’s a real business.
Bruce McLaren

Life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.
Bruce McLaren

My first actual race was on the beach, at a place called Muriwai in New Zealand… I was about sixteen…
Bruce McLaren

If you start taking time off to get involved in glamour you’re not going to be a car constructor or a driver for very long.
Bruce McLaren

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



It’s tough at the top.
Bruce McLaren

I’ve been more scared in an airplane during a storm than I have been in a racing car.
Bruce McLaren

To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy.
Bruce McLaren

You can analyse all your failures and breakages after that fact. And there will always be a reason for them.
Bruce McLaren

The luck thing - really there’s no such thing as good luck. It’s good preparation and hard work.
Bruce McLaren

Two big cars were fitted with special four-speed monsters made in the USA. And once again they broke.
Bruce McLaren

You should have seen all the finger pointing among the Ford people once things started unravelling. It was almost humorous.
Bruce McLaren

When the windscreen wiper packed up, we were flying blind and wishing that we were wet and able to see rather than snug and dry and poking along into opaque swimming gloom.
Bruce McLaren

Ken Miles and I certainly appreciated the fact that our car had a roof when the downpour hit.
Bruce McLaren

I tried to revive the wiper out on course but it was a hopeless manoeuvre in the pouring rain.
Bruce McLaren



Hanging the engine off the back of the monocoque was pretty much my idea.
Bruce McLaren

Why do we do it? Is it worthwhile? Yes. Of course it is…
Bruce McLaren

[In 1966] Finishing second at this stage is like not finishing at all…
Bruce McLaren

I drove it as hard as it could go.
Bruce McLaren

[On his very first race] It was probably the smallest, shortest, slowest race I’d ever win. But I was certainly excited by it.
Bruce McLaren

[On losing a wheel at Daytona] I’m quite sure the hair on the top of my head stood up. But I was able to function.
Bruce McLaren

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 the Shelby Team] It’s a team of chiefs that work like Indians.
Bruce McLaren

We only have four-speed gearboxes to combat Ferrari’s five-speed unit.
Bruce McLaren

Every racing driver starts racing because he enjoys driving cars…
Bruce McLaren



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.
Bruce McLaren

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

A grand prix driver discovers fairly early he wants to do a little bit better.
Bruce McLaren

A desire to be successful… to beat your competitors…
Bruce McLaren

It’s just a question of what you get started in.
Bruce McLaren

If you still have control of the situation or there’s a chance of your retaining control, you probably don’t get very scared.
Bruce McLaren

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.
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.
Bruce McLaren

The automatic reaction from years of training…
Bruce McLaren

When a car spins on a banking it’s reasonably safe.
Bruce McLaren



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