Martin Brundle's witty and wry comments (as well as the sarcastic and sometimes all-too-brutally honest ones!) are considered by many to be the highlight of ITV1's coverage of Formula 1 Grand Prix races. This site lists some of Martin's best quotes.
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.
PLEASE NOTE! This site is not associated with or endorsed by Martin Brundle in any way. 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. Try ITV1’s website (www.itv-f1.com/ContactUs.aspx ) if you want to try to contact him direct.

Callie

Congratulations to Martin who has confirmed that he will be commenting on Formula 1 Grands Prix next year for the BBC.


BRAZIL
“He does like that last of the late brakers, smoky tyre business.”

“He’s understeering like a cross-Channel ferry.”

“Well, if we said to Lewis Hamilton, ‘Just finish fifth in every Grand Prix,’ he’d laugh, wouldn’t he, and say, ‘That’s way, way too easy,’ but today that’s what he’s got to do. And why, then, are all you Hamilton fans at home really nervous about it? Because you know it could just all go horribly wrong.”

“All (Hamilton) really wants is a boring drive to fifth place or better this afternoon, and this [rain] throws a double six into the whole thing.”

“Any cunning plans they had – I’m sure that, for example, Kovalainen as Hamilton’s rear gunner had his guns fully loaded and pointed at Alonso – I think that’s all over now. It’s all a question of getting the car away and then somehow surviving the first few corners.”

“That’s tragic. I’ve never seen a driver so warmly bid farewell in Formula 1, and Coulthard only made the first corner.”

“He’s not going to get around him there in a month of Sundays.”
(Quote submitted by Lewis Owen)

“Just a fraction too much of the noisy pedal and you’ll be spinning around.”

(With 14 laps to go, teams start radioing their drivers that it might rain again)
“Stay tuned, everybody, stay tuned, because this is a long way from over.”

James: “We’ve done 206 Grands Prix as ITV; we’ve done some exciting ones together, you and I, over the years. I hope we’ll have the chance to work together again, but I don’t think that you and I will ever experience anything quite as dramatic as that.”
Martin: “It looked like it had gone, didn’t it? Unbelievable! Glock’s last lap a 1.44.7. Either he just fell off the cliff with grip from those dry tyres, or it’ll be interesting to see if he was asked to slow down.”

“He’s a worthy World Champion. He’s been a contender since the first lap of his first ever Grand Prix early last year, and I don’t think you can deny Lewis Hamilton the title of World Champion.”

“I’m gonna steal three seconds here to say thank you to every single person who’s worked on F1 ITV in the last twelve years. You’re tops: dedicated people, really creative. Well done, everybody.”

Driver of the Day and Driver of the Year
“Driver of the Day, Felipe Massa; Driver of the Year, Lewis Hamilton, just. Massa lost a lot of points through unreliability that Hamilton didn’t. Hamilton took the brunt of a lot of penalties that Massa didn’t so much. But I have to say in the end the right man won the World Championship.”


CHINA
“What a great job little Piquet did last week.”

“... that’s if you’re allowed to overtake without getting a penalty.”

“You strive all of the season, all of your life, for the perfect car. You’re never satisfied with your car whatever it’s really doing, even if you’re winning. You always want more. That’s – as a driver – how you have to gently put that across to your team: ‘It’s good, but I need more’.”

“Just to bore you regulars once again ...”

“Kovalainen taking too much of the carpet in the final corner.”

“I think there’s a bit of gloss goes on top of Lewis’ ‘I’m changing nothing, I’m in a good zone at the moment, I feel good.’ It’s all textbook sports psychology – and then, as we see, it all falls apart when he’s under pressure.”

“I can’t believe there’s not been a Chinese World Champion by now. They go for every single gap in the traffic to the bitter end, even if they’re diving in and being rude. It’s just extraordinary on their roads! Throw in numerous motorbikes, horse and carts, people, buses on the wrong side of the road and it’s highly amusing.”

“I love this last corner: it’s such an arrive-and-drive, give it plenty, slightly unsighted on the way in and stay right for the shortest run to the line.”

“Go on, give it some!”

“You don’t get any support in this business. You’ve got to deliver. They make no allowances for experience. This is a business where every Sunday afternoon you show the world how your business is performing, and Monday morning the meetings come and you’re not gonna get a warm cuddly arm around you as a driver. You’ve gotta get on with it.”

“I’m surprised Lewis didn’t come back at [the drivers who were griping about him]: ‘OK, guys, I hope you run into each other, then. Thanks very much.’ ... At the end of the day Lewis just said, ‘Catch me if you can’.”

“Coulthard and Bourdais getting a bit friendly down there.”

“(Hamilton) has been a bit over-aggressive; he’s a bit noisy for [the other drivers] sometimes. The main problem is he’s too fast for the others.”

