Any quotes I've missed which you would like to see included can be sent to me here. Please try to give me some clues as to when it happened.
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PLEASE NOTE! I don’t have Martin’s ear (or his email address!) and so I cannot forward questions, or requests for photos and autographs, to him.
Martin has his own site at www.martinbrundle.com/ and is also on twitter twitter.com/MBrundleF1
Callie
CAN ANYONE HELP?
One of my readers is seeking a recording of the Grid Walk during the Monaco Grand Prix in 2002. If anyone has any kind of recording of this and would be willing to lend it to her, or can upload it so that she can download it, please email me here and I’ll put the two of you in contact with each other. Thanks!
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BRAZIL
“Michael Schumacher turns left into the right-hander.”
(Quote submitted by Thijs de Wert)
“Three-quarters of this lap is spent with the throttle pedal welded to the floor.”
“This corner comes up and mugs you as you’re recovering from the previous one.”
“That long left-hand climb – the neck-wrecker.”
Martin: “Another corner that used to be terrifying. Now it’s just somewhere they take a rest and check the twenty-seven dials on their steering wheel.”
David: “I’m getting the impression that this track used to scare you!”
Martin: “It did use to scare me a lot!”
“How can you be sure it’s Felipe Massa in there, anyway? You can’t even see him and we don’t recognise his crash helmet. They could put anybody in there!”
(Martin talks about Schumacher while David’s not paying attention)
Martin: “... in his last drive in 2006, in his first career as it were, he was mighty.”
David: “Right, thank you for giving me that clue as to who you were talking about, because I was actually reading some notes!”
Martin: “Michael Schumacher. German guy. Drives a silver car. That one.”
“Well, we think it’s Felipe Massa in that gold helmet, don’t we, but we haven’t got absolute proof. You could put it on out the back and put anybody in, couldn’t you?!”
David: “How can you go a second faster than your team mate around this track? It’s the second shortest lap in the calendar!”
Martin: “It’s a lot easier to go a second slower, isn’t it?”
David: “Very casual message there to his racing driver: ‘Rear tyres are still a bit low, mate’. I wonder if the young German understands the more English, or British, reference there?”
Martin: “They all speak better English than we do, don’t they?”
“How does he do that?! How does he get so far ahead in five miles?!”
“Right, I’ve got a deal for you: let’s never mention the word ‘rain’ again until water starts coming out of the sky. I’m fed up talking about rain this weekend that just doesn’t seem to turn up!”
(Several laps later, we see a pitwall screen predicting the weather)
Martin: “Right, that’s a four-letter word we’re not using, right? ‘R-A-I-N’, we’re not gonna say that.”
David: “The only problem is I have a speech impediment, so ‘precipitation’ is quite difficult for me to say!”
(Throwing to Ted Kravitz in the pitlane)
“And Lenny is down at McLaren.”
David: “Somehow when that radio sparks open and you start listening to the engineer, it does take away a little bit of concentration.”
Martin: “But you don’t slow down on the road when you’re listening to Cliff Richard, do you?”
“Pretty much all year, Red Bull have been slower than a slow thing down the straights.”
“I used to breathe a sigh of relief if I ever got through Turn 3 without being on opposite lock and frightening myself silly.”
“That’ll compromise him a little bit in the twisties in the middle.”
(Radar shows that rain is expected)
Martin: “We want the precipitation now, don’t we? We need it for the race.”
David: “Mr. Angry from Norfolk’s now loosening up on the wet potential!”
“It’s the most pathetic feeling, isn’t it, when your neck goes and you can’t do anything with it. You don’t wanna touch the brake pedal or the throttle pedal, and you really don’t wanna turn the steering wheel, but somehow you hang on.”
(Hamilton’s engineer radios that, like Vettel, his car has a gearbox problem)
Martin: “Well, they’re all the fashion today, aren’t they?”
David: “Yeah, it never rains but it pours. Sorry, Martin, I mentioned rain again!”
(In relation to the failing gearbox)
“So, Lewis Hamilton then, also nursing a box of cogs that don’t really fancy seventy-one laps of the Interlagos circuit.”
