Книга - Mansell: My Autobiography

Mansell: My Autobiography
Nigel Mansell


The ebook edition of Nigel Mansell’s bestselling autobiography is an absorbing account of one man's rollercoaster ride to the top.Nigel Mansell is one of motor racing's all-time greats. An ordinary bloke who took on the best and most ruthless drivers in the world's most glamorous sport and won; the epitome of speed, daring and sheer bloody determination.His refusal to be beaten endeared him to millions, but few inside the sport or outside it have fully understood what motivates him in his quest to be number one. Here, for the first time Nigel reveals the secrets of his driving technique, his hunger for racing and the psychological approach that helped him outwit legends like Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.













COPYRIGHT (#ulink_4713e0cf-c056-5adf-a463-b775513a2e5d)

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

First published in paperback in 1996

Published in hardback in 1995 by CollinsWillow

Copyright © Nigel Mansell 1996

Nigel Mansell accepts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780002187039

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008193362

Version: 2016-05-18


DEDICATION (#ulink_8548d284-7b35-5884-a527-0312bcf2c4c8)

To Rosanne, Chloe, Leo and Greg

for giving me the love, understanding and support

which is so necessary to achieve so much.

Without you, none of this would have been possible.


CONTENTS

Cover (#u9c383919-f421-5e62-a02a-a686e2273f8b)

Title Page (#uab5e3a90-48ad-5fd1-bd60-a4b814fd22c6)

Copyright (#ulink_7ad12a88-c4b4-55fb-9a8a-981053400d5b)

Dedication (#ulink_2c277965-0971-5870-b7a8-b52a921551dd)

Preface (#ulink_9d8f8aea-8d54-5622-bbd7-3160fb4a2324)

Why race? (#ulink_b762ded8-eb2a-5ca1-af7d-0e43053c03b8)

PART ONE: THE SECRET OF SUCCESS (#ulink_fcf31d0f-1732-59d4-a09c-c452a80da4f8)

1. My philosophy of racing (#ulink_bd03f3cd-bbb2-54ab-9c8f-1464f71d742c)

2. The best of rivals (#ulink_c4725f98-5366-5ed0-acd3-85d47217f7a4)

3. The people’s champion (#ulink_dff3b050-f427-5ddf-bac6-f239fb74b874)

4. Family values (#ulink_c0592960-aead-51c3-bef7-4f9f7dd8bb6f)

PART TWO: THE GREASY POLE (#ulink_89477007-2304-54f8-9ebc-b21cf11c2996)

5. Learning the basics (#ulink_3aa4ab4f-ee30-50d0-96d0-2cc83a4ba8b3)

6. The hungry years (#ulink_b13f9a42-5d1e-5ae8-9b27-cde912a73ae5)

7. Rosanne (#ulink_654b7bc6-05c9-5550-a09a-7c044a3a5e5d)

8. The big break (#litres_trial_promo)

9. Colin Chapman (#litres_trial_promo)

10. Taking the rough with the smooth (#litres_trial_promo)

11. The wilderness years (#litres_trial_promo)

12. ‘I’m sorry, I was quite wrong about you’ (#litres_trial_promo)

PART THREE: WINNING (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Making it count (#litres_trial_promo)

14. Keeping a sense of perspective (#litres_trial_promo)

15. Bad luck comes in threes (#litres_trial_promo)

16. Honda (#litres_trial_promo)

17. Forza Ferrari! (#litres_trial_promo)

18. The impossible win (#litres_trial_promo)

19. Problems with Prost (#litres_trial_promo)

20. Building up for the big one (#litres_trial_promo)

21. For all the right reasons (#litres_trial_promo)

22. World Champion at last! (#litres_trial_promo)

23. Driven out (#litres_trial_promo)

24. Saying goodbye to Formula 1 (#litres_trial_promo)

25. The American adventure (#litres_trial_promo)

26. The concrete wall club gets a new member (#litres_trial_promo)

27. ‘You’re completely mad, but very quick for an old man’ (#litres_trial_promo)

28. The stand down from McLaren (#litres_trial_promo)

29. Fresh Perspectives (#litres_trial_promo)

Faces in the paddock (#litres_trial_promo)

My top ten races (#litres_trial_promo)

Career highlights (#litres_trial_promo)

Glossary (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


This is a story about beating the odds through sheer determination and self-belief. It is a story about starting with nothing, taking risks and defeating the best racing drivers in the world to rewrite the record books of this most dangerous and glamorous sport.

It is about overcoming the dejection of being injured, having no money and no immediate prospects for the future. And it is about the sheer exhilaration of standing on top of the world and knowing that whatever happens next, no-one can take away from you what you have just achieved.

Nigel Mansell

Woodbury Park, Devon


NIGEL’S THANKS

To the late, great Colin Chapman and his wife Hazel for giving me the first opportunity, and to Enzo Ferrari for giving me the most historic drive in motor racing and two years of wonderful memories. To Ginny and Frank Williams and to Patrick Head for the twenty-eight Grand Prix wins and the World Championship in 1992; for six years and four races it was an awful lot of fun. To Paul Newman and Carl Haas for the 1993 IndyCar World Series; and to Honda, Renault and Ford for giving me the power to win …

Without all these people and without the manufacturers and associated sponsors, none of the racing achievements in this book would have been possible. Rosanne and I and our family would like to thank you all for your support. A very big thank you.


PREFACE (#ulink_982dd9c5-b01b-515e-a613-eab57fc365e9)

Nigel Mansell’s life is a wonderful example of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. He has overcome enormous hurdles throughout his career thanks to an indomitable will, total self-belief and a burning desire to succeed.

All top Grand Prix drivers are heroes, you just have to stand by the side of the track during a race weekend to see that. But Nigel stands out from the crowd for his commitment, his determination and his natural showmanship. His force of will is apparent in everything he does. I once played against him in a soccer match for journalists, photographers and drivers on the eve of the Spanish Grand Prix in 1991, a week after the pit stop fiasco in Portugal, where Nigel’s hopes of beating the great Ayrton Senna to the World Championship had followed his errant rear wheel down the pit lane.

Most of the players were there for fun, either a bit long in the tooth or too fond of their beer to be fully competitive, but Nigel played as if his life depended on it, crashing into every tackle and chasing every ball. His day ended in a twisted ankle, which swelled up like a grapefruit. He won the race that weekend of course. His injury was not play-acting, but a perfect illustration of how accident-prone the man is.

The chronicling of Nigel Mansell’s career has always been uneven. A mismatch of personalities between him and many of my colleagues in the world of journalism has led him in for some heavy criticism, some of it justified, some of it no more than blind insults. I have always been sceptical about the criticism that Nigel has come in for and fascinated to know what really makes him tick. It struck me that, although a huge public feels it can identify with him, there are very few people in the sport who actually understand what he is all about.

Nigel and I spent over 16 months devising, developing and refining this book in order to make it the definitive text on his life and racing career. In these pages Nigel explains for the first time what lies behind his philosophy of life and his psychological approach to the sport he loves. A great deal of archive research was undertaken and over 30 hours of interviews carried out with people close to Nigel. Time after time fascinating revelations from them prompted equally fascinating reflections from Nigel. We have included some of the more revealing comments, where appropriate, as notes at the end of each chapter.

Sifting through all the evidence, I believe that the starting point for understanding Nigel Mansell lies in two comments made by Williams’ director Patrick Head and Formula 1 promoter Bernie Ecclestone, when interviewed for this book. Bernie, who knows and understands Nigel better than most in the Formula 1 pit lane, said that he is ‘a very simple, complex person’ while Patrick described Nigel as ‘not a driver who takes well to not-winning’. The veracity of these two statements is there for all to see in Nigel’s own words in this book.

He is a great champion who has not been fully appreciated in his own time and perhaps it will only be in history, provided it is objectively written, that the full achievement of Nigel Mansell will come to be recognised.

I am greatly indebted to Nigel’s many friends and colleagues who gave me information and insights and who pointed me towards the right areas to probe.

I would like to thank Murray Walker, Bernie Ecclestone, Gerald Donaldson, David Price, John Thornburn, Chris Hampshire, Sue Membery, Grant Bovey, Sally Blower, Anthony Marsh, Creighton Brown, Patrick Mackie, Mike Blanchet, Nigel Stroud, Frank Williams, Patrick Head, David Brown, Cesare Fiorio, Carl Haas, Paul Newman, Peter Gibbons, Bill Yeager, Derek Daly, Gerhard Berger, Keke Rosberg and Niki Lauda.

Special thanks to Peter Collins, Peter Windsor and Jim McGee for devoting a lot of time and help with my research, and to Rosanne Mansell for the stories, help with the editing and copious cups of tea. I am also greatly indebted to my father, Bill, and Sheridan Thynne for laboriously studying the draft manuscripts and making helpful suggestions.

Thanks also to the folks at CollinsWillow: Michael, Rachel and Monica and especially to Tom Whiting for an excellent piece of editing; Alberta Testanero at Soho Reprographic in New York; Bruce Jones at Autosport magazine for use of the archive; Andrew Benson for archive material and Rosalind Richards and the Springhead Trust; Ann Bradshaw, Paul Kelly and Andrew Marriott for their support; Pip for keeping me sane; and to my parents Bill and Mary and my sister Sue.

Most of all, I would like to thank Nigel for giving me the opportunity to write this book with him and for opening the door and allowing me in.

James Allen

Holland Park, London


WHY RACE? (#ulink_98f9fc26-593b-52e3-9fd3-8097bdf75622)

My interest in speed came from my mother. She loved to drive fast. In the days before speed limits were introduced on British roads, she would frequently drive us at well over one hundred miles an hour without batting an eyelid. She was a very skilful driver, not at all reckless, although I do recall one time, when I was quite young, she lost control of her car on some snow. She was going too fast and caught a rut, which sent the car spinning down the middle of the road. Although it was a potentially dangerous situation I was not at all scared. I took in what was happening to the car, felt the way it lost grip on the slippery surface and watched my mother fighting the wheel to try to regain control. I was always very close to my mother and I loved riding with her in the car. I was hooked by her passion for speed.

Racing has been my life for almost as long as I can remember. I told myself at a young age that I was going to be a professional racing driver and win the World Championship and nothing ever made me deviate from that belief. There must have been millions of people over the years who thought that they would be Grand Prix drivers and win the World Championship, fewer who even made it into Formula 1 and made people believe that they might do it and fewer still who actually pulled it off.

A lot of things went wrong in the early stages of my career. I quit my job, sold my house and lived off my wife Rosanne’s wages in order to devote myself to racing; but this is a cruel sport with a voracious appetite for money and in 1978, possibly the most disastrous year of my life, Rosanne and I were left destitute, having blown five years worth of savings on a handful of Formula 3 races.

Not having any backing, I often had to make do with old, uncompetitive machinery. I had some massive accidents and was even given the last rites once by a priest whom I told, not unreasonably, to sod off. But we never gave in.

Along the way Rosanne and I were helped by a few people who believed in us and tripped up by many more who didn’t. But I came through to win 31 Grands Prix, the Formula 1 World Championship and the PPG IndyCar World Series and scooped up a few records which might not be beaten for many years. For one magical week in September 1993, after I won the IndyCar series, I held both the Formula 1 and IndyCar titles at the same time.

Looking back now, it amazes me how we won through. I didn’t have a great deal going for me, beyond the love and support of my wife and the certainty that I had the natural ability necessary to win and the determination not to lose sight of my goal. I did many crazy things that I wouldn’t dream of doing now, because I felt so strongly that I was going to be the World Champion.

I have no doubt that without Rosanne I would not be where I am today. She has given me strength when I’ve been down, love when I’ve been desolate and she has shared in all of my successes. She has also given me three lovely children. None of this would have been possible without her.

Over the years there have been many critics. Hopefully they have been silenced. Even if they haven’t found it in their hearts to admit that they were wrong when they said I would never make it, perhaps now they know it deep down.

I have always been competitive. I think that it is something you are born with. At around the age of seven I realised that I could take people on, whether it was at cards, Monopoly or competitive sports and win. At the time, it wasn’t that I wanted to excel, I just wanted myself, or whatever team I was on, to win. I have always risen to a challenge, whether it be to win a bet with a golfing partner or to come through from behind to win a race. I thrive on the excitement of accepting a challenge; understanding exactly what is expected of me, focusing my mind on my objective, and then just going for it. I have won many Grands Prix like this and quite a few golf bets too.

As a child at school I played all the usual sports, like cricket, soccer and athletics and I always enjoyed competing against teams from other schools. But then another, more thrilling, pursuit began to clamour for my attention.

My introduction to motor sport came from my father. He was involved in the local kart racing scene and when he took me along for the first time at the age of nine, a whole new world of possibilities opened up. It was fast and exhilarating, it required bravery tempered by intelligence, aggression harnessed by strategy. Where before I had enjoyed the speeds my mother took me to as a passenger, now I could be in control. It was just me and the kart against the competition.

To a child, the karts looked like real racing machines. The noise and the smell made a heady cocktail and when you pushed down the accelerator, the vibrations of the engine through the plastic seat made your back tingle and your teeth chatter. It was magical. It became my world. I wanted to know everything about the machines, how they worked and more important how to make them go faster. I wanted to test their limits, to see how far I could push them through a corner before they would slide. I wanted to find new techniques for balancing the brakes and the throttle to gain more speed into corners. I wanted to drive every day, to take on other children in their machines and fight my way past them. I wanted to win.

At first I drove on a dirt track around a local allotment, then I went onto proper kart tracks. The racing bug bit deep. I won hundreds of races and many championships, and as I got more and more embroiled in the international karting scene in the late sixties and early seventies I realised that this sport would be my life. Where before I had imagined choosing a career as a fireman or astronaut, as every young boy did in those days, or becoming an engineer like my father, now I had an almost crystal clear vision of what lay ahead. My competitiveness, determination and aggression had found a focus.

I also used to love going to watch motor races. The first Grand Prix I went to was in 1962 at Aintree when Jim Clark won for Lotus by a staggering 49 seconds ahead of John Surtees in a Lola. I saw Clark race several times before his tragic death in 1968 and I used to particularly enjoy his finesse at the wheel of the Lotus Cortina Saloon cars. He had a beautifully smooth style and was certainly the fastest driver of his time. I can also remember rooting for Jackie Stewart when he was flying the flag for Britain. We went to Silverstone for the 1973 British GP, when the race had to be stopped after one lap because of a pile up on the start line. I’ll never forget watching Jackie in his Tyrrell as he went down the pit straight in the lead and then straight on at Copse Corner. I thought: ‘That’s not very good’ but it turned out that his throttle had stuck open.

Throughout the sixties and seventies as I tried to hoist myself up the greasy pole and move into their world, I followed the fortunes of the Grand Prix drivers. My favourites were James Hunt and Jody Scheckter, while I particularly liked watching Patrick Depailler and Ronnie Peterson, who were both very gutsy, aggressive drivers with a lot of style.

I never saw him race but I had a lot of respect for the legendary fifties star Juan-Manuel Fangio. To win the World Championship five times is a remarkable achievement. I have read about him and met him several times and I only wish I could have seen him race. I’m told it was a stirring sight.

As I turned from child to adolescent and into adulthood I absorbed myself totally in motor racing, becoming totally wrapped up both in my own karting career and in the wider field of the sport. I am very much aware of the history of Grand Prix racing and I think that nowadays it is a lot more competitive than it was in the days of Fangio or Clark, although I’m sure that the people competing in those days would dismiss that idea.

People like to compare drivers from different eras and discuss who was the greatest of all time, but the cars were so different that it makes it impossible to say who was the best; you just have to respect the records that each driver set and the history that they made. What I think you can say is that anyone who is capable of winning a World Championship in one sport could probably have done it in another discipline if they had put their minds to it, because they all have something special in them which gives them the will to win.

I had that will to win and I knew all along that, given half a chance, I could make it to the top. Against the wishes of my father, I switched from karts to single-seater racing cars in 1976 and thus began the almost impossible seventeen year journey which took me to the Formula 1 World Championship in 1992 and the IndyCar World Series in 1993. Along the way I suffered more knocks than a boxer, more rejections than an encyclopedia salesman.

In our sport it is often said that truth is stranger than fiction. The most unbelievable things can happen in motor racing, especially Formula 1, and in my case they frequently did. I can laugh now at my childhood vision of a racing driver’s life, it seems hopelessly naive in comparison to the reality.

We began writing my autobiography at possibly the worst time I can remember for trying to explain why I am a racing driver. My rival in many thrilling Grands Prix and a driver whose ability I respected enormously, Ayrton Senna, had just been killed in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. It was a crushing blow. The last driver to have perished in a Grand Prix car was my old team-mate Elio de Angelis in 1986, another death which hit me hard. I had seen many drivers get killed during my career, but for some of the younger ones it came as quite a shock to realise how close to death they could come on the track.

It had been twelve years since anyone had died during an actual Grand Prix. There have been huge advances made in safety since those days which certainly helped me to survive some horrific accidents, but when Senna and Roland Ratzenberger were both killed in the same weekend the whole sport was left reeling. There had been many terrible accidents in the preceding twelve years, but the drivers had got away mostly unharmed. Racing had been lucky many times, now its luck had run out.

Every time I thought about it, shivers ran down my spine. It was difficult to comprehend that Ayrton was dead; that he would never be seen again in a racing car. Ayrton was always so committed. Like me, he explored the limits and we had some thrilling no-holds barred battles where both of us drove at ten tenths the whole way. A mistake by either driver in any of those situations would have given the race to the other. It was pure competition.

He won half of his Grands Prix victories by beating me into second place and I won half of mine by beating him. We are in the Guinness Book of Records for sharing the closest finish in Grand Prix racing, at the 1986 Spanish Grand Prix, where he just pipped me by 0.014s as we crossed the finish line; a distance of just 93 centimetres after nearly 200 miles of racing. Some of the battles we had are part of the folklore of racing.

At Hungary in 1989, for example, I seized the opportunity, as we approached a back marker, to slingshot past him and grab a memorable victory. But perhaps the most enduring image of our rivalry was the duel down the long pit straight in the 1991 Spanish Grand Prix. His McLaren-Honda against my Williams-Renault; both of us flat-out on a wet track at over 180mph, with only the width of a cigarette-paper separating us, both totally committed to winning, neither prepared to give an inch. Like me, Ayrton wanted to win and was not a driver who took well to coming second.

