"The lead car is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it which is identical"
- Murray Walker
"You win some, lose some, and wreck some."
- Dale Earnhardt Sr.
"It's basically the same, just darker."
- Alan Kulwicki, on racing Saturday nights as opposed to Sunday afternoons.
"Race fans, I had inferred from my one trip to the Brickyard 400, fell into one of two categories: tattooed, shirtless, sewer-mouthed drunks, and their husbands."
- Steve Ruchin
"... the lead is now 6.9 seconds. In fact it's just under 7 seconds."
- Murray Walker
"Around the track, Brooke isn't looked upon as a beauty queen anymore; she's portrayed as the ice princess. The former Miss Winston is now about as welcome around here as a nicotine patch. When her name is mentioned, these good ol' boys scrunch up their noses as if you offered them a six-pack of O'Doul's."
- Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel Reporter, on Brooke Gordon's attempts to subpoena several car owners at Daytona Motor Speedway prior to the 2003 Daytona 500.
"Racing is a matter of spirit not strength."
- Janet Guthrie
"Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down."
- Dave Barry
"If someone said to me that you can have three wishes, my first would have been to get into racing, my second to be in Formula 1, my third to drive for Ferrari."
- Gilles Villeneuve
"And now, excuse me while I interrupt myself."
- Murray Walker
"It don't mean **** right now... Daddy's won here 10 times."
- Dale Earnhardt Jr.
"If I have a love-hate relationship with Martinsville, then we're missing the love part of the equation."
- Tony Stewart
"If I died right now, my life would be complete."
- Tony Stewart, after winning the Allstate 400.
"There are seven winners of the Monaco Grand Prix on the starting line today, and four of them are Michael Schumacher."
- Murray Walker
"Do you think you'll be driving a race car for the rest of your life?"
- Bob Nodolf, who was Matt Kenseth's driver education teacher in high school, relating a story that Kenseth once got scolded by his English teacher for skipping an English class.
"With two laps to go then the action will begin, unless this is the action, which it is."
- Murray Walker
" Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games."
- Earnest Hemingway
"I'd like to say I'm ready to kick *** and show the guys how it's done. But I'm not here to prove anything about being a woman. I'm here to drive a race car and try to win a race."
- Lyn St. James
"I feel safer on a racetrack than I do on Houston's freeways."
- A.J. Foyt
"To finish first, you must first finish."
- Rick Mears
"Nobody remembers who finished second but the guy who finished second."
- Bobby Unser
"Aerodynamics is for those who cannot manufacture good engines"
- Enzo Ferrari
"You're not a racing driver, you're a f***ing idiot!"
- Ayrton Senna yelling at Jordan, Eddie Irvine after the 1993 Japanese Grad Prix
"I've had a jackass driving for me, and now I am rid of him."
- Junior Johnson commenting on Darrell Waltrip's switch to Hendrick after the '86 season.
"You've got to be that desperate to try to win a race? He must not want to race a long time because that's going to some pretty extreme measures. Whatever. That's just the way he drives, the way he thinks."
"I think he's a punk. And I wish he was sitting right here beside me."
Greg Biffle to Kevin Harvick after the June '05 Busch Series event.
"When I raced a car last it was at a time when sex was safe and racing was dangerous. Now, it's the other way round."
- Hans Stuck
"I'm about 15 pounds heavier. I've got highlights in my hair."
- Tony Stewart on what's changed since his 2002 championship
"It's the last straw for Roush Racing. We're officially retiring as Kurt Busch's apologists effective today."
- Geoff Smith, Roush Racing president after the team suspended Kurt Busch
"That's baloney, man. That's what's wrong with America now. Every time somebody screws up, we tell them it's all right. You don't pay your bills? You can file bankruptcy. You kill somebody? Spend 10 years in jail, and we'll let you out. That's what's wrong with society now, man. If you do the crime, do the time. If you had the guts to do it, have the guts to take your punishment."
- crew chief Michael McSwain, telling the Richmond Times-Dispatch he was tired of hearing competitors whining after being caught cheating.
