"And luckily, therefore the good old days return. The traditional art of driving counts again, and it is all about good tactics, skills and reflexes instead of simple power"
About this Quote
Nostalgia is doing a lot of work here, but Jacky Ickx isn’t pining for sepia-toned romance; he’s staking a claim in a modern argument about what motorsport should reward. “Luckily” is the tell: this is a value judgment disguised as relief, a veteran blessing a rule change, a technical shift, or a cultural swing back toward his preferred definition of greatness. The “good old days” aren’t a calendar period so much as a hierarchy: driver over machine, craft over brute force.
The line lands because it frames technology as a moral problem. “Simple power” becomes an accusation - not that power is bad, but that it flattens the drama, turning competition into an arms race where budgets and engineering decide outcomes before the lights go out. By contrast, “tactics, skills and reflexes” read like virtues you earn the hard way, traits that can’t be purchased or simulated. It’s a pitch for human legibility: fans can see a late-braking move or a clever tire gamble; they can’t easily see a marginal horsepower advantage.
There’s also self-portraiture. Ickx, whose era lionized adaptability and seat-of-the-pants feel, is defending the currency of his own legacy against a world increasingly defined by aerodynamics, data, and optimization. The “traditional art” phrasing turns driving into something closer to musicianship than mechanics: an embodied skill, threatened by progress, rescued by constraint. In a sport obsessed with the next upgrade, he’s arguing that limitation is what makes excellence visible.
The line lands because it frames technology as a moral problem. “Simple power” becomes an accusation - not that power is bad, but that it flattens the drama, turning competition into an arms race where budgets and engineering decide outcomes before the lights go out. By contrast, “tactics, skills and reflexes” read like virtues you earn the hard way, traits that can’t be purchased or simulated. It’s a pitch for human legibility: fans can see a late-braking move or a clever tire gamble; they can’t easily see a marginal horsepower advantage.
There’s also self-portraiture. Ickx, whose era lionized adaptability and seat-of-the-pants feel, is defending the currency of his own legacy against a world increasingly defined by aerodynamics, data, and optimization. The “traditional art” phrasing turns driving into something closer to musicianship than mechanics: an embodied skill, threatened by progress, rescued by constraint. In a sport obsessed with the next upgrade, he’s arguing that limitation is what makes excellence visible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Training & Practice |
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