Naturally everybody wanted to know what I thought about Ayrton’s death and whether it would make me retire. I had achieved a great deal, I didn’t need the money, I was a forty-year-old married man with three children, why continue to take the risk? The press had a field day, some writing that I was considering retirement, others saying that I was negotiating a return to Formula 1 for some unheard-of sum of money. I have never had such a hard time justifying what I do for a living as I did in the weeks following Ayrton’s death. Every day I even questioned myself why I was doing it.

It didn’t help that this period coincided with preparations for my second Indianapolis 500; a race which I remembered painfully from the year before, when I nearly won despite a severe back injury caused by hitting a wall at 180mph in Phoenix the previous month.

Every journalist and television reporter I spoke to during this period wanted me to articulate my fears about racing and my thoughts on Ayrton’s death. They were just doing their job, of course, and it was my responsibility as a professional sportsman to talk to them, but it became thoroughly demotivating. If it were not for the fact that I am totally single-minded when it comes to racing, the barrage of questions about death could so easily have taken the edge off my competitive desire.

My passion for racing, undiminished by over thirty years of experience, was the only thing that made me put my helmet on, get into my car and drive flat out.

I am a great believer in fate, something else I inherited from my mother, and this has helped me to come to terms with some of the most difficult times in my life. If things had worked out differently and I had stayed at Williams for another couple of seasons after I won the 1992 World Championship, I would have had a great chance to win again in 1993 … but then the tragedy that befell Ayrton at Imola could have happened to me.

There are three or four drivers in the world who could have been in that particular car that day, but it wasn’t Prost, it wasn’t Damon Hill and it wasn’t me. It was Ayrton. Probably through no fault of his own, one of the greatest racing drivers of all time is dead and it could quite easily have been me. So when people ask me whether I have any regrets I tell them, ‘You cannot control destiny and in our business there are occasional stark reminders of that.’ As a racing driver you must believe in fate. You wouldn’t get back into another car if you didn’t.

Over the years I have hurt myself quite badly in racing cars and this will have prompted many a sane person to wonder why I race. Naturally pain is the farthest thing from your mind when you are in a racing car. You have to blank it out completely and focus on the job in hand. This is a quality only the very top racing drivers have. You must be able to forget an injury. Your mind must push your body beyond the pain barrier. I have often found that adrenalin is the best painkiller of all. In a hard race, even if you aren’t carrying an injury, your mind pushes your body beyond the point of physical exhaustion to achieve the desired result, which is winning.

When the race is over your brain realises that your body is exhausted and can’t move and then you are reminded of the pain. I have been so drained after some races that I have been unable to get out of the car. But my ability to blank out pain has been invaluable throughout my career; indeed I doubt whether I would ever have made it had I not had that ability. I won my first single-seater championship in my first full year despite suffering a broken neck mid-season. I got my big break into Formula 1 in 1979 with a test for Lotus on one of the world’s fastest Grand Prix circuits, Paul Ricard in France, and managed to get the job despite having a broken back at the time.

I even won the 1992 World Championship with a broken foot, which I sustained in the last race of 1991. An operation over that winter would have meant it being in plaster for three months. However, I was determined to get into perfect physical shape and to put in a lot of testing miles in the car to be ready for the following season. So I delayed the operation. I couldn’t tell anyone because if the governing body found out they might have stopped me from racing.

The orthopaedic surgeons thought I was crazy. The foot was badly deformed and after every race that year I could barely walk. Some journalists chose to interpret my limp as play-acting which, in retrospect, is pretty laughable. But then what do they know? None of them have ever driven a modern Grand Prix car flat out for two hours.

If they had they would know that the cockpit is a very hostile environment. The body receives a terrible pummelling during the course of a race from the thousands of shocks which travel up through the steering wheel, the footrest and the seat as you fly along the ground at 200mph. Through the corners the g-forces try to snap your head off. When you brake your insides are thrown forwards with violence, your body gripped by a six-point harness, which pins you into your seat. When you accelerate your head is thrown back violently against the carbon fibre wall at the back of the cockpit, which is the only thing separating you from a 200 litre bag of fuel. On top of that, the cockpit is hotter than a sauna and you are wearing thick fireproof overalls and underwear. The only thing which is in any way designed for comfort is the seat, which is moulded to the driver’s body.

If you have a good car and everything is right, you become at one with the car and it allows you to express yourself. It responds to your commands, goes where you point it and allows you to explore the limits with confidence. You can get into a straight fight with another driver, both pushing your machines to the limits, both determined to win. On days like that, driving a Formula 1 car is magical, another world. The pure essence of competition.

Other days you have to fight the car all the way. You might realise early in a race that your car is not handling properly but you have to try to drive around the problem. The car might catch you out or do something you don’t expect, and this destroys your confidence in it. Everything becomes a struggle, but you fight to stay in the race with your competitors. You must do everything you can to remain competitive. Driving a Grand Prix car hard is always exhausting, but you must not let up or give in to pain until you reach the end. As Ayrton once said, ‘All top Grand Prix drivers are fast, but only a very few of us are always fast.’

I often wonder what life would have been like had I chosen a less dangerous sport. I play golf to quite a high amateur standard and I’m pretty sure that if I had poured the same dedication and focus into it thirty years ago that I poured into racing, I could have made my living from it. Whether I could have reached the same level and got the same rewards, I’m not sure and I will never know. But I think in many ways if I had my time again I would like to find out.

It may sound improbable, but I have had days on the golf course where I have scored back-to-back eagles, or had a round of 65 including half a dozen birdies, and these have been some of the biggest thrills I’ve ever experienced. I love the idea that it’s just you and a set of clubs against the golf course and the elements. It’s a true test and if you get it right the sense of gratification is quite overwhelming. And if, by chance, it all goes wrong and you slice your ball into the trees, you don’t hurt yourself. You just swallow your pride, grab a club and march in after it.

Having said that, I’m glad that motor racing has been my life. It has satisfied my desire to compete and, above all, to win. It has tested my limits and my resolve many times. It has bankrupted me, hospitalised me and some of the disappointments it has inflicted on me have almost broken my heart. It has also robbed me of some good friends.

But all of that is far outweighed by what it has given me. I have had two lifetimes worth of incredible experiences and more memories than if I were a hundred years old. I set out on this long and treacherous journey with nothing, except the belief that I had the talent to beat the best racing drivers in the world.

After a lot of hard work I was able to prove it.


PART ONE (#ulink_de1c1f50-fe19-5785-9fd6-6239230fe08e)

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS (#ulink_de1c1f50-fe19-5785-9fd6-6239230fe08e)

‘I am interested only in success and winning races and if my brain and body did not allow me to be completely committed, I would know that I was wasting my time. The moment I feel that, I will retire on the spot.’


1 (#ulink_3c292549-41b7-5376-857d-81c57dc4df31)

MY PHILOSOPHY OF RACING (#ulink_3c292549-41b7-5376-857d-81c57dc4df31)

There are very few people who have any idea what it takes to be successful in this business.

Much of my life has been devoted to the pursuit of the Formula 1 World Championship. I was runner-up three times before I finished the job off in 1992. Yet if circumstances had been different and politics hadn’t intervened, I might also have won a further two World Championships, in 1988 with Williams and in 1990 with Ferrari.

In both cases the essentials were there. The hard work developing the car had been done, but politics dictated that the pendulum should swing away from me. In 1988 Honda quit Williams and dominated the championship with McLaren, while in 1990 Alain Prost joined Ferrari, where we had developed a winning car, and proceeded to work behind the scenes to shift all the team’s support, which I had worked for in 1989, to himself.

Although I consider myself strong in most sporting areas of motor racing, I am a poor politician and there is no doubt that this has accounted for me not winning more races and more championships.

Moreover, these experiences provide an object lesson in just how difficult it is to win a lot of Grands Prix and a World Championship; there is far more to it than simply beating people on the race-track. They also serve as a reminder that nothing in motor racing is ever certain. You might have all the right ingredients in place, the full support of the team, an excellent car, and yet some minor component can let you down or some freak accident, like a wheel nut coming off, can rob you of the prize after you’ve done most of the hard work.

There are no shortcuts to winning the World Championship, but in my fifteen years as a Grand Prix driver I have learned a lot about what it takes to win consistently.

My philosophy of driving a racing car is part and parcel of my philosophy of life. Achievement, success and getting the job done in every area of life, not just in the cockpit, are fundamental to my way of thinking. Everything has to be right. Whether it’s getting to the golf club on time or having the right pasta to eat before a race, the demand for perfection everywhere is critical.

MOTIVATION IS THE KEY

Winning at the highest level of motor sport is not like winning in athletics or tennis or golf. In those sports you have just yourself to motivate. In motor sport, you require a huge team and huge resources and it is incredibly difficult to get it all to gel at the same time, to hit the sweet spot. Everything has to come together in unison.

When people think of Nigel Mansell the World Champion, they think that all my winning is done behind the steering wheel. Although important, the actual driving aspect is the final link in the chain. A lot of what it takes to be a champion takes place out of the car, unseen by the public. Winning World Championships as opposed to winning the odd Grand Prix is about always demanding more from your team and never being satisfied. This was a very important aspect of the 1992 World Championship and it is perhaps an area that the public understand least.

At Paul Ricard in September 1990 I tested the fairly unloved Williams-Renault FW13B. I changed everything on the car and got it going quicker than either Riccardo Patrese or Thierry Boutsen had managed that year, but it was clear to me that although Renault and the fuel company Elf had been doing a reasonable job, they had not been pushed hard enough to deliver the best. I immediately began demanding more from them, especially Elf. Having been at Ferrari for the past two years, I understood the progress which their fuel company Agip had made. Agip was producing a special fuel which gave Ferrari a significant horsepower advantage. I am a plain speaking man and I told them straight. The demands I made on them didn’t endear me to them initially; in fact I pushed so hard that I was told at one point to back off. But I knew that if Williams-Renault and I were going to win the World Championship, we had to begin immediately raising the standards in key areas like fuel.

As I said, it didn’t endear me to them to start with. No-one likes to be told that they can do a lot better, even less that they are well behind their rivals. Perhaps they thought that I was complaining for the sake of it, or ‘whingeing’. I think whingeing is a rather naive term to use for trying to raise everybody up to World Championship level!

Eventually they came around to my way of thinking. In the case of Elf, it took them three or four months to realise that I meant business and another three to deliver the fuel that I wanted, but the performance benefits that began to emerge in the late spring of 1991 were the result of the pressure that I had put on both Renault and Elf in late 1990.

Ayrton Senna opened up a points cushion in the World Championship by winning the first four races of 1991 in the McLaren-Honda, but after that we were able to compete on more equal terms and as the year wore on and the developments came through onto the cars, the wins started to come thick and fast. From then on everybody kept the momentum going, always striving to do a better job than they thought was possible and the result was the total domination of the 1992 Championship. It took a year and a half to get the team into championship winning mode but together we did it.

Motivation is a vital area of a driver’s skill. Towards the end of 1990 I visited the Williams factory in Didcot to meet the staff. Since I had left at the end of the 1988 season, the team had grown and new staff had been taken on. Consequently there were quite a few people there who didn’t know me and who did not know how I work. I asked for everybody to come to the Williams museum where I did a presentation on what I thought it would take to win the World Championship. I needed them all to know that it isn’t just a driver and a team owner who win World Championships, but the 200 or so people back at base, some of whom only give up the odd Saturday or Sunday to come in to work and do what is required to win, but who are all very important.

Similarly, in February 1992, around a month before the start of the season, I went to Paris with the then Williams commercial director, Sheridan Thynne to visit the Renault factory at Viry Chatillon. We went around the whole place, not just the workshops where they prepare the engines, but every office and every drawing office in the building. We shook hands with every single person from the managing director down to the secretaries and the cleaners and signed posters for each of them.

It was a good visit from a motivational point of view. It got everybody focused on what we were about to do and it helped all the Renault people to understand me a bit better and to feel a part of the success. We were taken around and introduced to everybody by my engineer, Denis Chevrier. I subsequently found out that he had been on a skiing holiday that week and wasn’t due back until the weekend. But so committed was he to the cause of winning the World title, that he had cut short his holiday to be there. That is the stuff of which championships are made.

We also visited Elf’s headquarters and met with all of their people. I believe that this is a key part of building a successful team. You must push everybody involved with the team in every area and tell them that, although they are doing a good job, they can do better. A large part of it is demanding the best, better than people think they can achieve. From suppliers of components through to secretaries in the factory, everyone must be made to feel they can improve and to feel a part of the success when it comes. When I step from the car after winning a race or getting pole position, I shake hands with all my mechanics and congratulate them on the job that we have all done together.

Over the years, through sheer determination to succeed, I have learned all of the things that are required to win. I try to raise everybody’s standards to a level that they don’t always know they can achieve. I demand the highest standards from everyone around me and if everything is working right, then I just have to keep up my end of the deal on the track. If it’s not going right and everybody is searching for answers it puts more pressure on the driver and makes it more difficult to get good race results.

I have also learned that you cannot please everybody and that no matter what you do or say and no matter how you carry yourself when you are in the spotlight, people are going to criticise you. Sadly that is a given element of my life and I have come in for a lot of criticism, some of it justified, most of it, I believe, not.

If pushing everybody to produce commitment at the highest level in order to win really is whingeing, then I’m a whinger – but I have the satisfaction of knowing that it leads directly to success.

There is a deplorable and negative characteristic of the British, which is to try to undermine success and to glorify the gallant loser. It is often called the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. The media have a simplistic perception of a lot of stars; they like to stick a label on someone and work from there. Once the label is stuck on it is difficult to shake off. People are actually a lot more complicated than that and in most cases there is a great deal going on behind the scenes, which would explain a lot if only it were more widely known.

In 1992 I was criticised for implying that the victories we were accumulating were entirely due to me and not to the team and our fabulous car, FW14B. I always paid tribute to the team in post race press conferences, it’s just that the media chose not to use those quotes in their articles. I did a long interview with the BBC at the end of the year, where I spent quite some time going into detail about how the team had done a great job, but they cut that part out when they aired the programme.

The way I work is that I am the captain of the ship and I work for the common good within a team. I don’t like anyone telling me how to drive a racing car or what to do out on the track – that’s my business and my record speaks for itself. Outside the car I listen to all of the technical advice and make use of all the expertise available. I am a team player and I know that unless some outside factor comes in to upset the balance, what’s best for me is what’s best for the team.

When you hire Nigel Mansell as your driver, the actual time spent in the car and what I can do with the car is far from all that you are buying. The ability to get the best out of the the car is well known, but also crucial is the ability to get the car into a shape to be used like that.

I need to be surrounded in a team by people who believe in me and who know that if I am given the right equipment, I’ll get the results.

When I aligned myself to Williams in 1991/92, everybody worked my way and we delivered the goods: nine wins, fourteen pole positions and the title wrapped up in record time by August. If we hadn’t delivered the goods then I could sympathise with the team’s frustration and difficulty in continuing the relationship. But to change tack just because of pressure from the team’s French partners to bring aboard one of their fellow countrymen, Alain Prost frustrated me enormously, although I could understand the reason behind it.

There is an old Groucho Marx joke which goes: ‘I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club which would have someone like me as a member.’ I am the exact opposite of this. I only want to be in a team that wants me there and wants to work the best way both for the team and for me. If I feel that I do not have the team’s full support, then I am quite prepared to leave.

I don’t want to be in a situation where everyone is not pulling together.

BE FAST AND CONSISTENT

Patrick Head, Williams’ technical director, has said that one of my major strengths as a racing driver is that I don’t have on days and off days. I am consistently fast, which is a big help to a team when it comes to developing a car. They know that the speed at which I drive a car on any given day is the fastest that car will go, so they always have something consistent to measure against.

Of course, in reality, every human being has on days and off days, but if you are a real professional it shouldn’t show in the car, because you are being paid to drive the car and to perform. Also your professional integrity should not allow you to take it easy on yourself when you feel like it. A champion needs to have that extra will and determination to get the job done so that, although you might not feel on top form out of the car, you perform to the highest levels in it. That takes a lot of energy but it is vital if you are going to be successful.

Sometimes you have to face the fact that even your best efforts are not going to yield the results. In my second year of IndyCars in 1994, it just wasn’t possible to do what we had done the year before and win races consistently with the car we had. I gave it a massive effort in bursts during qualifying and sometimes was able to get on pole or the front row, but the Penskes were so superior over a race distance that there was nothing I could do to beat them, even if I drove every lap of the race as if it were a qualifying lap. When it’s not possible you can’t make it happen. That’s not to say that I gave up or resigned myself to making the numbers up. I was just being realistic.

I am often asked how I feel I have improved as a driver over the years. Obviously you cultivate your skills and talents in all areas, but if I had to be specific I would say that I have improved as a human being and that has matured my racing technique. I’m a little bit more patient now and I’m not as aggressive as I used to be, although there is still a lot of aggression there. I have much more knowledge of how to get the job done and I don’t pressure myself into doing a certain lap time, which I used to do all the time.

I am a better thinker in a racing car nowadays, I don’t feel that I have to lead every lap of a race. As long as I’m the one who crosses the line first that’s the important thing.

I have also developed the courage to come into the pits when the car isn’t working and to tell the crew that it’s terrible, rather than feel that I have to tread on eggshells so as not to hurt their feelings. In the early days, when I complained about a car everybody would say, ‘Oh, he’s whingeing again, he’s no good.’ Now I have the self belief and I know what is right and what is wrong and stick to it. I don’t just steam in and criticise, I make suggestions and pressurise people into accepting that something isn’t good enough and needs to be changed. In other words I have become a little wiser about how to operate and do things.

MY UNUSUAL DRIVING STYLE

My driving style has changed little over the years that I have been racing. It is quite a distinctive style, because I tend to take a different line around corners from other drivers. The classic cornering technique, as taught by racing schools, is to brake and downshift smoothly while still travelling in a straight line and then to turn into the apex of the corner and apply the power. Thus you are slow into the corner and fast out of it.

