Carroll Smith Quotes

#1. Planning, evaluation, reasoning and establishing prioritites are all more important than brilliance - either behind the wheel or at the drawing board.

Carroll Smith

#2. He who understands, as always, can make his car work better than he who does not.

Carroll Smith

#3. If you have complete control over the damned thing, you're not going fast enough.

Carroll Smith

#4. 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

#5. The visibility at the best of times is liable to be a bit haxy due to clouds of ignorance.

Carroll Smith

#6. Nothing good has ever been written about the full rotation of a racecar about its roll axis.

Carroll Smith

#7. Until we have established reliability there is no sense at all in wasting time trying to make the thing go faster.

Carroll Smith

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. You must learn to define the problem before you attempt to cure it.

Carroll Smith

#11. Horsepower sells motorcars and torque wins motor races.

Carroll Smith

#12. 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

#13. The racing driver needs to be fed a diet of other racing drivers.

Carroll Smith

#14. The necessary fiddling about and moving things can be greatly facilitated by a bit of forethought.

Carroll Smith

#15. 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

#16. The price for men in motion is the occasional collision ...

Carroll Smith

#17. 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