Today’s drivers get out of the car as if they have just stepped out of a hair salon
ANY regrets looking back on a long career, Nigel? ‘Three b roken b acks, t wo bust wrists, both feet smashed and titanium in my left shoulder,’ comes the answer in flat Brum straight down the line from his house in Florida.
It m ay b e 4 0 y ears s ince M ansell’s Formula One debut but his knack of wearing every scar on his b loodied s leeve h as n ot d iminished. ‘Ask any surgeon and they will tell you those kinds of injuries stay with y ou f or t he r est o f y our l ife.’
Now 6 6 a nd w ith e nough a ilments to conjure images of retirement spent in a wheelchair, he is still playing g olf, f erociously h ard. ‘ Golf — i t’s s till a l ove o f m y l ife,’ h e s ays. ‘I l ove i t; i t h ates m e.’
The coronavirus-delayed 2020 F1 season is finally due to start in Austria on July 5. That is where Mansell first raced an F1 car, for Colin Chapman’s Lotus team in August 1980, on the old Osterreichring, one of the fastest and prettiestg raveyards in the world.
Only f ive y ears b efore M ark Donohue crashed and died there. Mansell’s debut, naturally, was not without incident i tself.
Sitting on the grid full of excitement, he felt a b urning sensation around his buttocks. It was a fuel leak. He battled on and that was h im s tarted o n a t op-flight career that took him to the 1992 F1 world championship and t he 1 993 I ndyCar t itle.
Just as the Osterreichring has been t amed, i n i ts n ew g uise a s t he Red Bull Ring, so has the sport at large. M ansell i s a d evoted a dmirer of Lewis Hamilton but he regrets the B ritish g reat h e b acks t o r ewrite the record books is operating in a more a naesthetised a ge.
He k nows t he m odern w orld c ould not c ountenance d eath o n t he s cale of t he p ast. W hich t alk o f m ortality, sadly, brings us to Mansell’s h arrowing m emories o f t he d emise of F errari’s f lying b uccaneer, G illes Villeneuve, in qualifying for the Belgian G rand P rix.
‘In those days people got killed regularly and that could seriously affect y our p syche,’ h e s ays. ‘ Gilles befriended me and we became close. H e g ave m e g ood a dvice. S o I’ll never forget the tragedy that befell him in Zolder, not until the end of my days. I was in the car behind a nd I s aw i t a ll h appen.
‘I saw him go through the air. I saw him come down. I saw him fly out o f t he c ar. I s aw h im g o i nto t he crash fencing. I drove past and I remember thinking that his chances w ere v irtually n il.
‘It was the most shocking thing I ever witnessed. I was upset then and I s till a m.
‘Formula One throughout the Eighties and Nineties was a very serious occupation. If you didn’t get killed, you could get injured, with the barriers right on the edge of the circuits. You never knew what w ould h appen n ext.’
For 1 2 y ears n o d river d ied. T hen, as triple world champion Niki
Lauda p ut i t: ‘ God, w ho f or s o l ong had held His hand over Formula One, l ifted i t.’ That w as a t I mola i n 1 994, w hen Roland Ratzenberger and the sport’s leading man Ayrton Senna were killed in a single terrible w eekend. ‘Ayrton’s death was a catastrophic day form otorsport. It changed it for ever,’ s ays M ansell. ‘It m oved i t i n a l ot o f g ood ways and a lot of bad ones, too, because it sterilised race circuits throughout the world. That is a terrible m istake. F ormula One was an incredible sport when you got rewarded for driving well a nd p enalised w hen y ou d rove indifferently. You couldn’t go b arrelling into a corner at 200mph if you didn’t have the skill. Now it has c hanged b eyond b elief. ‘Lewis would have done well in those c ircumstances, b ut i t i s v ery, very difficult to compare eras. Then s o m any b rilliant d rivers h ad a simple accident and broke their legs or arms, or whatever and couldn’t continue their careers. Now good drivers make heinous mistakes a nd d on’t g et i njured. ‘They barely sweat in the car. At the end of the race, it’s as if they have just come out of a hair salon. The beautiful thing in my day w as i f y ou h ad d one 1 80 G rands Prix and you were still alive you patted yourself on the back and said y ou h ad a g reat c areer.’
Mansell contested 187 races. He racked up 31 victories — a British record until Hamilton bounded past. ‘To see drivers now do 300 Grands Prix and have no injuries — well you can’t compare. We had to a pply b lood, t ears a nd s weat a nd when you won you got nine points. They h ave a n e asier t ime a nd w hen they w in t hey g et 2 5 p oints.’
Among the indelible Mansell scenes a re t he o n-track m obbing h e attracted at the end of British Grands Prix. Perhaps his finest p erformance came at Silverstone in 1987 when he drove with t rademark g rit t o r eel i n t eam-mate Nelson P iquet t o w in.
There followed his stint as ‘Il Leone’ at Ferrari before his return to W illiams a nd t he t itle a fter y ears of endeavour, the first eight of them s pent a s a N o2.
‘The defining moment, the p innacle, was in Hungary having come second to Ayrton in the race but winning the title. He put his arm a round m e a nd t old m e i t i s t he best f eeling i n t he w orld.
‘The other great feeling was the chance the late, great Colin C hapman g ave m e t o t est a n F 1 c ar. Without that opportunity nothing else w ould h ave f ollowed.’
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‘For Has m e Lewis F errari missed w as u topia,’ the boat? s ays Mansell, who — along with the real love of his life, wife of 45 years Rosanne — splits his time between A merica a nd t he U K. ‘ It is incredible to win for Ferrari and I l ove t he t eam d early, b ut i f Lewis wants to chase history he will p robably f ind M ercedes a re more s table n ow.
‘Ferrari could have won world championships in the last few years b ut t here h ave b een t oo m any unfortunate m istakes m ade. ‘As f or L ewis, w hat a n o pportunity he h as b een g iven f rom a v ery e arly age. Like Michael Schumacher he has h ad t he i ncredible s upport f rom manufacturers to demonstrate his abilities. He won his first world championship with McLaren and then w ent s traight t o a t eam w here he w on a nother f ive. ‘History will depict him as one of the greatest drivers, if not the greatest driver, in the history of our country. There is no reason why he can’t win a seventh or eighth world championship before he r etires.’ The g reatest e ver, t hen? ‘I always say Fangio because those w ho d rove i n t hat e ra — a nd I think Lewis would agree — were the true heroes because they had no s eat b elts, n o p roper h elmets, n o proper goggles and at times no gloves. They had a fuel tank between their legs and if you had an accident it was 50-50 whether you w ere t hrown f ree o r d ied.
‘But Lewis is doing fine. E verybody who gets that level of adulation gets a lot of advice. He just has to keep his feet on the ground, make his own decisions and b e h appy w ith t hem.’