I never consciously set out to ignore those rules, I just devised my own way of driving and stuck to it because I found it faster. It is a lot more physical and tiring than the classic style, but it’s faster and that’s what counts.

My style is to brake hard and late and to turn in very early to the apex of the corner, carrying a lot of speed with me. I then slow the car down again in the corner and drive out of it. Because I go for the early apex, I probably use less road than many other drivers. In fact if you put a dripping paint pot on the back of my car and on the back of another driver’s car around a lap of a circuit like Monaco, you would probably find that my lap is 20 or 30 metres shorter than theirs!

To drive like this I need a car which has a very responsive front end and turns in immediately and doesn’t slide at the front. I cannot drive on the limit in a car which understeers, for example. My cars tend to handle nervously because I need them to roll and be supple; a car which does this at high speed is an uncomfortable car to drive and is very demanding, but invariably it is faster. Because it’s ‘nervous’ it will react quickly to the steering and will turn quicker into a corner. The back end feels like it wants to come around on you, but that’s something you learn to live with. Although it’s nervous it’s got to be balanced properly, if it isn’t then there’s nothing you can do with it. A stable stiff car is reassuring to drive and won’t do anything nasty to you, but it’s not fast. If you want the ultimate then you’ve got to have something which is close to the limit. This makes demands on you physically, of course. It’s much more tiring to drive a car this way and you need to have a particularly strong upper body and biceps in order to pick the car up by the scruff of the neck and hurl it around a corner.

The best car is not just a car which wins for you, but one which gives you the feedback that you need as a driver so you can have total confidence in it. The best car I ever drove was the active suspension Williams-Renault FW14B, in which we won the 1992 World Championship. It was a brilliant car because the only limiting factor was you, the driver. The car could do anything you wanted it to. For example, if you wanted to go into a particular corner faster than you had ever done before, all that was holding you back was the mental barrier of being able to keep your foot down. If you went for it, the car would see you through. I loved that.

SLOWING THINGS DOWN

Any top class racing driver must have the ability to suspend time by the coordination of eyes and brain. In other words, when you’re doing 200mph you see everything as a normal person would at 50mph. Your eyes and brain slow everything down to give you more time to act, to make judgments and decisions. In real time you have a split second to make a decision, but to the racing driver it seems a lot longer. If you’re really driving well and you feel at one with the car, you can sometimes even slow it down a bit more so it looks like 30mph would to the normal driver. This gives you all the time in the world to do what you have to do: read the dashboard instruments, check your mirrors, even radio your crew in the pits. That’s why, when I say after I won the British Grand Prix, for example, that I could see the expressions on the faces of the crowd, it’s because everything was slowed and I had time to see such things.

When you first drive a Grand Prix car, everything happens so quickly that you can sometimes frighten yourself. Once you’ve had some experience of racing at these speeds you can get into pretty much any racing car and go quickly, provided that you’re comfortable with the car of course. The more time you spend in the car the more in tune you become with the speeds involved.

Sometimes unexpected things happen incredibly quickly and you just have to rely on instincts to see you through. A good example of this is the incident which occurred when I was with Ferrari at Imola in 1990, when Gerhard Berger in the McLaren pushed me onto the grass at the Villeneuve Curve. That was an incredible moment. It was a split second decision as I travelled backwards at nearly 200mph whether to put it into a spin or whether to try and catch it. I took the first option and managed to bring the nose around the right way and kept on going. Although I cannot say that I saw the direction I was pointing throughout the two full revolutions the car made, I was aware through instincts of exactly where I was going the whole time. The result was a spectacular looking double spin and I kept on going. I probably only lost about 40mph in the spin. Because the adrenalin was pumping so hard after it, I broke the lap record on the next lap.

At times like that you’ve got to be a bit careful. Your heartbeat gets up to 150-200 beats per minute. You don’t think about it, but it is very important that you breathe properly, because you are on the verge of hyperventilating at that pulse level. It is vital that you understand your body and that you manage it as much as you do the car.

DRIVING ON THE LIMIT

Everybody has different limits, that’s one of the things which differentiates good amateur drivers from great professional drivers. Most top Grand Prix drivers will go beyond their limits at some time in their career and a few really top ones are able to go beyond their limit, if the occasion demands, for a period of time. Ayrton Senna talked after qualifying at Monaco in 1988 of going into a sort of trance, where he was lapping beyond his limit, treading into unknown territory. He stopped after three laps because he frightened himself. While I would not describe the feeling as being like a trance, I have had a similar experience several times, most notably at Silverstone in 1987, when I caught and passed Nelson Piquet after 29 laps of totally committed driving. This experience of mesmerising speed is described in detail later in the book. More usually that feeling comes when you commit every ounce of your strength and determination on a qualifying lap.

When you go for the big one in qualifying, you give it everything you’ve got and on certain corners you over-commit. Now this is where the judgment comes in because if you over-commit too much then you won’t come out of the corner the other side. You enter the corner at a higher speed than on previous occasions and if you are able to carry that speed through the corner you will exit quicker than before. You can’t do it consistently because the car won’t allow it and something will inevitably give. Of course you have to feel comfortable with the car. If it’s bucking around all over the place and is unstable even at medium speed through a corner then you would be a fool to go in 20mph faster next time round.

Provided that the car is doing more or less what you want it to, you can hustle it around on one or two really quick laps. It then comes down to your own level of commitment and that depends on so many factors. Some drivers become less committed after they have children, others lose the edge after a major accident, others will become more committed when it’s time to sign a new contract for next year!

Mental discipline plays a huge part in driving on the limit. A top athlete in any sport must be able to close his mind completely to extraneous thoughts and niggling doubts and concentrate 100%. If you want to be a champion, you need to be able to focus completely on the job in hand to the exclusion of everything else going on around you. Your brain must have a switch in it so that the minute you need to concentrate, your mind is right there and ready to go. I have been able throughout my career to give a consistently high level of commitment and even my harshest critics would admit that there are few more committed or focused drivers than me.

It’s a personal thing. You have to be true to yourself and if I thought that I had lost my edge I would stop racing immediately. I am interested only in success and winning races and if my brain and body did not allow me to be completely committed I would know that I was wasting my time. The moment I feel that, I will retire on the spot.

You can only do what your brain and your body will allow you to do. For example, in qualifying for the British Grand Prix in 1992, the telemetry showed that I was taking Copse Corner 25mph faster than my team-mate Riccardo Patrese, using the same Williams-Renault FW14B. In fact over a whole lap I was almost two seconds faster than him. As we sat debriefing after the session, Riccardo looked at the printouts and said that he could see how I was taking Copse at that speed, but that he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His brain was telling his body, ‘If we go in that fast, we’ll never come out the other side.’

Every really hot qualifying lap relies on the brain and body being in harmony and prepared, at certain key points, to push the envelope, to over-extend. That is the only way you are going to beat the Rosbergs, Piquets, Sennas and Schumachers of this world. It goes without saying that once you operate at that level, your self-belief must be absolute.

In all my career I have done maybe 10 perfect laps. One of the ones I savour the most was at Monaco in 1987. To do any kind of perfect lap is special, but when you do it at Monaco that’s as good as it gets. When you run the film of the lap through your mind afterwards and you examine every gearchange, every braking point, every turn-in and how you took every corner and at the end of it you say ‘I could not have done that faster’, that’s when you know you have done a perfect lap. You don’t need to go out and try to do better. When you get a lap like that you don’t even need to look at the stopwatch on your dashboard or read the pit boards. You know it’s quick.

When I came back into the pits David Brown, my engineer and a man who would become one of my closest allies in racing, pointed out that the white Goodyear logos had been rubbed off the walls of the rear tyres where I had brushed the barriers! You have to skim the barriers at a couple of points when you’re flying at Monaco, it’s the only way to be really quick. It sounds frightening, but it’s supremely exhilarating. I never feel more alive on any race track than I do on the streets of Monaco. Everything has to be synchronised and you need to have fantastic rhythm as well as aggression and a truckload of commitment to be fast there. I have always enjoyed the challenge, but I think also that the romantic in me responds to the idea of going well at this most celebrated of Grands Prix.

Generally speaking, although qualifying is important, merely lapping quickly, in other words driving fast, is not what turns me on the most. Competition is the most important thing and driving flat out against someone else with victory as the end result is my idea of heaven. Nevertheless, when you get a perfect lap in qualifying it feels absolutely marvellous. When I got out of the car at Monaco and looked at the white smears on the walls of the tyres where the manufacturer’s logo had been wiped off, it even impressed me. There are no long straights at Monaco, it’s all short chutes, but coming out of the tunnel I was clocked at 196mph, a full 17mph faster than Prost in the McLaren. I was six tenths faster than Senna and 1.7s faster than my team-mate Nelson Piquet and I had done not just one, but three laps which were good enough for pole!

From the point of view of a race, it’s not a major psychological advantage over your rival to get pole position. Anybody can get pole position if they have an exceptional lap in the right equipment. The key is to prove that you have the ability to do it time and again. It’s not one thing that gets you pole position, it’s a package of things, but you do have to put together the perfect lap and to show that you can do it more than anyone else. I am very competitive and I approach qualifying and racing at the same level.

Some top drivers believe that the race is the most important thing and that their position on the grid does not matter too much. Double IndyCar champion Al Unser Jr is like this, as to some extent was Alain Prost. They would concentrate on getting the set-up of the car absolutely perfect for the race and not over-extend themselves in qualifying. On one level you can see their point and I have done that a couple of times myself, notably at Hungary in 1989. It is the race after all which carries the points, but I have always believed that it is important to be quick and to show that you are strong throughout the weekend. Of course on certain tracks, like Monaco, there is a benefit to being at the front because it is hard to pass in the race.

Sometimes, as happened to me a great deal in the early part of my career, if your car is not up to scratch you are forced to make up the difference yourself. You do not want to be blown off in a bigger way than you have to be. So you delve deep into your reserves of commitment. You have to squeeze the maximum out of your car and out of yourself and whatever that yields is the absolute fastest that it is possible to go with the equipment. You can then go away satisfied in the knowledge that you’ve done the best job you can possibly do. Hopefully, if you are working your way up the ladder despite struggling with inferior equipment, the people who run the top teams will pay attention to you and maybe give you an opportunity in a good car.

It is also very important to be on the limit when testing a car because if you don’t know what a car is going to do when you are on the limit, then you’ll be in trouble when you race it. Anyone can drive at nine-tenths all day, but unless you understand what the car will do at ten-tenths and even occasionally eleven-tenths, then you are not being true to yourself, your car or your team.

When you are testing a car and you are not on the limit, you can make a change which might feel better to you, but which does not show on the stopwatch. If you then say, ‘No, it feels better like that, it’s only slow because I wasn’t pushing it,’ then you might subsequently find that the car won’t work on the limit and in fact you’ve made it go slower by making the change. If you find that out during a race, you’re in big trouble.

Sometimes making a car feel better doesn’t make it quicker, and the name of the game in motor racing is to shave as many fractions of seconds off your lap time as possible and then to be able to lap consistently at your optimum speed. It’s an uncomfortable truth for some, but the only thing that tells you that is the stopwatch.

Motor racing is in general, I think, the art of balancing risk against the instinct of self-preservation, while keeping everything under control. People can only aspire to great endeavours if they believe in their hearts that they can achieve their goals – and to my mind that’s the difference between courage and stupidity.

Courage is calculating risks; when someone sets an objective, realises how dangerous it is, but then does it anyway, fully in control. They have to fight with their feelings and hopefully are honest with themselves when facing up to the dangers inherent in what they are doing. Then there are others who aren’t really in control.

STARTING A RACE

The start of a Grand Prix is a very dramatic moment and there is a lot of chaos and confusion going on around you. But the most important thing you have to think about is your own start and making sure that you get away as well as you can. The first couple of corners in a Grand Prix can make a huge difference to the result. If you have pole position and you get a good clean start, you can open out a lead over the field, because they are jockeying for position behind you. Also it goes without saying that if it’s wet and the cars are kicking up huge plumes of spray, there is only one place to be!

It’s very important at the start to have mental profiles of each of the drivers around you, to know who’s fired up that weekend and who’s depressed, who’s trying to be a hero and who is desperate for a result. If there’s someone who has qualified way beyond expectations, then they will probably want to show that their position is justified so they are probably going to be dangerous. You need to know who is brainless, who is a cautious starter, and so on. You have to put all of this into your brain and let your instinct take you through. It’s like reading the greens on a golf course, or knowing about the going on a race course. It’s the finer points that matter.

Psychologically, the start is vital. In 1992 I had 14 pole positions and at the starts I went off like a rocket. I wasn’t holding anything back. I would open out as big a gap as I could as fast as I could. Sometimes I was two or three seconds clear at the end of the first lap. It was vital to dominate everybody, to intimidate everyone to the point where they knew who was going to win before the race even started. And it worked.

I was on a mission that year. No-one was going to beat me. I had psyched myself up throughout the winter and I was incensed when before the season started Patrick Head said when referring to the Williams drivers, ‘We’ll see who comes out better in 1992.’

That was an insult. My team-mate Riccardo Patrese was a great driver, but my credentials up to that point were a lot better and I had won three or four times as many races as him. What’s more, having spent years as the number two driver, I was finally number one. I was determined to crush everybody. I had to dominate the Williams team and I wanted everybody to know that I was number one. I also wanted Ayrton Senna, the only person whom I perceived as being a threat, to know that I was going to win the World Championship at the earliest possible time. The relentless pressure I applied through qualifying and then at the start helped to cement that idea in people’s minds.

Sometimes it can all go wrong at the start, as it did in Canada in 1982 when Didier Pironi stalled on the front row of the grid and Riccardo Paletti didn’t see him, hit him and was killed. I was one of the cars who had to dodge Pironi and there was no time to think about it, you just had to act. It’s the instinct of self-preservation. We all have this instinct because we don’t want to die. You know when you race a car that if you don’t do the right things at certain times, you could get killed or badly hurt. The start of a race is one of those times.

STRATEGY AND READING THE RACE

Peter Collins played a major role in helping me reach Formula 1 and he was my team manager for a few years at Lotus and Williams. I always used to laugh at him because he used to like to plan the race in minute detail beforehand and sometimes we would have ten different strategies in front of us. It was complete nonsense because usually something would happen that we hadn’t even considered. Before the start we used to study the grid and he would say, ‘What happens if he gets a good start and what if he gets a bad one?’ But whatever you tried to plan, it all used to change.

Niki Lauda was always a great planner, but what he thought about never occurred either, so he gave up wasting his brain power, relaxed and was ready for anything that came up.

That’s one of the strengths of my driving now. I don’t think about things too much. I’ve had so much experience and so many things programmed into my brain that I’m prepared for anything. When something crops up, you don’t have time to think about it anyway. If you try to think, you’ll be too slow in reacting. A mixture of instinct and experience tells your hands and your feet to position the car so that if something does happen, you’re in good shape. It takes years of experience to develop that ability. It just doesn’t occur by chance.

Once you are in the race, you can read what’s going on pretty well. You can control the race more in Formula 1 than you can in IndyCar racing. In IndyCar you rely on the team manager and the crew to call fuel strategies and the yellow flags can wreak havoc to your progress. You can win or lose a race because of yellow flags and that’s according to the rules. It’s a bit frustrating, but they are there for everybody, the fans and the television and the smaller teams. It can work for you and it can work against you. Does it level out? I’m not sure. I think I had a fair bit of luck in 1993, while in 1994 I had some bad breaks, but I’m happy that it worked out for me first time around.

Formula 1 is quite different. You win and lose a race out on the track. It’s a pure sprint and it’s very rare that a yellow flag or a pace car will intervene to deprive you of a win which you thought you had in the bag. You rely on pit signals and the radio link with the crew, but you can tell a lot from the cockpit about where the opposition is on the track.

OVERTAKING AND RACE CRAFT

The secret with overtaking is that you’ve got to be in total control of what you are doing before you set about passing other cars. If you are on the ragged edge just to keep your car at racing speed, then you are not going to be effective when trying to make up positions and compete with rivals. Some duels can last a long time and you need to be totally comfortable with your car before you can commit the mental and physical energy required to pass a Senna or a Prost on a race track.

When you come to pass someone, you first have to make sure that they know you’re there. Sometimes they do, but will pretend that they don’t and will try to block you or even put you off the track. It’s up to you to decide when and where to engage them in psychological combat.

You first put the ‘sucker move’ on them, showing them your nose and setting them up with moves through certain corners to make them think that this is where you are going to attack. You are saying to them, ‘This is the move which is going to come off,’ when in reality you know that it isn’t. You feint to one side and they think that this is your last-ditch attempt to come through, but it isn’t. You’ve got something else in mind.

You save up your best move and don’t give them any idea what it is or where it will come. Sometimes you only get one chance and winning a race depends on one proper effort. If it comes off you win, if it doesn’t you lose. But to have many attempts and to fail all the time, merely weakens your position. You must show that you intend to come through and in many cases you can psyche your opponent out before the fight begins. Some will say, ‘Oh God, it’s Mansell, I can’t possibly keep him behind me,’ because they’ve had experience of being beaten in the past. This does not work on the real aces however. You’ve got to do something special to pass them and you’ll probably only get one go.

This is one of the strongest areas of my driving and I haven’t had too much trouble in my career passing people, with one exception. Ayrton Senna stood out during my career as the toughest opponent. Our careers coincided and between 1985 and 1992 we both wanted to win the same Grands Prix. When we both had competitive equipment we knew that to win we would have to beat the other.

We had some fantastic scraps, although in the early days he was quite dangerous to race against. He was so determined to win that he would sometimes put both you and himself into a very dangerous situation. It was a shame he did this. He was so good he didn’t need to do it, but he so badly wanted to win.

Sometimes you over-estimate your opponent and this can have dire consequences. For example you might be lapping a back marker, thinking that he will react a certain way, the way you would react if you were in his shoes. If he reacts in a quite different way he might collide with you and then you’ve thrown away the race because you attributed a higher level of intelligence to a driver than he actually possesses. It is a far greater weakness, however, to under-estimate an opponent, for obvious reasons.

There is no doubt that at the pinnacle of the sport there are some very forceful competitors.






