Ayrton Senna Quotes

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'Okay, this is the limit'. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

And suddenly I realized that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

‎With regard to performance, commitment, effort, dedication, there is no middle ground. Or you do something very well or not at all.

I am not designed to come second or third, I am designed to win.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

You either commit yourself as a professional racing driver that's designed to win races or you come second or you come third or fifth and am not design to come third, fourth or fifth, I race to win.

I have no idols. I respect hard work, dedication and competence

Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

I'm very privileged. I've always had a very good life. But everything that I've gotten out of life was obtained through dedication and a tremendous desire to achieve my goals... a great desire for victory, meaning victory in life, not as a driver. To all of you who have experienced this or are searching now, let me say that whoever you may be in your life, whether you're at the highest or most modest level, you must show great strength and determination and do everything with love and a deep belief in God. One day, you'll achieve your aim and you'll be successful.

It was a man taking a machine and a machine taking a man into secret places, into the subliminal.

I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence.

By being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win.

eyeballs drifting at the surface and all sorts of cables and tubes feeding what remains. But I don’t want to be kept alive. Because I know what’s next. I’ve seen it on TV. A documentary I saw about Mongolia, of all places. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen on television, other than the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, of course, the greatest automobile race of all time in which Ayrton Senna proved himself to be a genius in the rain. After the 1993 Grand Prix, the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV is a documentary that explained everything to me, made it all clear, told the whole truth: when a dog

Escrevo como um cidadão brasileiro, igual a todos os demais, que foi empapado com a cultura brasileira, que torceu em muitas Copas do Mundo de Futebol e como um brasileiro que assistiu nosso Ayrton Senna da Silva dar a última volta na pista empunhando a bandeira brasileira após vencer mais uma corrida.

Il casco nasconde sentimenti che non possono essere compresi.

Some Brazilian bloke called Ayrton Senna da Silva seemed to be doing pretty well driving for Van Diemen. So thinking that this car must be great,

I earned good money,’ he said. ‘I was driving in good teams, I was winning races, I had pole positions … basically, not a lot to prove. So what is the point to take still the risk? That was my question to myself last week. But the other side is, what is the rest of your life?

Ayrton Senna. He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man, he. A great man, he was. A great man, he will be. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave.

...if the importance of being physically well prepared is obvious, mental preparation may seem less decisive. But that is not so, because before being a racing driver, you have to become a man. If that does not happen, it does not matter how much talent you might have, you will never reach the top, because for one reason or another the results will seem to elude you.

To get to the top of motor racing, to drive a Formula 1 car in one of the leading teams, you have to have certain qualities in the right proportion. One of them has always been much admired, and is now more important than ever: consistency. What matters is not a single outstanding move but your performance across the full duration of a race, a racing season, and indeed your career...Clearly consistency is not simply a natural talent within a driver, but the outcome of a long and tough physical programme which will allow us to give our best at all times and reach the end of a race - even the toughest - as fresh as we were to start.

The dialogue with the pits is very important for a driver who uses his head, and this is why, when choosing a team, you have to give careful consideration to its management.

There are drivers who have successfully made tactics the key to their approach and exploited them to the full. A mature driver must have an understanding of race tactics, he cannot always follow his nose. This is something that requires experience and the tempering of your aggression: A driver who sees the race like a chess game is easy to spot as he stops getting involved in accidents and aims for points and not just wins. This kind of driving is very effective over a season when aiming for the world title. Choosing the best set-up (a less fast car, but one that will be reliable) or the right time to stop for tyres, and knowing when to relinquish a position when the race situation calls for it are all part of this.

Broadly speaking any kind of mental training which aims to increase a driver's effectiveness at the wheel of a racing car must start from the assumption that victory is a consequence of the work done. With this attitude, victory ceases to be the main objective and is replaced by the quest for perfection in the various factors which contribute to victory, such as fitness training, setting up the car, managing a set of tyres properly, knowledge of the race tracks and so on, always focusing on smaller and smaller things...For a driver, getting into the car must be like going to the office for a top manager: it is his everyday job.

During the formation lap - and this is something you learn quickly in the lower formulaes - the driver must also leave his mark on his opponents, let everyone know he is not there to be pushed around, that he will finish as high as he possibly can. A squeeze on a bend, a hint of overtaking, a braking maneuver extended to within a few centimetres of the gearbox of the car in front demonstrate your intentions and ambitions: these feints and thrusts are a sort of declaration of war.

Here are some rules: never let an opponent know where you are faster than him (or where he is slower) so that you do not lose the element of surprise, allowing your rival to take defensive action. You must act decisively, without the slightest hesitation: once a decision has been taken, it has to be carried through. Don't fall into the rhythm of the driver you are chasing, but keep your own. Have the strength of purpose to run an independent race, in the firm belief that the 'study phase' will be short-lived. Use your intuition and imagination, because the one thing that is not legislated in motor racing is overtaking.

The main point is this: never give up and never lose heart.