Ayrton Quotes

#1. Winning at Monaco feels unbelievable, because it's such a special race and it's also my home race. My first memories were of watching Ayrton Senna here with his yellow helmet, and one day dreaming to win the Monaco GP.

Nico Rosberg

#2. Why make a movie about Ayrton Senna? Someone who drove around in circles at 200mph in a car that looked like a giant cigarette packet? Why would anyone who isn't already a fan of Formula 1 care?

Asif Kapadia

#3. In Formula One, the car can make a difference in a way that a driver cannot. Whereas Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna spent their early seasons in second-rate machinery, Hamilton walked into the equal best car on the grid. His first season none the less has, by any standards, been extraordinary.

Martin Jacques

#4. After you've had Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna as team-mates you don't give a **** who the next bloke is

Damon Hill

#5. When I think about greatness I just know Ayrton Senna. He was great.

Lewis Hamilton

#6. Michael [Schumacher] was a phenomenal driver but for me, Ayrton Senna was the greatest ever. If I could get one world championship that would be great; if I could win three, the same number as Ayrton did, that would be a dream. But I want to be the best driver there has ever been.

Lewis Hamilton

#7. When I was given the opportunity to direct 'Senna,' I decided the film had to work for audiences who disliked sport or had never seen a Formula One race in their lives. It had to thrill and emotionally engage people who had never heard of Ayrton Senna.

Asif Kapadia

#8. My team and I used the actual footage to create a three-act story of the life of Ayrton Senna. There are no talking heads and no voiceover. Senna narrates his own epic, dramatic, thrilling journey.

Asif Kapadia

#9. Ayrton Senna was an extraordinary racing driver. His skills, craft, subtlety and courage were of such magnitude that he dwarfed his generation of drivers.

Ron Dennis

#10. I cannot live on an island of prosperity when I'm surrounded by a sea of misery.

Ayrton Senna

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

Ayrton Senna

#12. Wealthy men can't live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

Ayrton Senna

#13. Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic.

Michael Ayrton

#14. You must take the compromise to win, or else nothing. That means: you race or you do not.

Ayrton Senna

#15. I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car.

Ayrton Senna

#16. Once you are in it you are in it, you have to go all the way to the end because you commit yourself to such a level where there is no compromise. You give everything you have absolutely everything. Sometimes you find even more because you require more if you want to stay ahead and you want to win.

Ayrton Senna

#17. Just because I believe in God, just because I have faith in God, it doesn't mean that I'm immune. It doesn't mean that I'm immortal.

Ayrton Senna

#18. The most satisfactory proof of intellectual strength is to be found in the existence of a power which enables the mind to conquer its prejudices and to correct its own errors

John Ayrton Paris

#19. The process of drawing is ... the process of putting the visual intelligence into action, the very mechanics of visual thought. Unlike painting and sculpture ... the artist makes clear to himself and not to the spectator what he is doing. It is a soliloquy before it becomes communication.

Michael Ayrton

#20. It's going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I'll risk saying that we'll be lucky if something really serious doesn't happen.

Ayrton Senna

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

Ayrton Senna

#22. Certainly, the history of my life and the works of art which have especially enriched it is precisely that: the depiction or incantation of a handful of metaphors whose spendour rests upon their intonation.

Michael Ayrton

#23. I believe if you are doing something like competing, like motor racing, you either do well or forget it.

Ayrton Senna

#24. Winning is the most important. Everything is consequence of that.

Ayrton Senna

#25. If you think I'm fast, just wait until you see my nephew Bruno.

Ayrton Senna

#26. Racing, competing, it's in my blood. It's part of me, it's part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

Ayrton Senna

#27. The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.

Ayrton Senna

#28. When you are fitted in a racing car and you race to win, second or third place is not enough.

Ayrton Senna

#29. In many ways we are a dream for people, not a reality. That counts in your mind. It shows how much you can touch people, and as much as you can try to give those people somehow it is nothing compared to what they live in their own mind, in their dreams, for you.

Ayrton Senna

#30. I want to live fully, very intensely. I would never want to live partially, suffering from illness or injury. If I ever happen to have an accident that eventually costs my life, I hope it happens in one instant.

Ayrton Senna

#31. Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.

Ayrton Senna

#32. Nothing can separate me from the love of God.

Ayrton Senna

#33. It's important that the drivers stay together, because in difficult moments we have each other. If we are not together the financial and political interests of the organisers and constructors come to the fore.

Ayrton Senna

#34. 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.

Ayrton Senna

#35. I don't know driving in another way which isn't risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other's.

Ayrton Senna

#36. Whoever you are, no matter what social position you have, rich or poor, always show great strength and determination, and always do everything with much love and deep faith in God. One day
you will reach your goal.

Ayrton Senna

#37. I believe that we start to see our true personalities when we go through the most difficult moments. This is when we get stronger

Ayrton Senna

#38. 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.

Ayrton Senna

#39. Michelangelo's contemporaries thought him the greatest artist who ever lived and called him 'divine.' His reputation as sculptor, architect, painter and draughtsman has not subsequently been surpassed, and who is to say his contemporaries were wrong?

Michael Ayrton

#40. There are no small accidents on this circuit.

Ayrton Senna

#41. Because in a split second, it's gone.

Ayrton Senna

#42. 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.

Ayrton Senna

#43. If a person has no dreams, they no longer have any reason to live. Dreaming is necessary, although in the dream reality should be glimpsed. For me this is a principle of life.

Ayrton Senna

#44. When a man holds you round the throat, I don't think he has come to apologise.

Ayrton Senna

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

Ayrton Senna

#46. The past is just data. I only see the future.

Ayrton Senna

#47. Fear is exciting for me.

Ayrton Senna

#48. 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
competing to win.

Ayrton Senna

#49. You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

Ayrton Senna

#50. I started racing go-karts. And I love karts. It's the most breath taking sport in the world. More than F1, indeed, I used to like it most.

Ayrton Senna

#51. If you have God on your side, everything becomes clear.

Ayrton Senna

#52. About the fearful sphere which we inhabit, whose centre may be calculated and whose circumference is physically established, there spin metaphors whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference shows itself only through holes in the dark.

Michael Ayrton

#53. Of course there are moments that you wonder how long you should be doing it because there are other aspects which are not nice, of this lifestyle. But I just love winning.

Ayrton Senna

#54. The main thing is to be yourself. Many times its through a mistake that you learn. And the main thing is to make sure you learn through your mistakes and get better.

Ayrton Senna

#55. I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It's a way of life for me.

Ayrton Senna

#56. Women - always in trouble with them, but can't live without them.

Ayrton Senna

#57. It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit but still able to find even more.

Ayrton Senna

#58. When you're not happy, you need to be strong to change, resisting the temptation of turning back. The weak goes nowhere

Ayrton Senna

#59. My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.

Ayrton Senna

#60. Because I believe in God and have faith in God, it doesn't mean I am immortal. It doesn't mean I am immune, as has been claimed. I am as scared as anyone of getting hurt, especially driving a Formula One car.

Ayrton Senna

#61. If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver.

Ayrton Senna