Mike Blanchet, a former competitor of Nigel’s in Formula 3 and now a senior manager at Lola Cars: ‘Nigel likes a car with a good turn-in. He likes a more nervous handling car, which would frighten most drivers. Most of them like a neutral car with a little understeer, which feels safer. Because of his reflexes and his physical upper body strength Nigel is able to carry a lot of speed into corners without losing control of the car. A lot of people would spin if they tried to take that much speed into a corner.’

Peter Windsor, a former Grand Prix editor of Autocar magazine and Nigel’s team manager at Williams in 1991/92: ‘Nigel drives a little like Stirling Moss used to. Moss always said, “Anyone can drive from the apex of a corner to the exit, it’s how you get into the apex that matters.” Nigel got a feel early on for turning in on the brakes, crushing the sidewall of the tyre and thereby getting more out of a tyre. From the outside he makes a car look superb and his technique is very exciting to watch. He gets on the power very early on the exit of the corner. If the track conditions change suddenly or unexpectedly then Nigel is more at risk than other drivers because he’s more committed early on and more blind than others.’

Derek Daly, driver, turned TV commentator: ‘Mansell’s style is an aggressive style more than an efficient one, but it’s very fast. He makes an early turn-in; he gets his business sorted out in the apex and gets out of the corner as soon as possible. The key to being quick is the time it takes from turning in to reaching the apex and then the momentum you carry through the apex and out the other side. That is an area of the track where a lot of people slow down too much. Mansell doesn’t do that. He goes to the apex as soon possible, carrying lots of speed, lots of momentum and gets on his way. It is an unusual style – he often uses different lines through corners, but always the same cornering principle.’


2 (#ulink_30914796-94ee-5a3a-9c5a-bdedf47339a5)

THE BEST OF RIVALS (#ulink_30914796-94ee-5a3a-9c5a-bdedf47339a5)

When I first started in Grand Prix racing there were many top names involved, each of which will always strike a particular chord in the hearts of Formula 1 fans around the world: Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter, Gilles Villeneuve, Didier Pironi, Nelson Piquet, Patrick Tambay, Alan Jones, Carlos Reutemann, Alain Prost, Elio de Angelis, Jacques Laffite, Keke Rosberg, to name but a few. A lot of those drivers were either World Champions at the time or became champions in the next few years. Thirteen of them had won Grands Prix. I was lucky to enter Formula 1 at a time when there were far more significant names around than there are today.

In the late eighties there were only four ‘aces’ – Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet and myself. Into the nineties and by the end of the 1994 season, Prost had joined Piquet in retirement and Senna had tragically died, so it was down to three: myself and the emerging talents of Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher. The new breed of drivers have not been able to establish themselves yet, either in the record books or the public’s perception, and their reputations remain unproven.

The biggest thing for a driver is to gain worldwide recognition and respect and you only get that by doing the job for a number of years and getting the results. You need years of wins and strong placings to establish your name. No disrespect to any Grand Prix driver, but until you have won five and then ten and then fifteen and then twenty Grands Prix, you cannot be considered an ace.

Only three drivers have won more than thirty Grands Prix: Prost, Senna and myself. If you go down the list of prolific Grand Prix winners, many have either retired or died – Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Jim Clark, Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Juan Manuel Fangio, and so on. One reason for the gulf between the big names and the rest is that in the late eighties, when much more non-specialised media became interested in Formula 1, they could only focus on a limited number of drivers and so instead of looking at seven or eight drivers, they focused only on three and put them under the microscope. Because Prost, Senna and I were winning everything, the non-specialist media totally disregarded some other good up and coming drivers.

When I decided to commit myself to motor sport and to strive to be World Champion, I knew that I was an outsider. I was told at the beginning of my career that with a name like Nigel Mansell I would never make it to Formula 1 or make anything of myself in life. I guess I proved them wrong.

In the early stages of my racing career, as I struggled to scrape together the money to pursue my dream, I became aware of a group of drivers whom I nicknamed ‘The Chosen Ones’. These are the people who are expected to make it, to go all the way to the top. The phrase ‘future World Champion’ is bandied about with reference to these people, some of whom do make it, many of whom don’t. What unites them is that they have the backing and support of wealthy sponsors or corporations and their path to the top is marked out for them. Influential people in the industry back them and tip off the magazines and newspapers to ‘keep an eye on this boy’. Consequently they get a lot of publicity and this pleases their sponsors, who put in more money. If you’ve got the money in this sport, you get the best equipment and on it goes. You can understand why these people are ‘The Chosen Ones’, because in this sport you need a lot of money and support to make it and people are unwilling to back outsiders, like me, who have no money.

But the unavoidable truth of the sport is that it takes talent to win races and championships. You cannot compete at the highest levels without having that talent. When I was coming through the ranks, ‘The Chosen Ones’ were drivers like Andrea de Cesaris and Chico Serra. They got huge backing and much ink was put on paper about how they would conquer the world. Yet neither of them won a single Grand Prix. Chico Serra was run in Formula 3 by Ron Dennis, now the boss of McLaren, and they used to have their own video cameras out on every corner so they could analyse what the car was doing. And yet Chico came up to me on the grid one day and said, ‘Excuse me Nigel, could you tell me how many revs you’re using at the start?’

The history of the sport is littered with examples like this and it’s still going on today. Maybe there is a young outsider out there who is struggling to get the money together but has the self-belief and the determination never to give up. If there is, I hope he draws strength from this story and I wish him the best of luck. He’s going to need it.

Others, like Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher were more successful. None of them spent much time in poor equipment and all of them were well financed along the way. The main thing which united them, however, was their supreme talent. It annoys me when I read that I do not have the natural talent of a Senna or a Prost and that I ‘made myself’ a great driver. Firstly, you cannot run with, let alone consistently beat guys like that unless you have as much talent and, secondly, I have the satisfaction of knowing that two of the sport’s greatest figures, Colin Chapman of Lotus and Enzo Ferrari, both considered me to be one of the most talented drivers they had ever hired. Their opinions speak for themselves.

Part of my problem was that I spent many years in number two driver roles and in terrible cars. It wasn’t done deliberately, it was just a set of circumstances. Lotus gave me an opportunity to show a little of my flair as I led races, qualified well, and got on the podium a few times, but when I was given a real opportunity in 1985 at Williams I flourished, winning two races in my first season; and in my second year I won seven more and almost took the championship.

When the opportunity presented itself I grabbed it, but it took a little longer to come to me than it did to some of the better supported drivers.

Over the years I have driven against some of the legendary names of the sport and some of my favourite memories come from knowing and racing against these characters.

Driving as team-mate to Keke Rosberg with Williams in 1985 was a great experience. Whenever Keke did anything he did it at ten or eleven-tenths. He was always driving totally flat-out, and he had unbelievable commitment. I’ll never forget his qualifying lap at Silverstone in 1985, when he set the first 160mph lap, the fastest ever lap in a Grand Prix weekend. If Keke wanted to go anywhere then he would do it by the most direct route. He was a real flair driver, instinctive and courageous. He didn’t know much about the technicalities of a racing car and didn’t spend too long working on the finer points of set-up. If his car was balanced, he would simply drive the wheels off it and that was always terrific to watch.

Before I joined Williams in 1985 Keke said that if Frank took me on he would leave. He had a very negative opinion of me, based on hearsay which at the time was coming from Peter Warr, who had taken over from Colin Chapman at Lotus and who was spreading all sorts of stories about me around the paddock. When Keke and I got together I could tell that he was working under duress, but to his credit his mind was not completely closed and as the months went on he clearly formed his own opinion of me which was much more favourable. From then on our relationship was terrific. He showed me a lot of things and I learned a lot from him about how to carry myself as a professional racing driver. He was fantastic with the sponsors and used to give really engaging and entertaining speeches to the corporate guests in the hospitality suites before a race. I watched him and learned from him.

We only spent one season together in the same team. The South African Grand Prix at Kyalami was the second to last race of that season. I’ll never forget it and neither will he. I was on a real high because I had just won my first Grand Prix a few weeks before at Brands Hatch. I grabbed pole position and afterwards he came up to me and said, ‘Now I know why you are so fast and why you have pole position here. It is because you are a complete bloody maniac. I watched you run right up alongside the concrete wall for fifty yards. You’re mad.’ He had a huge grin on his face and we both fell about laughing.

It was a hairy run, but it served its purpose and won me pole position. Keke could see that my confidence level was really up. The car was working well, the team was giving me full support and I had learned the secret formula for winning Grand Prix races. He could see that I was like a starving man who has just worked out how to get into the fridge. Nothing would stop me. The race was close. He and I were both under pressure from Senna and Prost. I won, making it two in a row. Keke has described it as one of the hardest races of his career and I would agree with that.

Gilles Villeneuve was a great driver, but more than that he was a great friend. We got on really well. When I first arrived in Formula 1, he took me under his wing and showed me a lot of things about how the Formula 1 game worked. We shared a lot of confidences. Like me, he was a plain speaking man and he always said what was on his mind. I understood where he was coming from and respected his judgements on people in the paddock. My arrival in Formula 1 coincided with the power struggle between the governing body and the constructors and Gilles encouraged me to go to the drivers meetings and take an interest in what was going on. He helped me a lot.

We had a lot of fun together, both on the track and off. The racing was pretty raw and competitive in those days and it was always cut-throat. The best man and the best car won on the day, but we had some massive scraps and then we would talk and have a laugh about it afterwards.

His road car driving was legendary and there are some great stories about him told by people who travelled with him at enormous speed on road journeys. I also travelled with him in his helicopter and because he was so fearless and such an accomplished person he could carry out the most extraordinary dives and manoeuvres as a pilot.

Gilles was a very special man, who lived his life to the full and who always drove at the limit. Looking back, the best race I had with him was at Zolder in Belgium in 1981. It was my first visit to the circuit and I managed to beat him for third place to claim my first podium in only my sixth Grand Prix start.

The following year we returned to Zolder for a rematch, but we never had the opportunity as Gilles was killed in an accident during qualifying. It was an awful incident in an awful year. Driving past the scene of the crash, I could see that it was serious as bits of his car were strewn all over the track and the surrounding area. I didn’t stop because there were already a lot of people there and the emergency crews had arrived in force. I was practically in tears as I drove around the rest of the circuit, repeating over and over again to myself, ‘Please, please let him be all right.’ It was shattering blow when I found out later that he was dead.

Gilles has been sorely missed in Grand Prix racing ever since that terrible day. He brought a magic to it, a sparkle, which is what endeared him to Ferrari and the passionate Italian fans.

I was very happy when Gilles’s son, Jacques landed a drive for Williams having moved over from IndyCar, where I raced against him in 1994, straight into one of the two top Formula 1 teams. It’s a real piece of history and I’m happy for Jacques. I was slightly amused when I heard he signed because I remembered Patrick Head, Williams technical director saying something about IndyCar drivers being fat and slow … then all of a sudden he’s signed one up!

Another driver for whom I have great respect – and I believe the feeling is mutual – is Niki Lauda. He is a total professional, very analytical, with tremendous courage. He was a superb racing driver who won many races through his intelligent handling of the car.

Niki was very good at getting himself positioned within a team and he was one of the few drivers to get the best out of Ferrari. He told me that if I had used my head differently I would have won more championships and he’s right. If I had been more political I would probably have won two or three more championships, but that’s just not the way I am. I’m not the sort of political manoeuvrer that some of my rivals were. I’m more romantic than that. I like to think that I am what a racing driver should be. I like to win by having a fair race and a fair fight with someone. If there has been some skulduggery in the background which means that a fair fight isn’t on the cards then that isn’t my scene and I don’t think it’s worth as much. I’ve gained more satisfaction from what I have won and the things I have achieved. I do try to look after my interests a bit more these days. But when it comes to politics, I’ll never be on the level of Alain Prost.

Alain Prost is the expert political manoeuvrer. He has won 51 Grands Prix, more than any other driver in the history of the sport, and he has four World titles, one less than Juan Manuel Fangio. You have to respect Prost’s record, but at least one of his titles was won more by skilful manoeuvring away from the circuit than actually out on the track.

Prost almost always had the best equipment available at the time: he drove for Renault in the early turbo days, then switched to McLaren, who dominated the mid-eighties with their Porsche-engined cars and the late eighties with the support of the Honda engine.

He’s a bit of a magpie. He uses his influence to pinch the most competitive drives. At Ferrari in 1990, Prost worked behind the scenes pulling strings and getting the management of Ferrari and its parent company FIAT on his side. At the end of 1989, Ferrari was my team and I was looking forward to a crack at the world title. Prost came along and tried to ease me out. The ironic thing is that Prost himself was fired by the management of Ferrari at the end of 1991.

When we did race on a level playing field he would rarely beat me. That’s why he didn’t want to compete with me on equal terms. Getting himself into a position where he doesn’t have to compete on equal terms is part of his strength. That’s part of the game, but it’s more romantic and far more satisfying for everyone if you have equal equipment and say ‘Let the best man win’. You have to be clever to get the car in shape, but to use political cleverness away from the circuit to get an advantage is not good for the sport.

It was disappointing not to be able to take him on in a fair fight either at Ferrari in 1990 or at Williams when he took my seat at the end of 1992. But it’s not the end of the world because I know how good I am. I raced alongside him in 1990 and knew that the only way he could be quicker than me was when the equipment wasn’t the same. I’m not interested in political manoeuvring or in working to disadvantage my team-mate. Naturally, I want success for myself and to win, this is positive, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of the person with whom I am supposed to be collaborating. I am simply not motivated like that. It’s so negative.

In my early Formula 1 days we got on reasonably well and played golf together occasionally, but as soon as I began to beat him on the track and to pose a serious threat to him, he didn’t want anything to do with me, which was a shame.

Ayrton Senna was one of the best drivers in Grand Prix history. I was probably the only driver consistently to race wheel to wheel with him and there is no question that he was the hardest competitor in a straight fight; I wouldn’t say the fairest, but certainly the hardest. You knew that if you beat Ayrton you had beaten the best.

He was often described as being the benchmark for all Formula 1 drivers. I believe that whoever is quickest on the day is the benchmark and it can move from race to race. Admittedly, because of his qualifying record Ayrton was more often the benchmark than I was. But it tended to move between Lauda, Prost, Piquet, Senna and me.

Ayrton tried many times to intimidate me both on and off the circuit. Once, at Spa in 1987 I told him to his face that if he was going to put me off he had better do it properly. We even had conversations where we started to respect each other’s skill and competitiveness and agree not to have each other off. But he would then forget about the conversation or make a slip and have me off or hit me up the back. It must have been premeditated, because he was too good a driver to do it by accident.

It was unnecessary for Ayrton to act in this way, but I always took it that the fact he did it to me meant that I intimidated him. Nevertheless we did respect each other. We weren’t bosom pals and we didn’t run each other’s fan clubs, but when both of us had anything like a decent car he knew that he would have to beat me if he was going to win and I knew that he was the one driver I would have to beat.

Ayrton was a natural racer and was willing to push the limits. Something terrible happened at Imola. There was no question that he was right on the limit when he went off. Perhaps something let him down on the car. He certainly pushed the limits and enjoyed it. We had that in common, we both enjoyed working on the ragged edge. That was where we would set our cars up and where we would drive when the need arose. If you are an honest professional racing driver that is what you have to do.

On my victory lap at Silverstone in 1991, I picked him up after his car had broken down at Stowe. I could see that he was getting a hard time from the crowd and I know what that’s like from my own experiences in Brazil. So I thought I would help him get out of a tricky situation. It was amazing the criticism I received after that show of support. One magazine said that I was stupid to do it because I allowed him to see the Williams cockpit and to see what was on the dashboard display. It was so small-minded of them. There are some people who are going to criticise you no matter what you do.

When he won his third World Championship at Suzuka in 1991, I hung around after retiring from the race to congratulate him. Later we had a chat and it was probably the closest we ever got. There was a deep mutual respect between us and that’s how I’d like to remember him.

Nelson Piquet was the other big name in Formula 1 during the late eighties. He was my team-mate at Williams in 1986/87, but it was an unhappy relationship. Nelson is a big practical joker with an annoying sense of humour; he also worked at splitting the team’s loyalties and getting people to side with him.

When he joined Williams in 1986 he obviously thought that he was going to win everything, but I showed him up over the next two years and took a lot of wins away from him. Williams has the capability of running two cars close together because of the very high standard of their engineering and the way that Frank Williams and Patrick Head run things. You still have a number one and a number two driver in the sense that the team leader has priority on the spare car and so on, but the number two at Williams always has a good chance of winning races, as I did over those two years.

Nelson didn’t like this and he tried to get Frank to give team orders, something which Frank refused to do. Nelson claimed that Williams was displaying favouritism towards its British driver, which wasn’t true at all. To be fair, Nelson was a hard competitor when he wanted to be. He could be devastating on fast circuits. Although I beat him at Brands Hatch in 1986 and at Silverstone in 1987, he snatched pole position from me at both with some very committed laps. In a straight fight and when he felt like it, he was somewhere between Prost and Senna.

Michael Schumacher is obviously going to be the star of the future, but I know less about him. I remember when he arrived in Formula 1 he made a big impact, not least when he and Ayrton had a set-to during a test at Hockenheim. I always said that he was very talented, very quick and brave and perhaps now he is settling down to become a good, if not yet great driver. Winning his first World Championship has helped his cause, but only time will tell whether he’s got what it takes to become a real ace. Unlike some champions he’s not had to struggle as he made his way through the ranks. What’s more, he has not had the opposition during his career that many of us had. But all credit to him, you’ve got to take your opportunities when you can and he certainly did that in 1994 with Benetton.

I am delighted for Damon Hill that he has been able to come on as strongly as he has. He’s certainly grown in stature and is getting better all the time. When you drive for a top team with the best equipment and you have the opportunity to win consistently, you can improve a lot as a driver. When I did four races with him as his team-mate in 1994, I honestly believed I helped him and that gave me a lot of pleasure. To my mind, he has all the ingredients to win a World Championship, and I really think he’s ready to win it. The pressure he is under is immense – only drivers at the front know what the pressure is like – and I think the way he and his wife Georgie have come through it is brilliant.


