LEWIS CAN BE THE BEST EVER, ROARS MAN SELL
Nigel Mansell spends more time on golf courses than race tracks these days. He’s just finished another round and is beaming. good enough to challenge Mr stenson?
‘not quite,’ he laughs before lauding the swede’s Open victory. ‘Henrik’s a lovely guy, he’s won all around the world and deserves a major. i’m thrilled for him.’
stenson’s win at Troon was the culmination of an incredible eight days of sport in Britain, following home wins for andy Murray and lewis Hamilton the previous sunday. Hamilton’s success at silverstone saw him equal Mansell’s tally of four British grand Prix wins and the 1992 world champion was on hand to congratulate him.
Hamilton is joining the greats and Mansell believes plenty more records will tumble before the 31-year-old calls it a day.
‘You make hay while the sun shines and if he keeps focused he can break every record out there,’ says Mansell. ‘i see no reason why he can’t equal Michael schumacher’s (seven world championships) and even surpass him.
‘lewis has been nurtured from the beginning. He has this tremendous opportunity. The support of an incredible manufacturer has fine-tuned his ability and he’s having a blast with it.’ Mansell, too, was central to the action at silverstone.
in his role as an Fia steward, the 62-year-old was on the four-man panel that determined the fate of Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate, nico Rosberg.
The german was struggling with a gearbox problem towards the end of the race, prompting his engineer, Tony Ross, to instruct him to ‘shift through’ and ‘avoid’ seventh gear. That was deemed an infringement of the radio rules introduced at the start of the season, which state the driver must pilot the car ‘alone and unaided’.
after more than three hours of deliberation, Mansell and his colleagues handed Rosberg a 10-second time penalty, relegating
him from second place to third. ‘What was worrying me was that there was no precedent for this, it was new territory,’ says Mansell.
‘I might understand the complexities of driving a car but there are the complexities of interpreting the rules from a legal standpoint.’
Despite agonising over the decision, Mansell is sure it was the right one, though he stresses: ‘I was very uncomfortable because Nico did nothing wrong whatsoever. It was a slip of the tongue by an over-enthusiastic engineer.’
The demotion cost Rosberg three points, reducing his championship lead over Hamilton from four to one going into tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
‘Maybe there are a few too many rules,’ he adds. ‘In our day you could move once, twice, three times, you could block. Things have changed.’
Mercedes are closing in on a third straight constructors’ title, but their dominance pains Mansell. ‘I’m not decrying what Lewis is achieving,’ he says.
‘But there is only one other driver in the field who can compete with him and that is his team-mate.
‘When I started there were nine world champions racing together with full grids of 26 cars. The depth of competition was immense. It concerns me as a fan that it’s taking so long for Ferrari and McLaren to compete.’
Meanwhile, Rosberg had double cause for celebration yesterday.
The German signed a two-year extension to his contract with Mercedes, worth £18million a year — then watched Hamilton crash out of second practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Briton was unhurt but his pride took a knock. Rosberg said: ‘It’s a great feeling to start the day like that.’