“He’s about as popular as a toothache today, Fisichella.”

“Thirty-three starts – 34 with this one – only two fastest laps in his career in Formula 1 despite so many victories already. (Hamilton) must be consistent rather than blisteringly fast.”

“We’ve had some thrilling races this year. This wasn’t one of them.”

“Nothing fell off his car, but a bit fell off his trophy.”
(Quote submitted by Hannah Crick)

Driver of the Day
“I was thinking Fisichella – he’s starred quite a lot, hasn’t he(!) No, Hamilton, easy.”


JAPAN
(Martin was presenting the ITV show as well as commentating this weekend)
“You’ll be seeing and hearing a lot of me this weekend, unfortunately.”

“My co-presenter, Mark Blundell, Mr Shirt himself. Do not adjust your set – this is not a test transmission.”

“It’s twenty years since I clinched the Sports Car World Championship here at Fuji Speedway. I don’t recognise a single square metre of the place.”

“Glock has got a fresh engine – they played their ‘joker card’. Bit of an unfortunate expression really, I think, for two hundred grand’s worth of brand new Formula 1 engine.”

“Don’t know what all the rolling hills at the end of the pitlane are about. I don’t think they were designed into the racetrack!”

“Mark, we started around 250 Grands Prix between us. We even got to the end of a few of them.”

“We’re both ex-McLaren drivers, although I spent my pay cheque quite a long time ago.”

“Senna did that with me in Formula 3 – ‘I’m coming through. Either you’re gonna let me through or we’ll have an accident together’.”

“Jenson back in fifteenth on the grid. I would say normally he’s racing the medical car down to the first corner, but [the driver of the medical car] managed to spin it off in practice!”

James: “Raikkonen looks across at Hamilton [on the grid].”
Martin: “That was a kind of ‘I’m gonna get you,’ kind of look, wasn’t it?”
(Quote submitted by Khaled Hassan)

“I think (Hamilton) got off the line badly and lost his head, frankly, and he did all the things he shouldn’t have been doing down into Turn 1. Easy to criticise, but these are the guys out there, they’re the stars, they’re world class drivers and you have to do the job – and that was a poor job.”

“The contenders have all been playing stop-car racing.”

“We’ve got to a nanny state. We’re just paranoid about penalties every time somebody as much as goes ‘Boo’ at another driver.”

“Did Lewis Hamilton leave his brain on the grid today?”


SINGAPORE
“[The drivers] are bitching about the bumps, but I love to see a Formula 1 car moving around, see the drivers fighting to maintain control, to correct the car after a corner. It just makes it more interesting.”

James (watching in-car footage): “This is what I was talking about before: how much the cars are moving around. It’s great – it’s like a movie rather than real life; everybody’s idea of what a Formula 1 car should look like.”
Martin: “Tell you what: it’s Fast and Furious.”

“He’s had very little lappery this morning.”

“I used to race against [Ferrari test driver] Badoer. Back in those days he couldn’t drive a nail into a piece of wood.”

“It’s the worst lap I’ve seen (Hamilton) drive all year. So a twist of brake bias towards the rear will be his first port of call, I would have thought, and then just calm down a little bit. Was he a lucky boy to get into this top ten shootout?!”

“The track’s new surface is like a living, breathing thing.”
(Quote submitted by Richard Baker)

“Hakkinen is around here somewhere ... oh, he’s talking to a load of boring TV journalists.”

ING Sponsor: “How do you think our logo looks in the dark?”
Martin (moving quickly in the general direction of away): “I think your logo looks the same as it does in the daylight, to be honest.”

Martin: “Any interesting people in your little entourage I can talk to?”
Bernie: “The Prime Minister.”
Martin: “Oh, you’ve done me before on Prime Ministers!”

Martin (to the Prime Minister): “Are you expecting rain?”
Prime Minister: “All our people put up chillies and onions to prevent the rain from coming down this evening.”
Martin: “Chillies and onions! That’s obviously the hot thing to do!”

“Bob McKenzie here from The Daily Depress. You’re always in the back of my gridwalks! Clear off!”

Ted: “How much longer will Ferrari persist with this semi-automatic pitlane traffic light system?”
Martin: “I reckon it’ll be in the bin out the back of the pits here after the race, to be honest.”

“He’ll stop again this afternoon ... this evening, tonight, wherever you are in the world!”

“I might be talking rubbish – not for the first time, not for the last, for sure.”

“Oh dear, I think Massa’s lost his mojo.”

“Easy to say; quite difficult to do when you’re approaching a corner about a hundred miles an hour too fast.”

“I think he’s driving so well at the moment, Alonso. I think he’s a challenging character and he’s damaged goods to a certain extent amongst some of the teams after some of the events of last year, but he is still possibly – probably, even – the best out there as a complete package.”

“My Driver of the Day is Nico Rosberg.”