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THE PEOPLE’S CHAMPION (#ulink_164c283f-4b4e-546b-9c04-188610bd39c1)

Perhaps the biggest satisfaction I have derived from my success has been the relationship that I have developed and maintained with the people who follow motor racing on television and in the grandstands around the world – the fans.

After the Australian Grand Prix in 1986, where I lost the World Championship when my tyre blew out, I received hundreds of letters from all over the world. Many said, ‘In our eyes, Nigel, you are the champion because you were the best this year. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t win it.’ This was the biggest accolade I could have received, because it came from the people who really count. I was immensely proud of their recognition. To this day I have a special relationship with the fans. They let me know, by letters or in person at the race tracks, that I have touched their lives and I try whenever possible to show them that it works both ways. Perhaps more than any other driver in Formula 1, I relate to the fans and I go out of my way to be in touch with them.

I am a racer and an entertainer. When I race I create excitement. It’s a trait which I sometimes wish I didn’t have, because people always expect the impossible. The fans enjoy watching me race because they know that I always give 100% and never give up. As long as I’m in the race, there’s a good chance that something exciting is going to happen. I make them laugh and cry and make them chew their finger nails with anxiety, but above all I try to make them feel that there is someone out there on the track with whom they can identify and who is giving it everything he’s got.

In Formula 1 there is a rather snobbish tendency among the insiders, especially the press, to look down on the fans. Formula 1 is quite a closed world and the fans sit on the outside, fenced off from the paddock. But what links all of us, fans, drivers, journalists and insiders is a shared passion for the sport and we should never lose sight of the fact that without the support of the fans, we would all be out of work.

Being a professional sportsman, I feel a tremendous responsibility towards the public. If they are good enough to buy a ticket and support me, I feel I must try to deliver for them both on and off the track.

I was born in England so naturally I have an affinity with my home country. I have a large following there and I have been lucky to be able to share a great deal of success with them. The English fans are extremely loyal; many have supported me since my early days in Formula 1 and I see a host of familiar faces whenever I appear in England.

Much of my success in motor racing came at a time when the national teams in other sports were doing badly. I won my back-to-back Formula 1 and IndyCar world titles at the same time as the English soccer team failed to qualify for the World Cup and the cricket team was also going through a rough patch. Nobody likes to see their national team do badly in any sport. It lowers a country’s self-esteem.

I became conscious during this period of being one of a few English sports stars out on a world stage who was actually delivering for the fans back home. Along with Nick Faldo, Linford Christie and Sally Gunnell, I felt responsible for carrying the torch. The public wanted someone to win for them and I was at the front of the line.

Having that kind of responsibility can be terrifying. Going into a Grand Prix weekend I would be aware that millions of people were looking to me to fly the flag and this would pile up on top of the expectations of the team, the sponsors and myself. But I have always maintained that pressure comes from within. You may be under pressure from all sides, but the secret is to control it, close your mind off to it and as you focus your mind on the job in hand, apply only as much pressure on yourself as you feel is required. A top sportsman must be able to control his emotions in this way and to keep all outside influences in perspective.

That said, I actually enjoy having a weight of expectation on me and it is something that I take very seriously. I rise to a big occasion and I thrive on the excitement of trying to win a major international race, whether it be the British Grand Prix or the Indianapolis 500. You can’t have the satisfaction of winning an event of this kind without having experienced the terror which comes from the possibility that you might fail and let down the fans. I have had so many years of carrying the flag successfully that I am now less terrified of failure. Although I would never rest on my laurels, I feel I’ve been there long enough that I should be allowed some leeway to get it right again.

Nowhere have I ever felt a greater weight of expectation than in front of the home crowd at the British Grand Prix. When you perform before your home crowd the sense of excitement about the whole weekend is even more intense than usual. Right from your first laps of the track on a Friday you can feel the energy of the crowd. All the way around the circuit, it is as if they are in the cockpit with you or adding power to your engine, It lifts you and gives you strength to push harder to achieve your goal. When race day arrives the atmosphere is positively electric.

Perhaps the most amazing atmosphere I ever experienced was the British Grand Prix in 1992, when over 200,000 people packed into Silverstone. We had set some quick times in testing before the weekend, but nothing prepared me for the speed which we found during that weekend. At every corner of every lap during qualifying I could feel an energy and a passion, willing me on to take pole position. It all came together perfectly. The car felt right, I felt right and I had this extra force on my side which seemed to put extra power under my right foot on the straights and extra grip in my tyres around the corners. I managed a wonderful lap, which put me comfortably on pole, two seconds faster than anyone else was able to manage.

Afterwards I was in the transporter with Williams technical director Patrick Head and my engineer David Brown when Riccardo Patrese, my team-mate came in. He walked over to where we were talking and grabbed hold of my crotch.

‘Hey, get off,’ I yelled. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Nigel,’ he said laughing, ‘I just wanted to feel how big those balls really are because that lap was unbelievable.’

That’s quite a tribute coming from your team-mate because he is the only one who knows what the car is capable of.

The whole weekend had that magic about it. After I won the race, everyone went crazy and the crowd invaded the track. It was an incredible spontaneous outpouring of emotion. On the podium I almost cried I was so proud of what we had achieved. I felt completely at one with the crowd. They had willed me on to win and I had won for them. Now we could celebrate together.

I triumphed on home soil five times between 1985 and 1992, including my first ever Grand Prix win, the European GP in 1985. The crowd was amazing that day too. During the final laps of the race people in the crowd were counting me down the laps, holding up four fingers, then three, then two … It had been two and a half seasons since a British driver had won a Grand Prix and they weren’t going to let this one get away. I have special memories of all my home wins and of the support I had each time from the crowd.

The fans have given me a great deal of spiritual support, but I have also been lucky enough to receive several prestigious awards which reflect wider public recognition and which are very important to me because I am intensely patriotic. I was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year twice, received the OBE from the Queen and I was sent a personal letter of congratulation by the Prime Minister when I won the World Championship. These are mementos that I treasure and they mean as much to me as any of my racing trophies. They symbolise something which goes beyond success in a sporting competition; they say that I have done something for my country, something of which I and the people of my country should be proud.

As I climbed up the ladder in Formula 1, I became increasingly aware of support for me in other countries, like Japan, Australia and Italy. I can’t begin to describe what it feels like when you realise that people from different nations are getting behind you and giving you their support. It is a strange feeling, but also a deeply moving one. It heightens your determination to succeed, but moves everything onto a much wider playing field. Where before you identified with your home crowd because of shared origins and shared culture, now you realise that you have a much greater responsibility to a much larger number of people.

When I signed to drive for Ferrari in 1988 I was given the nickname Il Leone (The Lion) by the Italian fans. It was the biggest compliment that I could imagine. The Ferrari fans, or tifosi as they are called in Italy, are one of the most powerful groups of supporters in all of motor racing. They have had several British drivers to cheer on over the years: in the fifties Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn were both Grand Prix winners and favourites with the tifosi, Hawthorn becoming Britain’s first World Champion in 1958 while driving for Ferrari, and in 1964 former motorcycle racer John Surtees won the title for them.

Obviously when I joined Ferrari I was aware of all the history and I had deep respect for the seriousness with which the tifosi follow the team. I was touched when they gave me that nickname. It was obviously significant to these passionate and committed people, so as the object of that passion I knew that it should be significant to me. It was certainly a flattering label. The lion is a symbol of power, strength and aggression. It has, of course, a strong historical association with England, which has a lion in its national emblem. It was also an appropriate nickname as, having been born in August, my star sign is Leo.

It was an honour to be able to develop a relationship with fans in Italy, Japan, Australia and many more far flung countries in which Formula 1 racing and its star drivers are celebrated. When I went to the States in 1993 to take on the top American stars, I received a warm welcome from the fans. As the season wore on and I won four oval races I became aware of a wider fan base all around the country. The American fans took to me and I took to them because I am a straightforward person, who is at heart what they would call a ‘pedal-to-the-metal racer’.

I am also a family man and when my children were on holiday Rosanne and I would bring them to races. IndyCar is much more family oriented than Formula 1 and I really enjoyed that. There was a lovely moment on the podium after I won on the oval at New Hampshire. I invited my three children, Chloe, Leo and Greg to join me as I held aloft the winners trophy. Emerson Fittipaldi, who finished second, brought his two daughters Juliana and Tatiana up on the podium as well. The American public appreciates moments like that.

For a professional sportsman in the television age, fame is something which comes with the turf, and being at the very top in Formula 1 means being famous all over the world. In terms of the size of its global audience, the sixteen-race Formula 1 World Championship lies behind only the Summer Olympics and Soccer’s World Cup and these events happen only every four years. In America, however, Formula 1 has only a cult following, while IndyCar and NASCAR racing rule the airwaves. Of course, when I moved to America I became more widely known, both through racing and through commercials and appearances on chat shows like David Letterman’s.

But I remember one occasion not long after I moved my family to Clearwater in Florida which highlighted the differences in attitude to the sport across the Atlantic. I was at a children’s party with my son Leo and during the course of the festivities I broke my toe. Naturally, I went to have it X-rayed at the local hospital, where the doctor on duty said that he needed to ask me a few questions for hospital records. He produced a clipboard and began scribbling.

‘Name?’

‘Nigel Mansell,’ I replied.

‘Occupation?’

When I told him that I was a race car driver there was not a glimmer of recognition. Because I had spent most of my time in the past few years in countries where Formula 1 has a huge following, I had forgotten what it was like not to be recognised. It was nice in those early days in Florida to be able to take the children out for a hamburger without someone approaching me for an autograph or to have their photograph taken. I could spend time with my family and enjoy being completely normal. Alas, this didn’t continue for long.

In the summer of 1994, I came back to England to look at Woodbury Park, the golf course I had bought near Exeter. I took the family down to Exmouth and in the evening we sat on the beach eating fish and chips. Several people walked past and I heard one of them say, ‘Blimey, that bloke looks just like Nigel Mansell,’ thinking of course that it couldn’t be me as I must be in America. I love moments like that.

Six months earlier, around Christmas time, I had come back to London to attend several awards dinners to celebrate my IndyCar title. I went out for a meal with my friends Mark and Iona Griffiths after which, as it was a lovely night, we decided to have a stroll around the centre of London. It was about two o’clock in the morning and cars were pulling over and complete strangers rushing up to congratulate me on my IndyCar Championship. Later, I came across four really drunk guys staggering down the street who, having obviously had a real Saturday night drinking session, didn’t realise they were shouting rather than talking. They were pulling my leg and I was having a laugh with them – the cameraderie was just fantastic. I thought to myself: ‘You couldn’t do this at 2 am in America, Nigel.’

I am interested in people and I take the trouble to talk to them. Fame is something to be enjoyed at times and endured at others. As many young stars of sport and pop music have learned, fame can ruin your life and destroy your privacy. But it can also enhance your life, as I have found through my relationship with the fans. To get a feeling of warmth and respect from total strangers is a unique experience. But you must always be responsible and conduct yourself with dignity.

Being famous has its down sides too. If you make yourself accessible to the fans, there is always the threat of an attack, of the kind suffered by Monica Seles, the tennis star, who was stabbed in the back as she sat in her chair on court between games. Her fear of a repeat attack has kept her out of the game for a long time, but it’s good to see her making a comeback. The incident sent shock waves reverberating throughout the professional sporting world. We realised that when we are surrounded by hundreds of people jostling to get closer, we are vulnerable. It worries any athlete in any sport. I don’t know what motivates someone to make an attack on a sports star. The public must appreciate that sportsmen are not politically motivated, they are simply dedicated to being the supreme athlete at their discipline. There is absolutely no justification for attacking someone who seeks perfection in their sport.

What happened to Seles was distressing to every sportsman and woman in the world. ‘If a star can be attacked in such a way …,’ we all thought to ourselves, ‘it could happen to me as well’ and that was very worrying.

I always have people covering my back and I think that anyone who is reasonably famous takes precautions at times, because in this day and age it’s wise to do so. But I’m privileged to say that over the years with all the fans I’ve met I’ve not once had any major problem. I wish I could say the same about the press.

My relationship with the press over the years has mostly been amicable and positive. I am an open person, I speak my mind and I take people as I find them. Consequently, with real professional journalists I have no problems. As I have already mentioned, I am a racer and I create excitement and this translates into good copy for the newspapers and magazines. Certainly over the years I have generated my fair share of dramatic headlines. But what never ceases to amaze me is the number of so-called experts in any sport who have never actually competed in that sport and who haven’t got a clue as to what they are talking about. I have suffered at the hands of journalists who are unable to comprehend, much less swallow the scale of what I have achieved in motor racing. This is because years ago when I was working my way up to the top, the same people said that I would never make it and now their arrogance will not allow them to accept that they were wrong. There is a small group of journalists in the specialist press who pursue negative angles whenever they write about me and who have tried for many years to make me look bad.

When I got to the top, several of them actually came up to me to apologise for what they had written, because their editors were putting pressure on them to get an interview with me. I accepted their apologies and we sat down to talk. They fulfilled the wishes of their editors by publishing the required interviews and then the following week went back to rubbishing me. I have no respect for anyone who can behave like this.

Years ago, as I climbed the greasy pole, the things these people wrote in their magazines had an influence on my life. Now when they go to work on me, they make themselves look pathetic. You cannot argue with the history books, which reflect achievements whatever the sport. These people are annoyed because they are jealous of success.

I believe that sportsmen who have achieved a great deal and who have created history should be given the benefit of the doubt. They shouldn’t have to put up with silly criticism. If it’s objective or if they’ve done something wrong then there’s no problem with that because they can learn from it. But to criticise for the sake of it is ridiculous.

Most famous people suffer to some degree at the hands of the press. I am relieved to say that I have not encountered the mauling or the total invasion of privacy suffered by some sportsmen, like Paul Gascoigne or Ian Botham. I have had my share of problems, but I have also had pleasure in working with some real pros.

As a professional sportsman I have a major responsibility towards the public and I think that the press have got to stand up and be as responsible because by reporting some of the things they do, they’re not helping anyone. There’s a lot of cheap journalism out there. The hacks forget how they earn their money and forget their obligations.

There are a few incredibly unethical people in journalism who are only interested in helping their bank balance and if motor racing gets undermined as a result, they’ll move on to another sport or personality and start making things up about them. They’ll concoct some sensational headline because they think it’s clever and it will sell papers, regardless of how much trouble it causes everybody and how little evidence there is on which to base a story. They then go out and try to get a story to substantiate the headline. They’re not interested in telling the news as it actually is. There is a great phrase among some newspaper editors: ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a great story.’ I think that says it all.

A lot of people rubbish stars and then want to make money out of them. Over the years several scribblers have taken it upon themselves to write books about my life story. They claim to be my friends, to be close confidants of mine and to have unique insight into my character. They write poorly researched, hastily assembled potboilers with the simple aim of making money out of my name. How can people like this write a definitive book about my life without coming to me for the truth? What do they know of my past, my family life, my innermost thoughts? How can they have the barefaced cheek to rubbish me one minute and then become my ‘biographer’ the next? It’s beyond belief, but is nevertheless true that some of my biggest critics have also made a lot of money out of me.

The sad truth is that they get paid good money to rubbish people. If you’re in the spotlight then you’ve got to expect that this will happen. It comes with the territory. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in racing or soccer or an actor or a pop singer. For sure there are plenty of knockers out there, but you have to see the wider picture. Outside of the publicity you have to put up with, there are many levels of life and experience and although it’s irritating, I don’t ever let it put a large cloud over my life. In any case I have also had the pleasure of working with a great many professional journalists, who I am sure despair of the dross written by their low-life counterparts as much as we sportsmen and women do.

I saw the bigger picture long before I entered Formula 1. I paid close attention to what was written and said about the successful and the famous, especially in racing, so I would be prepared when I came in. But then even when I was in FF1600 I had journalists approach me saying that they could do a lot to further my career, raise my profile, or even proclaim me a ‘future World Champion’ if I would slip them some backhanders. So right there, in my formative days I got a good glimpse of the wider picture.

I later learned how to deal with the pressure of fame a lot better at Ferrari because the pressure is much greater there than at any other race team and the Italian press are very persistent.

I have always had my feet on the ground and have listened carefully to the advice of people I respect. I was lucky enough to meet the actor Sean Connery in the early eighties, just after I became a millionaire for the first time. He said to me that whenever you get money and success you will suddenly find lots of friends you never knew you had, all wanting you to finance some plan they have or lend them a few quid. The secret, he told me, was to keep your money, because you might never get another pay cheque like it.

Those words rang true to Rosanne and I and that’s why we left England in the early eighties. We were paying 70% tax at the time. I said to Rosanne that my Formula 1 career could end at anytime. As hard as it had been to get in, we knew that it was the easiest thing in the world to be booted out. You only have to fall out of favour with someone or injure yourself and you’ll be forgotten and your whole career is over.

Motor racing is a fickle business. I have worked hard for the success which I’ve achieved, but it could so easily not have happened.


4 (#ulink_a6808155-714e-53a3-940b-d6a9dcf4f976)

FAMILY VALUES (#ulink_a6808155-714e-53a3-940b-d6a9dcf4f976)

I was born in a small room above my family’s tea shop, in a quiet corner of a sleepy town called Upton-on-Severn, in the heart of England. The third of four children, I was christened Nigel Ernest James Mansell. It was August 1953.

It had been a momentous summer. Everest had been conquered for the first time by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing; Queen Elizabeth II had been crowned at Westminster Abbey; and over in France, Mike Hawthorn, an Englishman driving for Ferrari, had beaten the great South American champion Juan Manuel Fangio in what was being hailed as the Formula 1 ‘Race of the Century’.

I remember my childhood at home being very happy. My brother Michael was a fair bit older than me and we were quite distant as we grew up. I was closer to my two sisters, Gail and Sandra and to my parents Eric and Joyce, whom I loved very much. Throughout my childhood and adolescent years before I left home, they were the model parents and I couldn’t have wished for a better mother or father.

We weren’t rich, but neither were we poor. My father was an engineer and had quite a senior job with Lucas Aerospace based in the Midlands. My mother, who had her hands full with a young family to look after, managed the day-to-day running of the family tea shop with help from my father.