"You know, when Arnold Palmer came on TV with an old tractor and told me to buy Pennzoil, I bought that, and when Dale Jarrett advertises UPS, I can go along with that, too. But I don't think having an 18-year-old, somebody who's probably gotten five packages in his life and they were all 'Girls Gone Wild' videos, tell me what delivery service I should use would have much effect on me."
- Kyle Petty
"I love this kind of racing, (but) these guys sure change their personalities in race mode. They're like Doberman pinschers with a hand grenade in their mouths."
- road racer Boris Said speaking of NEXTEL Cup drivers.
"I feel like I got a pile of cattle chasing my ***, and I'm peddling as hard as I can to stay in front of 'em. I'm looking behind me driving like hell."
- Rusty Wallace, prior to the July race at Pocono on being in the top 10 in points.
"You've started a lot of engines."
- Chris Myers, television host for FOX and FX NASCAR broadcasts, to All-Star Challange grand marshall Pamela Anderson.
"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."
- Darrell Waltrip
"The crashes people remember, but drivers remember the near misses."
- Mario Andretti
"When I started racing my father told me, 'Cristiano, nobody has three balls but some people have two very good ones."'
- Cristiano Da Matta
"If you think the last four words of the national anthem are 'Gentlemen, start your engines,' you might be a redneck."
- Jeff Foxworthy
"You drive the car, you don't carry it."
- Janet Guthrie
"We drove for the sheer fun of driving because there wasn't that much money to be made."
- Richard Petty
"I closed my eyes, held my breath and then everything went black."
- Richard Petty - (About his 1988 Daytona accident)
"The winner ain't the one with the fastest car, it's the one who refuses to lose."
- Dale Earnhardt
"If I have to, I'll buy every piece of property around the track to make sure it stays open."
- Tony Stewart in response to those around Eldora that complain about the noise and dust.
"I make jokes about the fact that as a neuro-surgeon I shouldn't be required at a motor race because the drivers don't have any brains.... otherwise they wouldn't race."
- Syd Watkins - Formula One Chief Medical Officer
"In what other sport do you get a 15-second break every hour?"
- Dale Earnhardt Sr. on the "drvers aren't athletes" debate.
"Years ago, you used to get out and fight and run around and chase each other with a jackhammer and stuff like that. Those were the good ol' days."
- Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a "Daily Show" appearance
"Dear Lord baby Jesus, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC and the always delicious Taco Bell. I just want to take time to say thank you for my family. My two sons, Walker and Texas Ranger, or TR as we call him. And of course my red hot smokin' wife, Carley, who is a stone cold fox."
- Ricky Bobby saying grace in "Talladega Nights"
"I feel like it is something that SCCA has loaned NASCAR and I feel like we should give it back to them."
- Tony Stewart, speaking about the Car of Tomorrow.
"She particularly loved racing with and beating her brothers."
- Tim Flock about sister Ethel Mobley Flock
"Sometimes it seemed like the more you drove the less money you had. I remember one time Buck Baker and Lee Petty and I had to put our money together just to split a hot dog and a Coke."
- Lousie Smith
"Be born rich."
- Janet Guthrie's advice on succeeding in racing
"They told me if I saw a red flag to stop, They didn't say anything about the checkered flag. I wondered where all the cars were and then as I was all along on the track, I noticed them all in the pits. They finally threw the red flag and I pulled in. I had finished third."
- Lousie Smith
"You best be keepin' an eye on your son's ******* at a NASCAR event."
- Oscar Wilde on NASCAR
"Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought, and love into their cars than any racer ever will. Lose on the track, and you go home. Lose with a load of whiskey, and you go to jail."
- Junior Johnson, NASCAR legend, and one time whiskey runner.
"It's his life, not mine. I'm sure if James Hylton could do it, I could. But I've got better sense."
- Junior Johnson, on Hylton attempting to make the 2007 Daytona 500 field
"Oh, what a basket of junk," it drives like a station wagon, an old station wagon, like an old Oldsmobile station wagon, green with wood panel trim on the sides."