(Quote suggested by ‘Kim’)
(Onboard footage – and sound – of Hamilton’s car grinding to a halt as the gearbox fails)
“That sounds expensive.”
(Quote suggested by David Maclean)
(Another shot of a pitwall screen)
“‘Dry weather’! That’s funny – we’re not gonna get any rain(!)”
(Webber gives a rather subdued radio response to his victory)
“That’s what he’s not talking about, it seems.”
“There’s more people in the paddock than there are at some Grands Prix, aren’t there?!”
“I think it really has turned to custard for D’Ambrosio, hasn’t it?”
Jake: “Eddie still hasn’t told you you’re not driving for him in ’97, has he?”
Martin: “Let’s not go there.”
“You make your own luck, especially in a single-seater. There’s nobody else to blame.”
An announcement: As Martin has now declared that he is going to commentate for Sky Sports next year, I have to say very reluctantly that it’s likely that this has been my last set of entries for Martin Brundle’s Racing Lines. I don’t currently subscribe to Sky and that isn’t likely to change in the near future. But do watch this space in case plans change!
It’s been a fantastic ten years running the site and enjoying Martin’s commentary – thank you for visiting, and thank you to Martin for being so consistently entertaining.
Love and hugs, Callie x
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ABU DHABI
(As David arrives rather breathlessly)
“It’s a Coulthard in my commentary box! Did you miss the bus or something?”
“Oh, the power of that finger! Isn’t that a wonderful feeling when you’re sitting in the cockpit and you just lazily put a finger out and go, ‘Start my engine’.”
“I’m really worried that Pirelli are getting their act together. These tyres will do twenty-five, thirty laps. They’re becoming so good and so durable. I want the bubblegum tyres back. I want lots of shocks and surprises.”
“He’s decided he likes the racetrack this time rather than the run-off areas.”
“These tyres are gonna last forever tomorrow. They’ll be using them in Brazil in two weeks’ time, they’ve got so much durability.”
“That’s the trouble with these supermarket car park run-offs. ... Have I mentioned this before?!”
Martin: “When I took you round in the two-seater, you said it was the second most scary thing you’d ever done in your life, sitting behind me. I can’t remember what the most scary thing was now.”
David: “That was the other time you took me round a racetrack. I just need you to take me out a third time and it’ll form a podium of my scary moments.”
“A racing driver’s job is to shorten the track and make it as straight a line as he can get away with.”
“Into Turn 1 ... (the car goes very wide) ... Turn 1 and a half ...”
“Will we see something other than Vettel on pole position in a Red Bull? Please, let’s see something other than that!”
“A hundred years ago, this was known as the Pirate Coast on the trade route to India, and there are a few bandits here on the grid today.”
Martin: “Does this come off if you win the race, the Movember [moustache]?”
Jenson: “No.”
Martin: “Oh, you’re really liking it, are you, the flavour saver?”
(Jenson grins closely into the camera)
Martin: “I thought he was gonna kiss the camera there. I was gonna be ill.”
“Sebastian Vettel emailing his mum to tell her he’s OK.”
“Pirelli give a minimum pressure, which most of the teams politely ignore.”
(Maldonado goes under investigation a second time for again ignoring blue flags)
“I can hear Derek Warwick in the stewards’ office now, like, ‘Don't you ever learn?!’”
(Quote submitted by Nigel Hall)
Jenson’s engineer (over radio): “(Webber) is out of the picture.”
Martin: “‘Out of the picture’?! Long way to go yet!”
“He’s got the slowest car in a straight line. He can barely get out of his own way.”
(Sebastian watches from the pits)
“The world’s fastest spectator looks on.”
“The gap is 4.4 to the man – I’ve said it so many times and I’ll never give up saying – he never gives up.”
INDIA
“Who’s vindaloo and who’s korma, d’you think?”
“There’s Timo Glock, or Tim O’Glock as he was known when he drove for Jordan.”
(Quote submitted by Alex Baker)
“Michael Schumacher, who is blowing you a kiss. Not sure that was for us up here in the commentary box.”
