“The bottom line is what we do might not be the safest so there is always some risk but we are ready to take that into account because we love racing and we love motor sports and it is dangerous.”

I come from an ordinary family – my dad is a carpenter, a roof-maker – and we’ve always loved racing together.

We always kept believing in ourselves and our team and the car.

Qualifying is all about putting everything that you have and that the car has in one lap. It’s like a rush, I really enjoy that.

It’s a tricky place, especially the last sector. I wasn’t happy in practice. I wasn’t happy with the car and I wasn’t happy with myself. But I always thought there was more in the car.

I didn’t know Dan Wheldon, but he was big in motorsport, and then this year I got to know Marco Simoncelli, so our thoughts are with them at the moment.

All these nice people saying I’m going to be world champion won’t make me any faster, you have to believe it yourself.

At the end of your life, it’s friendships, emotions and thoughts that you take with you, rather than what’s in your bank account.

Simply racing a Formula 1 car is an achievement.

Teams like Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes are going to be very, very motivated to go for the titles.

I remember my first test in F1. After five laps, I came back to the pits and tried to play it cool – ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine, I’m on top of this’ – but I was completely lost.

You can’t change what happened. But you can still change what will happen.

I found myself sitting in the RB7 and smiling.

Thanks to BMW and WilliamsF1 for giving me this chance to test. The test team looked after me brilliantly and I learnt plenty.

I don’t care too much what happened in the past.

Simply fantastic this circuit, and if you get 53 laps more, you appreciate it even more. It’s made by God’s hands.

You can’t always say what you’d like to say.

My mom taught me this really great beauty tip. She used to put oil or mayonnaise on the bottom half of her hair before she would shower.

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well.

To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives.

In this universe the top end is light and the bottom end is real hard stuff.

The fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top.

Any journey around Islington involves hundreds of speed bumps that seem to tear the bottom of your car off.

The role of humour is to make people fall down and writhe on the Axminster, and that is the top and bottom of it.