“I can’t remember a single occasion when I have been kind to a journalist.”

[When I’ll be old I see myself] as a world champion, on a big farm with an Italian-style, big family with a whole bunch of grandchildren. And the foundations for that I have already laid!

Lewis [Hamilton] is a hero in the UK. The British love Formula One. Sebastian (Vettel) is also not doing much for F1. People hardly recognize him on the street.

Our sport is ruled whether it’s for good and bad, or whatever, for technical things. There’s lots of teams out there that could and should have done better if they’d have had technical things. I suppose in the end that basically revolves around how much money they’re gonna get.

When people want to built new tracks, they want to look at Silverstone. We don’t want it built like that. It’s quite embarrassing.

I’ve never told anybody this, so I don’t know if maybe you shouldn’t print it, but I’ve made plans. I’m only going to continue doing this for another 25 years.

It’s the best thing to happen to a sport, that you have a superstar. In football there is always something to write about the Beckhams, same as people want to write about Rooney or Hooney or whatever his bloody name is.

It’s not as easy as that… it’s disappointing to think that all these countries spend a lot of money trying to get the Olympics.

A wise man who was always helpful to me: Mr (Enzo) Ferrari. He always supported me.

I have always been happy to have daughters rather than sons. You never really can be mad at girls for anything in life.

I simply scraped together all my experience and put it into the sport.

[Donald] Trump, I think, is the sort of guy that if he maybe thought he’d made a little bit of a mistake, would find a way out, he wouldn’t want to say, “Well, that’s what I’ve done and I’m sticking to it, and I don’t give a damn.” Which is what the other people in America would be like.

You have to hope that your opponents are unlucky. Never only rely on your own luck.

When there is more money at stake it affects the atmosphere and things become more businesslike.

I never neglected my daughters – quite the opposite – but I suppose I could have and should have spent more time with them.

I was delighted with Baku. People said I was completely mad; I was so happy when it all turned out all right.

Take away Toto Wolff’s Mercedes shirt and send Sebastian [Vettel] down a street – nobody would recognize him.

I had rather be called a journalist than an artist.

It’s silly to say that with a journalist, but sometimes there is not a truth to be found.

My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.

I know more than most journalists. I know more than most columnists on big, important newspapers.

New York waiters, probably the surliest in the Western world . . . are better images of their city than that journalistic favorite the taxi driver.

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.

I’ve been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That’s the stuff my dreams are made of.

I’ve had journalists asking me, ‘What do we call you – is it handicapped, are you disabled, physically challenged?’