When I was three, my father’s job forced us to move closer to Birmingham and we ended up in an area called Hall Green, which is a southern suburb of the city and where we stayed a few years before moving on again. We seemed to move a great deal during my childhood. As soon as I settled into a new area and a new school we would up sticks and move again. It was pretty hard on me, especially changing schools. When you go to a new school you don’t know anybody and it takes time to settle in.

The second school I attended was a private preparatory school called Wellsbourne, which I liked a lot. I immediately took to sports and soon became the captain of the school soccer and cricket teams. I loved sport and it seemed to come naturally to me. I realised early on that I could derive tremendous satisfaction from competing against children in other school teams and winning. Even at the tender age of seven, winning was everything to me. I made quite a good sports captain because I so badly wanted to win that I always motivated the other players in my team to try harder.

Academically I was one of those children whose end of term report usually contained the phrase, ‘He’s bright and does well at the subjects he’s interested in, but could try harder.’ I didn’t care too much about studying and I hated doing my homework. After school I preferred to kick a ball around with friends or to ride my bicycle rather than settle in for the evening with a few mathematical puzzles.

Although I got by in most subjects, I didn’t like Latin at all and I really wanted to get out of it. Luckily the Latin professor headed up the school chess team and when I expressed my dislike for ancient languages he said to me, ‘If you don’t like Latin, I’ll do a deal with you. If you get into the chess team, you can go to chess classes instead of coming to Latin.’ At the time, chess was pretty big at Wellsbourne and we had regular competitions with other schools in which we used time clocks, large size boards and all the proper paraphernalia. It was all taken deadly seriously. I played intensively for two months, got into the chess team and never went to another Latin class.

Sadly the school closed down in the middle of a term and I was shunted into a school near my house called Hall Green Bilateral. It was a real culture shock. Whereas Wellsbourne had been an all-boys school with class sizes of around fifteen pupils, Hall Green was mixed and the classes were twice the size. To make matters worse, I started half way through the term, so I was out of step with everything.

It’s a very difficult situation being the new boy. You stand out because you have a new uniform when everyone else’s is worn in, and you don’t know anybody. Before you get up to speed and settle in you get teased for being a ‘dunce’ and a ‘thickie’ because you don’t know what’s going on. At the age of between 7 and 14, other children don’t care about you and they don’t think for a moment about how you might feel. They only care about the things they are interested in, like sport, girls or being a bully. There were a lot of bullies at Hall Green Bilateral and predictably, soon after I arrived, they came to pick on the new kid.

I have never taken kindly to bullies and so I had a lot of problems. When they got rough with me I would always fight back and never give in. It was pretty nasty for a while. Although I was miserable at the time, I believe those formative years helped me a great deal in that they made me quite tough early on. Children can be unbelievably cruel to each other and if you can cope with that as a small child, very little in the adult world is likely to defeat you. As an adult I’ve been intimidated a great deal and I’ve been able to cope with and overcome all the hurdles.

I don’t think a child usually forms a pattern of how he or she is until their middle teens, but I was forced to be my own person from a very early age because when you are thrown in at the deep end you learn to swim rather than sink. When you don’t know anybody and nobody believes in you, you either shrink into nothing or you learn to believe in yourself and become more self-reliant.

My mother had a sixth sense when it came to people. She would be able to tell very soon after meeting them whether they were genuine or false, and I inherited that ability from her and put it to good use at school and later at college. It’s an animal instinct, rather like dogs have, which tells you straight away whether someone is a friend or a foe. It has helped me to survive and to succeed in the business that I’m in. I have stopped a lot of people in their tracks when they have come over all gushing and insincere, or when they have tried to get me to do something I don’t want to do. I hate falseness and deception.

Like my mother, I am very sensitive to what’s going on around me. I am renowned for being an incredible fighter, yet I have a soft side to my character. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to do something for a friend or a family member. Throughout my life I have found that many people seem to regard kindness as a weakness and will prey on that perceived weakness. It’s is a side of human nature that I will never understand. Kindness is fundamental to my nature. But if a tough decision has to be made, I can be as hard as nails. If I believe something is right I will go through a brick wall to make it happen.

I used to get up to quite a bit of mischief, as any young boy does, but I was always pretty responsible and early on I developed a clear set of beliefs and values. I learned to trust what I thought was right and wrong and to do what I thought was right for me. It became the code by which I have lived my life and according to which I have made every important decision.

Looking back, my formal education was totally inadequate at times, mainly because of the lack of continuity. But in another way it was marvellous, because I was constantly thrown in at the deep end with people and I learned more because I was up against it. I was always mechanically minded and when I went to technical college a lot of the work came as second nature to me. It was a question of applying myself and if I wanted to apply myself I did pretty well, whereas at school I did just enough to pass the exams.

After Hall Green Bilateral I moved again, to Hall Green College, where I stayed until I was 16. I got a couple of GCE O-levels and a few CSEs, then went to Solihull Technical College. I was 19 years old when I transferred to Matthew Bolton College in Birmingham to study engineering.

Although when I was young I had a lot of unpleasant problems to contend with in the playground and I struggled on the academic side, my athletic ability always kept me going. I became a good, disciplined athlete and my competitive spirit grew stronger and stronger throughout my school years. I loved to win and however steep the odds I never regarded any game as lost until the final whistle blew. I played hard at soccer, crunching into every tackle and chasing every ball. Even if we were playing a so-called ‘friendly’ match against another school, I felt it absolutely necessary to play to win. I was at my best when my team was a goal or two behind and we had to fight back. If we won after coming from behind the satisfaction was even greater than usual. I loved team sports. Although I also enjoyed solo sports like tennis, I was always a team player and I learned a lot of lessons from playing team sports which would stand me in good stead later in life.

I had a lot of fun playing sports. I remember one soccer match I had at college where I scored the winning goal completely by accident. I was running back from the goal, trying to slip away from the defender who was marking me. The ball was crossed into the middle, but I couldn’t see it because my marker was standing in the way. Suddenly the ball came through, hit me right in the face and flew into the goal. My team-mates seemed pretty impressed with my header. I had no idea what had hit me and I fell to the ground, so everybody thought it was a diving header and were even more impressed. In reality it was a total fluke, but the result was marvellous!

Some people have suggested that my fighter’s mentality was shaped by the fact that I come from Birmingham. They argue that because Birmingham is looked down upon by people in the more genteel South of England, its people have to fight harder for recognition. I think that’s a bit of a myth. I don’t believe that where you come from really matters. Although I am proud of my background, we have lived and travelled all over the world and my allegiance is to England rather than to any particular part of it.

My family and in particular my parents were very supportive of me as a child and my father backed my karting career. However, as will be explained in later chapters, they were not in favour of me pursuing a career as a professional racing driver. It caused a few problems for us initially, although they came around to my point of view in the end and we were reconciled. Their main objections to my chosen career were from the safety point of view as they didn’t want me to get hurt or killed, but also my father saw a terrible struggle ahead for me and he just wanted me to be happy and settled. Our family did not have the money that many aspiring racing driver’s families have and I think that my father felt frustrated at times that he was not in a position to do anything about it. He badly wanted to help, but he was inhibited financially. As a result I think he felt a bit out of place in the early days.

I persisted in my dogged pursuit of success in racing and when I made it into Formula 1 they were genuinely very happy for me. Unfortunately, my breakthrough into F1 with Lotus coincided with the awful news that my mother had terminal cancer.

She was a strong and marvellously brave lady through to the end, despite having to go through endless treatments of radiation therapy. I remember one time I took her to the hospital for her treatment and on the way home I had to stop three times for her to be sick. It was so upsetting. She was proud of me for getting into Fl, but all she ever saw of my F1 career was the struggle. Neither did she get the chance to see her grandchildren.

My mother was terribly ill for a few years before eventually succumbing in 1984. Sadly, the illness had a bad effect on my father. As happens often when one partner has a terminal illness, it does odd things to the one who survives. My father had a hard time dealing with the situation and handling life. He went off at a tangent and nobody within my family, including myself, could understand him any more. He remarried two years later to a woman 26 years his junior. It put a strain on the family and upset me terribly.

Then he became very ill and he died too. In the space of three years I had lost both of my parents. It was very hard. Rosanne lost her mother five years before I lost mine, so we have one last surviving parent between us. When I see people today who are ten years older than me and who still have both their parents, I think that they should be very proud of them and very happy.

Losing both my parents in that way was upsetting, but you have to be strong and realise that you have your own life to lead and you must make the most of it. My life has shown me many times that virtually nothing is ever certain. The only thing which is certain is that one day you are going to die. The day you are born is the day you start to die. Everyone has their allotted time and that will be made up of good times and bad times. It doesn’t matter who you are or how clever you are, you are going to age, gradually lose your health and fitness and eventually die. So when my parents were gone I said to myself, ‘Right I’ve got to get on with my life and make my own decisions, because I’m only young once and there is a lot to be done.’

Rosanne and I turned to each other and worked through it. Our marriage has gone through many ups and downs but we have a solid family unit. We had no parental advice or guidance about bringing up our three children and in the business we’re in that’s not been easy. Hopefully, it is possible to bring up normal children in this kind of environment. You only really know when they grow up into adults, but I feel that our three children are just like anybody else’s children. Certainly their father and mother think that they are exceptional. Rosanne and I are very close and the five of us are a tightly knit family. I wouldn’t swap that for the world. Our children dearly love us and we dearly love them.

I became a father for the first time in August 1984, half way through my final year at Lotus, when Rosanne gave birth to our daughter Chloe. It was a magical experience. The births of all three of my children are some of the most special moments I have ever had.

Becoming a father changed me considerably. Life is very blinkered at times. Ignorance is blissful. Fatherhood opened up a whole new aspect of life which I don’t think you can even begin to appreciate until you become a parent. You have a tremendous responsibility to this little child who can’t feed itself or look after itself or do anything for itself until it reaches a certain age. Even then it has to have great counselling and schooling from its parents.

Rosanne and I waited seven years after we were married before we had children. We wanted to make sure that we had all the necessary security before we brought a child into this world. Parenthood is a huge responsibility. The financial burdens it places on you are great. To bring children into the world when you can’t give them the basics and all the love they need, is totally irresponsible. All it does is create problems for everybody, not least yourself.

Without doubt my own experience of education has helped me to plan my children’s schooling and to make sure that where my education fell short, theirs would not. Like any father I want them to have all the things which I did not have. Away from school, they are also getting an education on life from following Rosanne and me around the world. Having seen the inside of the Grand Prix scene, they are more worldly wise and have a better understanding of the wider picture than most children and certainly more than Rosanne and I had at their age. Chloe, Leo and Greg are learning certain disciplines which I would have found very useful at their age. For example, they will all be karate exponents to at least black belt level before they are eighteen and I am sure that they will grow up to be self-reliant and self-disciplined. Helping them to get the right start in life is the least I can do for them.

My family is the the most important thing in my life and I would go through a brick wall to give them the environment they need to flourish and grow.

After all, it’s the way I was brought up.


PART TWO (#ulink_927958bc-f02d-5d6f-8847-8c0598231f23)

THE GREASY POLE (#ulink_927958bc-f02d-5d6f-8847-8c0598231f23)

‘I was told that with a name like Nigel Mansell I would never make it or amount to anything in life …’


5 (#ulink_c9c2ff7c-07d1-577f-87a0-4fc56beef8d1)

LEARNING THE BASICS (#ulink_c9c2ff7c-07d1-577f-87a0-4fc56beef8d1)

My father was quite a keen member of the local kart racing scene and he encouraged me to take an interest. We went down to watch a meeting at the local kart track and I remember being drawn in by the spectacle of these little machines buzzing around the twisty track. Some were being driven with more enthusiasm than skill, others looked more purposeful. Watching them exit the corners you could see the difference in speed between the ones who were really trying and those who were just out for fun. I felt I understood quite a lot about it straight away and I couldn’t wait to get out there and see what I could do. I was hooked.

The great thing about kart racing in the late sixties and early seventies was that it was completely uncommercial. It was purely a family thing. The people involved were all very friendly and there was always a real community spirit about the local kart meetings. The whole family would turn out on a sunny Sunday afternoon, including mothers and sisters who would take turns to hold a spanner or cheer on their boy, when they weren’t doling out lemonade and egg sandwiches.

Money didn’t seem to make the difference between winning and losing back then. If your family was a bit better off than the next one you might have a few more engines or a couple more sets of tyres. But money wasn’t a decisive factor. You could always go out in whatever kart you had and if you won, you had the satisfaction of knowing that it was more due to your efforts than anything else. I found that very satisfying.

Our first kart was a pretty crude piece of equipment, powered by a lawnmower engine. We bought it secondhand at a cost of £25. It wasn’t up to much but I was terribly excited about it and spent as much of my spare time as possible driving it round dirt tracks in an allotment near where we lived. It wasn’t very fast, but the important thing was that it needed no pedalling and it was thrilling to press down my foot and increase the speed.

A few other children had similar machines and we used to race them whenever we could escape from the house and our school homework. Before long I could beat everyone around the allotment and I was ready to go into properly organised local competitions, like the one I had visited a few months before.

Although the minimum age for a licence was 11 years and I was barely ten, we managed to get around the problem and I got my first licence. I was ready to go racing and based on my form around the allotment I felt confident that I would win my first race with ease.

Not surprisingly that first race was something of an eye opener. My primitive kart was hopelessly outclassed by the other machines and I watched in dismay as the field streamed away from me down the straight in the preliminary heats. I had my foot to the floor but I was going nowhere fast. To add insult to injury my engine stopped and I had to pull off the road. I sat there wondering what had happened. When I looked back I saw my engine lying in the middle of the track. The kart was so old that the bolts holding the engine in place had sheared. It was so humiliating. We got the engine welded on properly and went out to see what we could do, but it was a hopeless situation. The other children were so much faster that I felt I was standing still.

I had been naive in the extreme. There was far more to preparing a kart than I had imagined. That first race gave me a shocking lesson in the school of karting set-up. The other children’s karts had both of the rear wheels driven, whereas ours only had drive to one wheel. Not only that but they had a box of different sized sprockets, so they always had the right gearing for each track, whether it was slow and twisty or fast and sweeping. Also I knew nothing at the time about minimum weights. The power to weight ratio of a kart is critical and so the trick was to get the kart down to the minimum weight permissable in the rules, while tuning the engine to give maximum power. Our poor underpowered kart was 40lbs overweight, so we really didn’t have a prayer.

Most of the children were much older than me; some were as old as sixteen and I felt upset and humiliated by the sharp shock I had received. I went away at the end of that day a much wiser ten year old. I knew that I had a burning desire to race karts and my desire to beat everybody had been heightened by the experience. I was down, but I was determined to fight back.

I knew that we would never be competitive with the equipment we had so I put a lot of pressure on my father to get a newer and faster kart. Because karting was still uncommercialised, the cost of upgrading our equipment was not prohibitive. Looking back, I’m glad I was racing karts when I was. I shudder to think what it would cost today to buy competitive equipment.

My father was not rich and I had to justify the cost to him. I think he could see that I was very determined to race and that we needed better gear if we were to compete.

I knew even at that age that I was very competitive. No matter what field you compete in and no matter at what level, if you are born with the will to win then you know it from a very early age. At school you can see people around you who win and enjoy it, they really thrive on it. I was like that for me from the word go. By contrast you see other people who win or lose and it doesn’t really matter much to them either way. That is an admirable quality to have, but if you are a racer and you want to be successful as a driver, then it is completely the wrong attitude.

Winning is pretty much everything. Once you’ve realised that, it dictates the whole way you look at competition. If your equipment isn’t up to scratch, you do everything you can to upgrade it. No-one in our family was wealthy, but my grandparents used to give me equipment for my birthday and at Christmas. I remember putting pressure on them one year to give me a new engine.

Although winning is everything, that is not to say that you have to be a bad loser. I think you can be a good sportsman and be a gentleman and lose gracefully without losing your competitive edge. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. Psychologically you approach competition believing only that winning is everything and losing doesn’t exist.

If you lose, there are always reasons why you have lost. This is where you’ve got to be honest with yourself and think, ‘This is the reason why I lost today’, rather than ‘The car, or the engine, let me down.’ It is important to be positive and to look for constructive reasons why you failed to win, but above all it is important to be honest with yourself. This is something I learned very early on in my competitive career. One of my strengths and probably at the same time one of my weaknesses is that I am very straightforward. I am honest with myself and with other people. I call things as I see them and sometimes that upsets a few people, as I would discover later in my career.

I won with my new kart and as the years progressed I moved up through the different junior karting categories. It was a thrilling time for me. The competition was fierce, but the atmosphere in the paddock was friendly. If you were short of a piece of equipment, you could always rely on someone in the paddock lending it to you.

All of my spare time and my school holidays were spent working on my kart and racing it. I can remember putting the kart in the boot of the car and going off to the little track at Chasewater testing. My father and I used to make dozens of trips like this. We would test engines and pistons and run bits in at Chasewater, then go back home and rub the pistons down and hone the barrels, then go back to the track to try it again. My father and I were extremely close in those days and I think in a way he was re-living his childhood through me, because he had a very bad time in the Second World War.

The karting became pretty serious as I began to race further and further afield. To start with it was the length and breadth of Britain, then when I was picked for the English team we began travelling to the continent and across the North Sea to Scandinavia. I was doing what I wanted to do, satisfying my competitive urge and loving every second of it.

Unfortunately, things were not quite so straightforward at school. Although the teachers did not object to me missing school to represent the country in international races, some of the other children at the school didn’t like it at all. They were jealous and resented my success. One morning the headmaster announced in morning assembly that I would be going to Holland for two weeks to race for England. I was to be given a special two-week leave of absence from classes. The school hall buzzed with an uncomfortable mix of approval and resentment.

Although the trip sounded pretty exotic, in reality it meant that I would be well behind with my schoolwork when I got back and would have to put in many extra hours. Some of the other children didn’t see it that way. They were jealous and they wanted me to know that I shouldn’t consider myself special. There was an uneasy atmosphere in the playground later that morning and then suddenly I got hit on the back of the legs with a cricket bat. I went down and when several others joined in I was beaten up quite badly.