“Time passing very quickly as it always does, and increasingly so.”
“Can Perez get himself up from seventeenth? I suspect he can ... but he doesn’t.”
(Driving over one of the strangely nicknamed kerbs, Massa breaks his suspension)
David: “That’s what happens if you hit that orange ‘baguette’!”
Martin: “Well, that was a full loaf of bread, wasn’t it?”
“Listen to that Renault engine singing its heart out in seventh gear.”
“Defending heavily against fresh air was Jenson.”
(Hamilton and Massa collide side by side)
“That’ll be the ‘one at a time’ section I talked about Lewis knowing a lot better than me.”
(Race Control announces a stewards’ enquiry into the above clash)
“OK, ref, what do you think’s gonna happen here? We’re gonna see it again before you have to blow your whistle.”
(Petrov has told Martin how to pronounce his name)
“... so that’s what I’ll call him ’cause I thought he probably should know.”
“Mark Webber all on his lonesome down the back straight.”
“As soon as you’re onto the grainy sand, you’re all at sea.”
“Vettel’s just done the fastest lap of the race on the hard tyres – that’s how much he doesn’t like them.”
“What’s not a fair competition is when somebody puts Sebastian Vettel in the car at the moment, because they just can’t see which way he went. He’s got it all covered: he doesn’t fluff the starts, doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t trip over traffic ... (Seb climbs on top of his car in Parc Fermé and salutes the crowd) ... doesn’t fall off the front of his car.”
(Vettel does Martin’s favourite one-fingered salute)
Martin (ironically): “That’s what we’re talking about.”
Martin: “Vettel as in ‘kettle’.”
David (smugly): “I think it’s ‘Fettel’, actually, if you’re pronouncing it the German way.”
(As the top three get together in the waiting room)
“Come on, tell us something, boys.”
“I’ve enjoyed the event. I’ll be happy to get out of this commentary box, I have to say – I’ve not enjoyed this one.”
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KOREA
“If you could do a university study, ‘Design us the worst possible pit-in and pit-out at a Formula 1 track,’ I think this is what they would come up with.”
“Bruno Senna, twenty-eight years old today and very keen to get in ... the pitlane.”
“It’s only half a second, but it’s the end of the world, isn’t it? It is now – it’s the end of qualifying, anyway.”
David: “Remarkably, when I went down to the gym at 9.30 last night, the only man in there was Michael Schumacher, so pushing the fitness.”
Martin: “Stealing the water out of the gym again, were you?”
“That’s when we get tears and people spitting the dummy.”
“Here we’ve got Fernando Alonso’s car. I think I can handle not being ignored by him today. Michael, time for a quick word? I don’t even know why I asked that.”
David: “He’s using tons of ... well, not tons – he’s using hundreds of pounds of downforce being right up behind the gearbox of that Ferrari.”
Martin: “Probably feels like a ton as you turn into this corner and nothing happens.”
David: “I was getting carried away with my expressions.”
Martin: “I’ve told you a million times – don’t exaggerate in commentary.”
“Looks like they might throw a steering arm on that and pop the Russian back in. He’s rushin’ nowhere at the moment.”
David: “Instead of using the analogy ‘going like a scalded cat’, could you say he’s ‘gone off like a coiled spring’ ’cause I just don’t like the image of a cat being scalded?”
Martin: “Yep. Say what you like. I don’t care.”
(Vettel’s engineer radios that he needs to look after his tyres)
“That’s Rocky saying, ‘Stop doing one minute forty point sixes! Stop enjoying yourself’!”
“Once again Webber will have the seemingly useless DRS available to him.”
Alonso (over radio): “Oh, I give up. I give up.”
Martin: “What?! I think that’s a ‘If you ever leave me behind Massa again, this is the price you’re going to pay’. I think that’s what that message is, personally.”
“There’s the man who’s given up, hunting down Jenson Button.”
(During the weigh-in)
“Sixty four kilos with all his kit on?! He weighs nothing!”
[64 kilos = 10 stone 1 lb, or 141 pounds]