- Tony Stewart Speaking of the Car of Tomorrow
"Gentlemen, I won't be dictated to by the union." Six-foot-five, 240-pound Big Bill France loosened his tie, removed his glasses, and proceeded to put the "fear of God" into his workers. Before he had "this union stuffed down [his] throat," he swore, he would shut down his entire operation, plow it up, and plant corn.
- Big Bill France Bowman-Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1961
"DEI without Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a museum."
- Tony Stewart on Dale Jr. possibly leaving DEI.
"If I find out that that caution was for the show, I'll choke."
- Mark Martin After a late race "debris caution" cost him the 2004 AMS win.
"I pity the fool who don't think NASCAR is a sport!"
- Mr.T on NASCAR
"The astronauts got nothing on me."
- Cale Yarborough after getting together with Sam McQuagg in the final stages of the 1965 Southern 500. Yarborough went sailing over the wall and remark was made to ABC's Chris Economaki after scrambling back over the wall unhurt.
"The competition, of course, is No. 1. Dale Earnhardt Jr., we have to remember, is Dale Earnhardt Jr. He could sell a chocolate popsicle to a woman in a white dress. It's easy. ... Kyle Busch, he wouldn't be able to sell a favorite candy bar to a kid, I guess."
- Kyle Busch, on whether marketing and sponsor demographics play a role in his search for a new team.
"It was all about winning today because we want those extra 10 bonus points. If you're solidly in the top 10 right now -- settling for second, you might as well kiss your aunt with a hairy mustache. That's generally not something you really care about."
- Tony Stewart Comment after winning the 2007 Watkins Glen event.
"That's the way race people are. If they think anybody's got money, we're all hookers."
- Kyle Petty
"He's got a 10-foot ego, and a four-foot body, and it ain't working too good right now."
- Mike Bliss after being punted by Bobby Hamilton Jr.
"Robby's got a little problem going faster under caution than he does under green."
- Jeff Gordon on Robby Gordon
"Hill and Moss? They've only got two hands and two feet, haven't they? I can dust 'em off."
- Glen "Fireball" Roberts Speaking of Graham Hill and Stirling Moss on his chances to beat them in the 1962 Daytona Continental
"If the lion didn't bite the tamer every once in a while, it wouldn't be exciting."
- Darrell "Jaws" Waltrip
"Racing is dangerous, but I've been in a lot worse situations as a pipe fitter."
- Neil Bonnett
"I think it's gonna be some exciting racing, gonna see something you'd probably never seen on Fox."
- Dale Earnhardt Dale's words to Matt Yokum awaiting the start of the 43rd Daytona 500 on February 18, 2001. A few hours later, Dale died in a last lap crash.
"There are certain guys who you can race with, and they'll race you hard and clean. "[Earnhardt Sr.] is not one of those guys."
- Ricky Rudd about Dale Earnhardt Sr's driving style
"I was the lucky ******* who got all the credit when things were going right, but I always felt the crew didn't want to have anybody but me driving the car. That type of chemistry you cannot force; it happens by destiny once in a while."
- Alex Zanardi
"There have been other tracks that separated the men from the boys. This is the track that will separate the brave from the weak after the boys are gone."
- Driver Jimmy Thompson speaking about Daytona International Speedway
"I jumped out of the car to address this thing, knowing I had to address it right then or run from Cale [Yarborough] the rest of my life. And with that, Cale went to beating on my fist with his nose."
- Bobby Allison Speaking about the famous fight ending the 1979 Daytona 500
"When I first came down here, I was accepted but I can't say why. I would say a lot of people were scared of me as I didn't care whether I was upside down or not."
- A.J. Foyt on his acceptance when first entering NASCAR
"You've got to have at least two a day, or you're going to have bad luck. I think the most I ever had was 27 in one weekend. That was over a four-day weekend for a late model show; a little bit of competitive eating going on."
- Darian Grubb Talking about Martinsville Hot Dogs.