Carroll Smith famous quotes
03-22-2025
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At some point in every racer's life he has to make his peace with cheating. I do not approve of cheating ... at all. Of course, like every successful racer, I differentiate between taking advantage of loopholes in the regulations, stretching the grey areas and outright cheating. In any given racing series I will not start the cheating. If someone else starts it, I will appeal to them and to the officials to stop it. If my efforts do not succeed, then I'll show them how it is done ....
-- Carroll Smith -
The racing driver needs to be fed a diet of other racing drivers.
-- Carroll Smith -
In order to win, you have to be aggressive - with your car, with the racetrack, and with the competition. But you don't have to be stupid about it.
-- Carroll Smith -
The price for men in motion is the occasional collision...
-- Carroll Smith -
Until we have established reliability there is no sense at all in wasting time trying to make the thing go faster.
-- Carroll Smith -
Knowledge and ideas tend to be a bit like experience - nice, but not necessarily useful. Clear thinking, logical priorities and the ability to reason will beat bright ideas and unassisted experience everytime.
-- Carroll Smith -
The visibility at the best of times is liable to be a bit haxy due to clouds of ignorance.
-- Carroll Smith -
The necessary fiddling about and moving things can be greatly facilitated by a bit of forethought.
-- Carroll Smith -
If you have complete control over the damned thing, you're not going fast enough.
-- Carroll Smith -
Planning, evaluation, reasoning and establishing prioritites are all more important than brilliance - either behind the wheel or at the drawing board.
-- Carroll Smith -
There are lots of people out there who prefer tinkering to winning - it gives them a good excuse.
-- Carroll Smith -
There are many different types of prioritites in Motor Racing, the first...being how much you are willing to sacrifice in order to get to where you want to go.
-- Carroll Smith -
Nothing good has ever been written about the full rotation of a racecar about its roll axis.
-- Carroll Smith -
Horsepower sells motorcars and torque wins motor races.
-- Carroll Smith -
Nothing is ever in such short supply at a race track as time. It doesn't seem to matter whether we are at the track for a race meeting or for testing - there is never enough time.
-- Carroll Smith -
He who understands, as always, can make his car work better than he who does not.
-- Carroll Smith -
We normally learn at least as much from our mistakes as we do from our successes. The best development driver/engineer I ever knew once told me that he reckoned that about 20% of his bright ideas worked.
-- Carroll Smith -
You must learn to define the problem before you attempt to cure it.
-- Carroll Smith -
Balance, or drivability, and the ability to accelerate while cornering are more important than maximum cornering power - every time. Until you reach teh top levels of professional motor racing you will achieve more results by optimizing the package that you have than by redesigning it.
-- Carroll Smith
