“You can’t always have the best team. It’s always a compromise.”

So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race.

When I test I never go right to the limit. Only because when you are below the limit you can go at the same speed all day, and that’s the only way you can be absolutely sure about what you are testing.

Do you know, why I really love my helmet that much? Because it makes me 15 centimetres taller!

So I know at the beginning of the race, from all that I have analysed during the practice, whether I will win the race or not.

Sometimes it also helps you to understand the mentality of the people in the team a bit better.

I like the mentality of the Americans. It’s like when you talk about money.

I have always had this mentality because I hated to break anything on the car.

I think maybe the English don’t want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.

That is an important part of my success. Another big part of my success is that I hated not to finish a race.

I always work the same way, starting from the beginning of the weekend.

Maybe I am not French, maybe I am from nowhere.

In 1980 I finished three or four times in seventh place.

When I drove for British teams… they called me The Tadpole because I was too small to be a frog.

In 1980 I finished three or four times in seventh place. I pushed like mad, yet everyone was gathered around the winner and they were thinking that I was just trundling around. But that’s motor racing.

One of my biggest problems this season was with the clutch at the start of the race. I hate to risk the car.

When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good. There have been times when I have been flat-out to finish sixth, but you can’t see that from the outside.

When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I’m not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy.

The best thing about Berlin was that I got to be surrounded by people who pursue their ideas for themselves.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

Where the sky begins, the horizon ends, despite the best intentions.

Don’t do your best, do whatever it takes.

Negotiating means getting the best of your opponent.

Life is a great and noble calling, not a mean and grovelling thing to be shuffled through as best as we can but a lofty and exalted destiny.

It is not the first time that men sell their birth right for a dish of lentils, and thus disown (or repudiate or deny) the best of thmeselves.