So I learned another important lesson: that no matter what you do you cannot please everybody and there will always be some who want to undermine your success. Their attacks, whether they be with a cricket bat in the school playground or, later on, with words in the press, always hurt. They are motivated by jealousy; people who said that you would never be any good and who are forced to eat their words when you go out and prove them wrong. It is a reaction against success achieved against the odds, a denial that somebody from within their midst could be successful and get the attention and the rewards that success brings. This is a negative side of human nature which I have run up against many times in my life, but which I don’t believe I will ever understand. Sadly it is one of the prices you have to pay if you single-mindedly pursue your goal. It comes with the territory.

The karting trips abroad were great fun and often my father and I would be accompanied by my sisters Sandra and Gail. We would pack the car onto the ferry and set off on another adventure. I enjoyed meeting and racing against children from other countries, although it was always nice to come home once the job was done. The races were enjoyable and we had our fair share of successes. I had a few accidents too, but mostly these were harmless spills. Because the karts didn’t travel terribly fast, parents were never too worried about their children getting hurt. I had one accident where I took off and flew into the branches of a tree. The chassis buckled under the impact, but I was perfectly alright. Not long afterwards I had my first serious accident.

It was an accident that shouldn’t have happened, but in those days in kart racing there wasn’t the quality control in the manufacture of components which there is today. Also the thoroughness of scrutineering and inspection was way behind today’s standards. Unbeknown to me, the steering column on my kart was cracked when I started the race. I was coming down the hill on the fast kart track at Morecambe, travelling at probably 100mph and approaching a slight left-hander. I turned the wheel and the steering just snapped. I realised that I had no steering and at that speed there is no time to scrub off speed before you go off. I was in big trouble. I took off over a kerb and somersaulted. There was a huge impact and the back of my helmet struck something hard. I was knocked unconscious.

It must have looked like a serious crash. Whenever they take a driver’s helmet off and his whole face is covered in blood you know that it’s been a significant blow. I was taken to the Royal Lancaster Hospital where I was found to be haemorrhaging from the ears and the nose. The scar tissue which is caused in the channels of the ears by an injury like that stays with you for life and I have actually lost some of my hearing as a result.

I remember drifting in and out of consciousness. It was rather like a dream. I also recall hearing a voice and as I came to, I caught a glimpse of a priest standing at the end of the bed. He was saying prayers and his last words were, ‘And what else can I do for you my son?’ I realised that he was giving me the last rites.

My head hurt and I was struggling to keep awake. I vividly recall coming to the realisation that the situation was very serious. I knew I had to fight. I was not about to let life slip away from me. I summoned up the strength to speak … and promptly told the priest to sod off. Then I collapsed back into unconsciousness. I had a battle going on inside my head, but I have such a strong will to live that I came through that traumatic experience and before too long I was out of hospital and back at home with my family. It had been a frightening period but I knew that I had to go on and learn from it.

That accident taught me that I should always check four fundamental things before I race: the steering, the brakes, the suspension and the aerodynamic wings. I check them because if any one of them were to fail I would have no chance of controlling the car and could be killed. Pretty much anything else on the car can go wrong and you can stay in control. But if you lose any one of those four key things, it’s curtains. If the suspension fails, you’re on three wheels while if the brakes fail, you have no stopping power. If your front or rear wing fails or falls off then you have little or no control; and if the steering goes then you’re a passenger on a high speed ride.

In the early days I had a lot of accidents I shouldn’t have had. I’ve analysed every one of them because it is so important to learn. Accidents like the one I had at Morecambe weren’t my fault, they were caused by failures on the machine. In large part this was because we never had the finance to get the best and safest equipment. In my early single-seater days many accidents were caused by component failures and even when I joined Lotus we had five suspension failures in one season.

Over the years I have been more down after accidents and retirements caused by mechanical failure than those where I was at fault. When something breaks and you crash, you’ve got to take it personally because you are the one who is sitting in the car and you realise that you are under threat from some major unknowns. It’s far easier if you make a mistake to accept it and learn from it. For sure if it’s a big error it might take a little longer to get over, but you can still rationalise it and put it out of your mind.

One of the worst mechanical failures I ever suffered was during the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal in 1991. I was winning the race hands down, heading for my first win of the season, when the gearbox failed. It was a semi-automatic gearbox, which controls the gear selection electronically and was operated by pushing a lever on the back of the steering wheel. We had had a few problems with it at the start of the season, but we thought that those problems had now been solved. But coming through the hairpin on the last lap I couldn’t find a gear to save my life. I had a box full of neutrals. The revs dropped and the engine cut out. That was it. To be leading the race by almost a minute and then to be forced to quit on the last lap was hard to take.

My engineer David Brown and I were trying to get over it as quickly as possible, when we read some truly idiotic suggestions in the press that I had switched the ignition off while waving to the crowd. It was a pathetic notion and it really hurt. Let’s face it, you don’t push as hard as you can for 68 laps and then switch your own engine off. It was bad enough losing the race through mechanical failure, but to have insult added to injury in that way was too painful to describe.

That accident at Morecambe had been a wake-up call, but I bounced back and carried on racing karts. As I reached the end of my teenage years, I had won seven Midlands Championships, one Northern Championship, one British Championship and many other races. It had been a lot of fun, but my attention was beginning to wander onto single-seater car racing and onto Formula Ford in particular. It was clearly time to move forward on the road towards Formula 1 and the World Championship.

Almost immediately I ran into problems.






Chris Hampshire, a karting colleague: ‘There are probably a hundred people who raced against Nigel in karts, who look at where he’s got to and say, “Now why couldn’t I have done that?” Nigel had the determination to pull himself right up to the top. His will to win is enormous. He also had extraordinary reactions, much faster than most people’s. By reacting so quickly, he seemed to make more time for himself.’


6 (#ulink_5f23fe02-402d-5ecd-9c70-a056a67a01dd)

THE HUNGRY YEARS (#ulink_5f23fe02-402d-5ecd-9c70-a056a67a01dd)

My father didn’t want me to go into single-seater racing. He had been right behind me all through my karting career and it had been his interest in karting that had got me started, but when it came to proper racing cars he decided to draw the line. Karting was fun, he said, but motor racing was serious. He had a good job and a comfortable, although by no means affluent lifestyle and he wanted the same for me. It was clear that he was hoping I would pursue a career in engineering as he had done. He was being realistic, trying to guard against what he saw as the likelihood that I wouldn’t make it in motor racing. And knowing how competitive I was he thought that I would find it hard to bear the disappointment of failure.

After all, the odds against a lad from Birmingham going on to beat the world’s best drivers and win the Formula 1 World Championship were huge. Every year thousands of young drivers start racing and join the ranks of the hopeful. Every season new teenage talents from Europe, as well as from countries further afield like Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, come pouring into England with pockets full of money to race in the most competitive starter championships in the world.

It was common knowledge in racing circles around the world that if you wanted to climb the ladder and get noticed by a Formula 1 team, you needed to race in the British Formula Ford and Formula 3 Championships. Britain has the most powerful motor racing industry and because most of the Formula 1 teams are based here, there is a huge network of information around the industry. A lot of the people who run teams in the junior formulae know people in Formula 1. Formula 3 team managers might tip off their friends in Formula 1 if they see a driver with special talent or someone who has reasonable talent and massive financial backing. For a young driver, being spotted by a Formula 1 team owner is what it’s all about.

Unlike the local kart scene, in Formula Ford or Formula 3 money can make the difference between winning and losing. The cars and engines were all similar, so a few extra thousand pounds could buy you better engine tuning, which in turn would gain you a few precious horsepower over your rivals.

The British series had sent many of its champions on to Formula 1 and it was into this ultra-competitive environment that I wanted to throw myself. Considering that this was the goal of many other young drivers, most of whom had plenty of overseas sponsorship money, the chances of me being successful were less than my chances of winning the pools.

I don’t hold it against my father that he was against me trying. What I was disappointed about was that he motivated me to stick with my engineering job with the promise that if I reached certain goals he would support me in my racing career. Out of the goodness of his heart, because he really did love me, he promised many things which never came to fruition.

I had joined my father at Lucas Aerospace at the age of 16 as an apprentice engineer. By this time I was all fired up to race cars and was desperate to get on with the next stage of my career. Given a fair chance I knew I would be able to make it. I realised that the jump to single-seater cars would be impossible without my father’s help and eventually I persuaded him to make a deal with me. If I passed all my engineering exams, he would help to finance my racing.

It was a hard slog. I worked part of the time at Lucas and the rest of the time I attended classes at various technical colleges and polytechnics in and around Birmingham. It took several years and in the meantime I carried on karting. My father enjoyed my success and was proud of my competitiveness and determination, but I was longing for a chance to prove myself on a wider stage. I would arrive at a local kart meeting with the knowledge that, barring some mechanical disaster I was going to win fairly easily. It was still fun, but really I knew it was pointless. I had outgrown karts and could not wait to get into a proper racing car.

When I was twenty-one I passed the last exam and emerged with a Higher National Diploma in Engineering. By this time I had also made progress at Lucas and I now held the position of electronics instructor. Things looked rosy. I went to see my father to tell him that I had qualified and to remind him of his promise. I was in for a nasty shock.

I found him in the laboratory at Lucas and cheerfully told him that I was going to be a racing driver. He asked me how I planned to finance my venture. When I reminded him of his promise he told me that my chances of making it were nil and that he would not be a part of it. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to reason with him but he wouldn’t budge. He would not help me race and that was that. I was furious. I had spent several years fulfilling my side of the bargain, going to endless engineering classes and now I was back to square one. My goal of moving into Formula Ford began to look distant. I felt bitter and disappointed. It was one of the worst days of my life.

I discussed it at great length with Rosanne, who by then had become my wife. I was determined to race. I knew that I had talent and refused to be beaten by the circumstances. Rosanne and I decided that, whatever the consequences, we were going to give it a go.

The cheapest and most sensible first move was to try out a Formula Ford car at a racing school. At least then I would know whether I could drive one or not. I might find that I didn’t like it and return to karts, but I had to know what it was like.

We scraped together £15 which was enough for a one-day lesson in a Formula Ford car at the Mallory Park school. Most of the other students there on that day were signed up for a week-long course, but I couldn’t afford such luxuries. I had one day to decide.

I went out in the car and immediately found it to my liking. It was fairly predictable and I felt quite comfortable with its behaviour. Because it was light and had narrow tyres it had a tendency to slide through corners. I quickly got a feel for what it would do next and felt that it was a car with which I would be able to express myself. That day at Mallory was enough to persuade me that my instinct was right. I should move on to Formula Ford racing.

But when he heard of my plan, my father was very angry and wouldn’t speak to me. My mother was upset by the rift that the whole issue had caused and the situation was quite unpleasant for some time.

Rosanne and I went ahead and bought a second hand car which we saw advertised. It had obviously seen plenty of action and had passed through several owners, some not so caring. We scraped together our savings, sold a few items here and there and got the money together to buy the car and a trailer. Rosanne had a nice new road car, but it was too small to tow the race car, so we traded it in for an older but larger model. She was marvellous, always keeping me company in the garage late into the night when I was working either on the race car or on the road car. I remember the latter used to devour clutches in protest at having to tow the race car!

Most evenings I would come home from work at Lucas and go straight over to Rosanne’s brother’s workshop, where I used to make extra cash helping him out with his picture framing business. We used to work late into the evening mounting pictures in the frames, and then around eleven o’clock we would go out to the bars and clubs around Birmingham selling them. It was quite a good business, although the drawback was I often didn’t get home until 3 am and I had to be at work again at 7.30. But the money came in useful – in fact, all money came in useful.

The racing car I had bought was in a bit of a state, but I was able to do something with it which I hadn’t managed in karting – to win my first race. Fittingly it was at Mallory Park, a circuit which had played a big part in my decision to take the plunge. The field of drivers I beat was something of a mixed bag, but it didn’t matter. I was on my way and very pleased about it too.

Although I could see many areas where the car needed improving, I felt comfortable with it and pushed it quite hard. I was not conscious of developing a style of driving at the time, it was more instinctive, but I was winning races and could already see the possibilities. I remember one particular race that first year when I was really charging through the field and came through strongly to win on the last lap. Rosanne told me later that the track commentator had been going crazy at the microphone, ‘Mansell’s coming up on the outside, he’s not going to be able to do it there, he’s on the wrong line. And he’s done it!’ I hope that same commentator was watching fifteen years later when I passed Gerhard Berger around the outside of the infamous Peraltada corner in the Mexican Grand Prix!

That first season went well for us. I won six races in all out of the nine that I entered and I went away feeling reasonably pleased with my progress. But my competitive instinct was gnawing at me. I wanted to win a lot of races and I knew that I needed a better car and a better budget if I was going to move forward.

As I had learned at school and in junior karting, there were a few people, like me, who loved winning and couldn’t contemplate defeat, and plenty of others who were just racing for fun and didn’t mind too much if they didn’t win. It was never a game to me. I could see from that first season that my feelings about racing had been right. I had the ability to win and to make instinctive overtaking moves, which others wouldn’t even dream possible.

Because of my engineering background I had a pretty good feel for the technical side of a racing car and was able to make adjustments to the car to make it faster on each circuit. Those Formula Ford cars were fairly basic technically, and a long way from the highly-sophisticated Formula 1 cars I would drive later. There weren’t many things that you could adjust, but it still required clarity of thought and confidence in your own instincts to make the right changes to the car. From the early stages of my single-seater career I learned to trust what I felt was right and wrong on a car. That’s not to say that occasionally even today I don’t go down the odd blind alley while looking for an ideal chassis set-up, but for the most part I know which direction to head in as soon as I’ve done a couple of laps.

I felt confident that I had made the right choice in pursuing my racing career and was determined that I would become a professional racing driver as soon as possible.

The turning point came in 1977. I started the year with a slightly better car, although it was still pretty run-down compared to many of my competitors. The car was owned and run by a colourful Irishman called Patrick Mulleady and it was yet another case of trying to do the best I could in a dilapidated old car. At one race I qualified on pole position but, coming round to the grid on the parade lap, the driveshaft broke and fell through to the ground. I was beside myself with anger. I had given everything to put that old nail of a car on pole and here we were losing a race we could have won because of bad preparation. We did win a few races that season with the car, but when eventually one of the wheels fell off while I was leading by over ten seconds, it was clear that we needed help to move forward.

I had started to get noticed by this point and I decided to try my luck and approach a man called John Thornburn, a manager who had a reputation for running a good race team. One day I walked into his office and said, ‘Hello, my name is Nigel Mansell and before you throw me out I don’t want money, I want help.’

I had bought a slightly better car, but it was still pretty worn out and I was anxious to get it prepared as well as possible. John said he would have one of his mechanics take a look at it.

The following weekend I got pole position and a win with it. I rang John up to thank him for his work and he was obviously stunned.

‘What do you mean you won with it?’ he gasped. ‘When we looked at it, only three of the wheels were in line, the other was an inch and a half out of line because of all the shunts it’s had. Either you’ve got a lot of talent or you were driving against a blind school, because that car is a load of crap.’

My next race was at Thruxton and without telling me, John came along as a spectator. He liked what he saw and told me that he would help. He said, ‘You have a lot of natural talent, Nigel. There are plenty of quick drivers out there, but very few really talented racers. Remember that no-one can beat you except yourself.’

I knew he was right. I think it is true for anybody as long as they have equal equipment and total self-belief and have the capabilities or the talent to do the job. John told me that I had to get really fit so that I would be strong at the end of races. He said it was possible to win a race in the last couple of laps when your rivals are beginning to get tired. At the time I was a little overweight, largely because I used to enjoy my beer, but I knew John was right so I stopped drinking there and then. I have been a teetotaller ever since. I also got very fit by going to the gym and running several miles every day. In actual fact I hated running, but I forced myself to do it because I knew it would pay off.

The season was going well and I worked my way up to being a leading contender for one of the national Formula Ford Championships. Because we had no money, Rosanne and I used to sleep in the back of a van at race meetings. We borrowed it from Alan McKechnie who was John Thornburn’s partner in the wine business, so ironically, although I had given up the drink, I went to sleep every night with a stale smell of booze hanging in the air. Not only that, but it was freezing cold in the van and the condensation from the ceiling and the windows used to drip on our sleeping bags. Combined with the wind to which circuits like Silverstone and Snetterton are often exposed, neither Rosanne nor I had ever experienced such extreme cold.

But we didn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t a hardship, it was reality for us at the time. Rosanne and I have a saying: ‘What you’ve never had you never miss.’ If we had had a better life up until that point and then had to do that sort of thing, it would have been a hardship. But the fact is that this was our life. It was how we had to live in order to achieve what we both wanted. It was unpleasant and looking back on it now with all the creature comforts we have today, then it does seem like a terrible hardship, but at the time it was necessary and whatever was necessary we did without a second thought.

Both of us were working overtime to pay for the racing. Rosanne was working for British Gas as a demonstrator and took on evening assignments to get as much money as she could. At times she was working up to eighty hours a week. It was a tough situation. We had very little spare time and certainly couldn’t contemplate taking a holiday. We saw less and less of our friends and our families. Deep down we knew what we were doing was right, but many of the people around us had serious doubts.

We tried to keep our distance from them. It wasn’t a case of cutting them off, we just made a personal commitment to ourselves that we didn’t need negative people in our company, telling us that we would never make it, that we shouldn’t take the risk and how stupid we were to try.

When you want to turn the tables and be successful in an environment which is already tough enough, you can do without that kind of negative influence. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, but if it’s really negative, then it is far more constructive to keep it to yourself. It doesn’t help anybody to come out with that sort of thing.

There were people whom we hardly ever saw, but if something went wrong they would come up to us and say, ‘I could have told you about that. I could have told you that wouldn’t work.’ It’s amazing how many people we’ve run into with that attitude.

If they were more constructive in their approach and came to us saying, ‘Listen Nigel and Rosanne, we love you a lot, but we’re concerned about what you’re trying to do and that you might get hurt,’ and maybe even make a few tactful suggestions about other ways of going about things, then I can respect that kind of opinion. As it turned out, our true friends were fabulous and kept us going, while gradually the ones who didn’t believe in us dropped away.

I have always been a positive thinker and I have never been able to tolerate people who are negative. Perhaps that is the root of my problem with some of the motor racing journalists I have encountered over the years. In any case, it is something to which I really hardenened my attitude during those difficult early days in Formula Ford.

Meanwhile, things began to look up. A guy called Mike Taylor offered me a newer car, on condition that I used my own engine. I jumped at the chance and drove down to his workshop to fit my engine into his car. It was very late when we finished and I only managed a couple of hours sleep before I had to go to Thruxton to race it. Although I was exhausted, I won the race, which was immensely satisfying. It was to prove a major turning point.

The car was made by a company called Crossle, which was based in Ireland. When John Crossle heard what had happened at Thruxton he called John Thornburn and said, ‘Tell me honestly, John, how good is this bloke Mansell?’

‘Well from a Formula Ford point of view,’ John said, ‘he’s the best there’s ever been. But he’s got no money.’ Crossle thought for a second and said, ‘I suppose I’d better give him a car then.’ To which John replied, ‘Well, if you don’t someone else will, because he’s going to win whatever he drives.’

Crossle sent a car over and we managed to persuade one of the top engine tuners to work on the engines for free. Things were beginning to come together and at this point I made the biggest decision of my life.

I was in the position of manager at Lucas, even though I was only twenty-two, and it was a well paid job. The problem was they wanted me to make myself available to work Saturdays and Sundays if the workload required, but they weren’t prepared to pay any overtime. At the time I was racing most weekends during the season and winning a lot. I pointed this out to my boss and he said, ‘Well, Nigel, you’ve got to decide whether you’re going to be an amateur playboy racer or a mature man in a sensible job.’

That night I went back to Rosanne and told her about my conversation at work. We thought about it until late into the night and agreed that we would only be young once. If we didn’t at least try to make it in racing we would have to live with the regret for the rest of our lives. Every element of the discussion brought us back to the same answer – we had to go for it.

The next day I went into the office and handed in my notice. My boss almost fell off his chair. He really hadn’t expected it. I said to him, ‘Look, I’m young and I’ve got to give racing a try. I’ve got all my engineering qualifications, so if it doesn’t work out I can always come back here or to a similar place.’

He was quite good about it and I think he could see that I meant it. So I walked out of the door and left my job behind me. There was no turning back, we had taken the plunge. I was now a professional racing driver. It was a strange feeling as I drove home that night. I was satisfied knowing that I had made the right decision, and nothing would shake me from my belief that I was going to make it. But I knew it was going to be tough and I had just given up a healthy source of income. When I told Rosanne we smiled at each other. We had taken charge of the situation. From now on it was down to us.

Three weeks later I broke my neck.

Many people are faced with that difficult choice between doing something they love or playing it safe and going for the secure, tried and trusted route. Some decide, like we did, to go for it. Others choose the safe route and perhaps encounter a degree of regret later in life. I don’t know what advice I would give someone faced with that choice. It depends on so many things. You must have the talent, of course, and you must be able to focus totally on one objective. But more important than that, you must believe in yourself. When Rosanne and I look back we wonder what gave us the strength to carry on believing at times.

I broke my neck in my first race with the new car. It was at Brands Hatch and the chequered flag had fallen to end the qualifying session. I was on my slow-down lap when I came up behind a car going much more slowly. The track surface was mostly wet, but there was a single dry line which we were both using. Rather than hit the slower car I swerved and immediately the car became loose on the slippery surface. I went off backwards and in the ensuing accident I broke two vertebrae in my neck.

The accident at Morecambe had been pretty frightening, but this was worse. I was actually paralysed for a few hours and the fear you experience when you cannot feel your arms and legs is truly shocking. I looked at the X-rays of the broken vertebrae and shuddered. The doctors had very serious expressions on their faces as they told me that I was lucky not to have permanent paralysis.

Rosanne went back to Birmingham, because she had to go to work the next day. I think that the shock hit her quite badly. She was tired and despondent. We had been burning the candle at both ends to support ourselves and now we were left wondering whether it was all worth it.

I hated being so far away from her and the rest of my family. The hospital was in Kent, over 200 miles away from my home. I felt isolated and depressed. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and get home. After a few days, I tried sitting up and the following day I told one of the nurses that the doctor had said I could walk to the toilet if I felt strong enough. He hadn’t said anything of the sort, of course, but I wanted to speed up my release from the hospital. The short walk to the toilet and back took nearly an hour. I was roasted by the doctor when he found out. He said that I should be flat on my back for several months, not walking around. Didn’t I understand how serious an injury I had?

The walk to the toilet had been like rolling in broken glass, but it gave me the confidence to discharge myself, much to the dismay of the specialists. I’d had enough of lying around in the doldrums, I wanted to get going again. I was in a position to win the Formula Ford Championship and I couldn’t do it from a hospital bed.

Back home again, things didn’t look too bright. With me having quit my job a few weeks before, we had only Rosanne’s salary to live on. The situation only served to harden our resolve. The accident had been a setback for sure, but we were not going to let it get in the way of our objective. As the weeks passed I took longer and longer walks every day and gradually my neck began to feel better. Seven weeks after the accident I was back in a racing car.

I had missed a few rounds of the championship and had dropped a few points behind the leaders, but I managed to pick up the pace when I returned and soon began winning again, although in my first race back I had a bit of a scare. On the second lap I took off over the back of another car and flew through the air for a short distance. Luckily I got away with it.

As the season wound to a close I was back in contention for the title. My main rivals were Trevor van Rooyen and Chico Serra, the much fancied new Brazilian driver. Both had well-funded teams and plenty of equipment. Van Rooyen always seemed to have a few more horsepower than the rest of us and although everyone suspected that he had something special in his engine we could never prove it. Before the last race at Thruxton, which would decide who was champion, John Thornburn asked the stewards to announce that they would seal the engines of the top four finishers after the race and take them away to be checked. They agreed.

To win the championship I needed to get pole position, win the race and get the extra point for fastest lap. It was a tall order. Luckily van Rooyen didn’t seem to have any advantage on the straights that day and through qualifying and the race I was able to pick off my objectives one by one. I started from pole. It was a very close race, but my determination saw me to victory and I became 1977 Formula Ford Champion.

It was hard to believe that only a few months before I had been flat on my back with doctors giving me little chance of racing again that season. It was not the first adversity I had encountered in my racing career and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but I had overcome it. I had set myself an objective and achieved it, which was immensely satisfying. In all I had competed in 42 races that year and won 33 of them. I felt that I had proved something to the people in the business who were watching. Rosanne and I allowed ourselves a little time to enjoy the satisfaction before turning our attention to the next step.

I wanted to drive in Formula 3, so I became a window cleaner and then we sold our house.

It is hard to imagine, looking at all the rewards I have around me now, that I was once a homeless window cleaner. I didn’t have to do it, no-one was forcing me, but racing will make you do some crazy things once you get hooked.

Although I had a firm offer on the table for a well-funded works drive in Formula Ford for 1978, I knew that I had to move forward into Formula 3. That was the stage on which true talent was often recognised and I was confident that, given a fair shot in a decent car, I would be spotted by a Formula 1 team owner. The problem was that the stakes were much higher in Formula 3. It would cost several times my old salary just to compete for a season and I didn’t have access to that kind of money.

I took a job with my friend Peter Wall, who had an office cleaning business. I did a little administrative work, but mostly I cleaned offices after the workers had gone home for the night. My speciality was window cleaning. It was actually great fun and quite satisfying when you saw the sunlight gleaming off a freshly cleaned window. The only problem was that the business was based down in Cirencester, some two hours drive from home, so I often had to stay at Peter’s house overnight, away from Rosanne.

I spent the rest of that winter looking for sponsors to help foot the bill for my move into Formula 3. Despite sending hundreds of letters I got nowhere. It was a fruitless search and although I learned a lot from it, I was still no closer to a Formula 3 drive and the 1978 season was approaching fast. So that’s when we did what any right thinking people would do under the circumstances – we sold our house.

It was a tough decision, but as we could see no other way of raising the money we were left with no alternative. Rosanne was still working long hours as a demonstrator for the gas board and her salary supported us as we moved into rented accommodation. It was sad to let our place go as we had been happy there, but we both knew that it was the right thing to do.

We raised £6000 from the sale of the house and added another £2000 from the sale of some personal items. We were staking everything we had. I took the money to March, who had promised to help me if I could get enough cash together to start the season. They were confident that they would pick up enough backing along the way to mount a challenge.

The season started well. I was on pole position for the first race and came through to finish second behind Nelson Piquet. Little did we realise at the time that our careers would become closely linked in years to come.

On race morning I was practising standing starts on the Club straight when I was approached by two people. One of them I recognised as Peter Windsor, an Australian journalist working at the time for Autocar magazine. Peter introduced the other man to me as Peter Collins, another Australian, who had a job at Ralt cars, but who was soon headed for the Lotus Formula 1 team as assistant team manager. We chatted for a while and I think that they were both impressed by my single-mindedness. They told me years later that they had never encountered anyone at that stage of his career who had such a clear focus on where he wanted to get to. We hit it off immediately and they said they would keep an eye on my progress. It was to prove one of the most important meetings of my life so far.

The Silverstone race was an encouraging start, but after that, things went downhill fast. It was a very poor car and although I’d been able to hustle it around Silverstone for that first race, I couldn’t get it going quickly anywhere else. March blamed me. I knew that it wasn’t me who was at fault. I did four more races and picked up some minor placings but all too soon I was told that the money had run out. They had found no backing, so that was it. End of season. Close the door on your way out.

Rosanne and I were devastated. We had blown everything in six weeks and there was nothing left. We had hit rock bottom.






John Thornburn, Nigel’s team manager in Formula Ford: ‘Alan McKechnie and I had decided to take a break from motor racing after a bad experience with a sponsor. Then Nigel showed up. When I realised that he was winning races with a car which we knew had a twisted chassis, I decided to go and have a look at him racing. I went down to Thruxton and stood on a couple of corners and it was obvious that he was very special. He was bearing everybody in an old nail of a car. So we decided to help. We used to turn up with the McKechnie Wine Company van with the race car on a trailer behind it and he’d go out and beat the pants off all these kids in state-of-the-art cars with huge transporters. It was brilliant.’

Peter Windsor, journalist on Autocar magazine: ‘Nigel is unbelievably competitive and always had this incredible desire to succeed. When I first met him he was running ten miles a day in army boots and firing off five letters a day to sponsors. He had total commitment and talent. To my mind there was no way that the guy would fail to make it. He was always looking forward. I covered Formula 1 for Autocar and Nigel used to ask me lots of questions about how Grand Prix drivers operated, how they travelled, whether they had managers and so on. Then he’d say something like, “I’m going to be winning Grand Prix races soon and I’ll have a house in Spain. “It wasn’t a romantic notion, it was the way he wanted to live.’


7 (#ulink_89c2e787-1d35-564a-b577-dab21cdd7ba7)

ROSANNE (#ulink_89c2e787-1d35-564a-b577-dab21cdd7ba7)

Nineteen-seventy-eight was without doubt the worst year of my life and by far the lowest time in my racing career. I had been given a lot of false promises and told I would get a lot of support and help which wasn’t forthcoming. I was bitter about it, but there was nothing I could do. In many ways the frustration was the worst part; I felt as though I was powerless to stem the flow of disasters and body blows. I wanted to take control of the situation, but I couldn’t see a way forward for my career. We needed money before we could begin to look for any solutions.

Rosanne had been the bread-winner ever since I had turned professional the year before and now I had to lean on her even more. She had a very good job and she put in all the hours that God sent. Although a lot of my time was spent looking for drives and for sponsors to pay for them, I carried on working for Peter Wall down in Cirencester, so Rosanne and I were forced to spend time apart, which put a strain on our marriage.

Although we were both very committed to getting on with what we had decided to do, namely my racing career, the awfulness of our situation began to put that commitment into question. When we were together we talked long into the night about the future. Should we abandon our plans? Should I forget about trying to be the Formula 1 World Champion and go back to engineering or should we stick to our guns, tough it out and hope that someone, somewhere would give us a break soon?

We reminded ourselves that what we were trying to do was something you can only do when you are young. We knew that eventually we would want to have children and so we needed to make the most of the opportunities now. In most jobs, you go to your office or place of work each day, do your job and if you like it and the company is happy with your work, you can do that job up until the day you retire. Before I left Lucas I would occasionally thumb through the magazine which the company sent out to all its employees. There were always photographs of people who were celebrating their retirement after years of faithful service. Sometimes the magazine would honour an old gentleman who had been with the company for 40 years. I used to look at the faces of these people and wondered how they could spend almost half a century doing the same job.

They had made their choices of what they wanted to do with their lives and, with Rosanne’s support, I had made mine. Motor racing was calling us and we knew that although we had hit rock bottom, if we didn’t dedicate ourselves even more at this time to what we believed we could do, then all the money we had lost and all the sacrifices we had made would be for nothing. It would just be a bad memory for the rest of our lives. I have never wanted the word ‘regret’ to be part of my vocabulary.

I know how competitive I am and could see that if I stopped racing now I would carry a chip on my shoulder about it for the rest of my life. We turned the situation around by looking at it in a different way. We drew positive lessons from the negative experiences we had suffered. The disasters and the knocks spurred us on to succeed and made us all the more determined not to give up.

I’m sure that there are a lot of people who, if placed in the same situation, would have given up. They would probably have stayed low for years and would have carried that bitterness and sadness through the rest of their lives. But in Rosanne I had a pillar of strength and together we managed to turn things around.

Unfortunately, renewing our commitment to racing did not put food in our mouths. This was a lean time financially. We had only Rosanne’s salary plus the few quid a week that I earned from my office cleaning sorties to Cirencester. We were caught in a trap. We had only enough money to live on and to pay the bills on our rented apartment. We so badly wanted to take a holiday or just go out for a night to cheer ourselves up, but we couldn’t afford to do anything. In the early days of our marriage, before most of the funds were channelled into racing, we used to take holidays abroad. That was out of the question now.

There was maybe an afternoon or a week during this period where we had a great time, but it was so infrequent that you almost couldn’t remember it. And usually it was something which was free, like going swimming in a lake. We had sold almost everything so we didn’t have any possessions we could enjoy. We used to spend a lot of time walking my parents’ dog on a great big park called Umberslade. We would walk for hours, chatting and playing with the dog. It became a big part of our routine because it didn’t cost anything and we could spend some quality time together relaxing, away from people and the pressures of the telephone and life in general.

Rosanne was so strong. She was just as committed to my racing career as I was, even though she had no family background in racing and had only become aware of it properly when she met me. She did not regard my goal of winning the World Championship as a pipe dream, as I’m sure many wives would have done under the circumstances. She believed in my talent and she knew as well as I did that if I could just get one decent shot at it, I would make good. We had only been married for three years, but she gave me all the support a man could reasonably ask of his wife and far more besides. It makes us appreciate what we have now all the more, because we have not forgotten those times when we had nothing.

Rosanne came into my life when I was seventeen. She is a year younger than me and we were both students at Solihull Technical College near Birmingham. Although we were not in any of the same classes, I had seen her around the college and she had really caught my eye. She looked bright, confident and strong and I knew that I wanted to meet her.

My chance came one morning while I was driving to college. I had passed my driving test and bought a second-hand Mini van. I saw her walking along the road, so I pulled over.

‘Hey, you’re going to the college, aren’t you? Do you want a lift?’

She hopped straight into the car. She told me later that she only did that because she thought I was somebody else – a neighbour of hers – and that if she had realised it was a total stranger offering her a lift she would never have got in. As she has said since, ‘It’s funny how things happen in life, isn’t it?’

It was only a short drive and we talked in general terms about this and that, but she made a major impression on me. We ran into each other more and more frequently at the college and before long we started going out together. It was a good relationship from the start and we made sure that we saw each other every day.

She was the youngest of three children from a loving family. She knew nothing about motor racing when I met her. Her brother watched the occasional Grand Prix on television, but didn’t consider himself a fan.

I introduced her to karting and I think she could see immediately how important it was to me. What impressed me about her was how willing she was to muck in. Although I took her on some exciting nights out, we also had plenty of long nights in working on the kart and she became quite handy with the sandpaper and the plug spanner. She always used to stick around and help me and we developed a deep bond. Although karting was thrust upon her and she much preferred horse riding, she was behind me from the start and came to almost every race with my family.

Then came the Morecambe accident and she began to see the other side of racing. She was always nervous about watching me race – she is to this day – but Morecambe gave her a nasty shock. She was there when the priest gave me the last rites. She had never seen anything like that before, let alone when someone she cared for was the victim. It was her first experience of the dangers which motor sport can bring. It was a worrying time for her and, being fairly young at the time, she found that she was having to be very mature when dealing with a different side of life.

She could have tried to persuade me to stop after that, I’m sure many girlfriends would have done, but she could see how much it mattered to me and I suppose she could also see that my competitive instinct would always need an outlet. If it wasn’t karting it would have been something else.

As well as being highly competitive, I have always been very aggressive and very physical. As I matured as a racing driver I channelled these characteristics into positive aspects of my driving, but before I met Rosanne I used to like raising hell with my male friends.

I don’t scare easily and I was never afraid to get into something with someone bigger than me. Having said that I was pretty large myself at that time. As we all know, beer is very fattening and by indulging my taste for it my weight shot up to almost 200lbs, which is a lot for a man of 5ft 10in. It was all pretty pointless, but when you’re a teenage male there is always pressure to be tough and to look after yourself. We used to dare each other to do daft things like jump off motor bikes at 30mph. That escapade landed one of my friends in hospital.

Rosanne was always a cut above all of that and I did not want her to get involved with that group of friends. In the early days of our relationship I would enjoy a civilised evening with her and then after I dropped her off I would go out again and hit the town with my friends. Gradually I changed, broadened my horizons and took more of an interest in the things which interested her. We would go on day trips in the car with a picnic, or visit stately homes and art galleries. She was really into horse riding, so I went along with her on rides. We enjoyed each other’s company so much that it became second nature to me to want to do these things. After all it was only fair; she supported my karting and helped me work on the karts. We were happy and very much in love.





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