Lotus Legends
Lion HeartNigel Mansell, the fastest man to ever wear a flatcap, fought harder than any other driver—in and out of the cockpit.
By Malcolm Folley
Nigel Mansell, now 58, was nothing less than an irresistible force of nature howling through Formula One in the 1980s and 1990s. He could be belligerent, brutish, or brilliant—but he was never boring behind the wheel of a race car.
His close friend, the legendary commentator Murray Walker, likened Mansell to John Bull himself—the quintessential Englishman with bristling moustache and bristling attitude beneath a flat cap. Mansell’s Midlands accent has never wavered one flat octave in the 31 years I’ve shared his confidence. In Italy, the Tifosi christened Mansell Il Leone after he won the Brazilian Grand Prix in Rio in his Ferrari debut—in a car that hadn’t completed more than a dozen consecutive laps over the winter.
Mansell was more than happy to play the part of both everyman and racing star, proudly naming one of his most precious toys, a luxurious motor cruiser, Lion Heart. This was the man, after all, who reminded a young Ayrton Senna, then driving according to his own rule book, that there was a code of conduct on the race track beyond which it was unacceptable to trespass. He did this in his own inimitable style, naturally, pinning Senna by the throat in the Lotus garage at the Belgian Grand Prix. Mansell had merely been brought up to stand his ground, and it was Senna, more than anyone, who respected what took place that day. The two men later raced wheel-to-wheel at 320kph down the straight at Barcelona in 1991, with sparks shooting from the undercarriages of their cars—a metaphor for the tangible electricity that could be felt whenever they shared the same piece of tarmac. The Brazilian blinked first. When Senna was killed three years later, I joined Mansell, through prior arrangement, at a test day in the United States. I had never seen him at a lower point.
Mansell’s place in the pantheon of racing drivers is secure as the only man to have won the Formula One World Championship and the CART Indy Car World Series. The fact that he did this in successive years—1992 and 1993—serves only to enhance his legend.
His career was a testament to his courage, as well as to his speed and dogged stubbornness in a fight. After breaking vertebrae in his neck in a colossal Formula Three accident in 1977, he discharged himself from hospital against his doctors’ wishes and then hid the extent of the injuries with painkillers so as to persuade Lotus team principal Colin Chapman to give him an F1 test drive. Chapman’s faith in Mansell would be vindicated—but, sadly, only after Chapman’s premature death.
It was Chapman who provided him with a third Lotus at the 1980 Austrian Grand Prix for his F1 debut. Only after he was forced to retire from the race due to a mechanical failure did those of us at the Osterreichring realise that he had been forced to sit in a fuel bath after petrol had overflowed into the cockpit. He still bears scars from the chemical burns. Mansell’s body, in fact, is a shrine to the wonders of medical science. In 1992, he drove the entire season with broken bones in his left foot. (The damage was caused at the end of the previous year, but Mansell, not wanting to spare the necessary recovery time, declined surgery to repair the fractures.)
The world championship was his at the Hungarian Grand Prix, months before the season’s end. The rest of the year should have been a victory parade for Mansell. Instead, it became a wake: The day after he celebrated the title he had dreamed all his life of winning, he received a call from the Williams team telling him his services would not be required for the next year. His place was to be taken by an enemy, Alain Prost.
Mansell’s role as the eternal underdog, along with his never-say-die determination, endeared him to Britain’s sports fans from the moment of his first victory in Formula One at Brands Hatch in 1985—his 72nd attempt—on his way to winning 33 grands prix, more than any other British driver. But he attained God status at Silverstone in 1987—once again on English asphalt—when he beat Williams team-mate Nelson Piquet in an epic duel that will live in the memory of the 100,000 spectators that day. Later that afternoon, we coined a new word that entered the lexicon of British motorsport: Mansellmania.
He was hired by four of the most hard-driven, demanding, and successful team bosses in history: Chapman, Frank Williams, and Enzo Ferrari in Formula One, and on the other side of the Atlantic by Paul Newman, whose passionate love of motor racing ran as deep as his affection for Hollywood. Mansell’s record of 14 pole positions in 1992 was only eclipsed by Sebastian Vettel last year. (On beating the record, Vettel and his Red Bull crew donned stick-on comedy moustaches as a tribute to Mansell.)
Nigel Mansell may never have been the most stylish driver, but no one was more dramatic behind the wheel. He drove every race like his life depended on it.
Over tea—plain old builders’ blend, naturally—we took a look back over that amazing life, that incredible career.
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Lotus Legends
Lion Heart
Nigel Mansell, the fastest man to ever wear a flatcap, fought harder than any other driver—in and out of the cockpit.
By Malcolm Folley
Photograph by LAT PhotographicHow much did Colin Chapman pay you to drive your first full season for Lotus in 1981?
I was paid $25,000—out of which I had to pay for my flights and hotel rooms and hire cars. At the beginning, Rosanne [Mrs Mansell], who was a home economist for West Midlands Gas, had to work to support my Formula One career. When I qualified top three at Monaco, though, Colin doubled my salary overnight!
What made Chapman and Lotus so special?
He was innovative, motivating, creative—and an incredible designer before F1 teams had wind tunnels, let alone the hi-tech aids of today. It was an exciting, fun time.
Colin never lived to see you win a grand prix…
Bless him—in a very short period of time he was very generous to me. Before his premature death in 1982, he gave me a contract that made me a millionaire.
What happened when Peter Warr succeeded Chapman? It appears you didn’t hit it off.
Looking back, Peter had a lot of good qualities. The shame of it was that instead of trying to do things his way, he tried to emulate the late, great Colin. Nobody could do that.
How was your relationship with your Lotus team-mate of the time, Elio de Angelis?
We had some difficulties to begin with—the Lotus hierarchy played us off against each other. But we overcame that and became ardent friends.
De Angelis was driving a Brabham when he was killed testing in 1986. How did his death impact on you?
It was a defining moment that changed my life. You realised this wasn’t just a job; this was a very serious business, and if you were going to stay in it, you wanted to be successful. For that to happen, you had to be tremendously focused and dedicated. I don’t think I ever suffered fools easily, but after Elio’s death I suffered fools even less. Drivers were still dying too frequently.
By then, you had won your first grand prix at Brands Hatch in 1985. Was that a moment of jubilation, or sheer relief?
Both! It was also the turning point of my career. All of a sudden you have won, and all you want to do is win again. [Mansell won the next race in South Africa, the last of the season, allowing him to imagine greater things on the horizon for 1986.]
In a three-way fight for the world championship with Alain Prost (McLaren) and (team-mate) Nelson Piquet, you must have felt deflated beyond measure when a rear tyre blew at 320kph in Adelaide, depriving you of the title at the final race of 1986.
I was too busy trying to keep the car out of the wall to think about losing the title.
But surely you must have feared that, being just 70 kilometres away from the championship, you might never get another chance as good as that?
No question. Even now, more than 25 years later, it’s hard talking about it. As you get older, you realise life can be unfair even when you are doing everything right. Some, it seems, are fated to have everything fall into place for them. A perfect example is Lewis Hamilton being picked up and groomed from an early age by McLaren. Because everything was mapped out for him, life only became tough after he became world champion. But what’s even worse about 1986 is that, in a way, I lost the world championship twice that year.
What do you mean?
I was told by the FIA that I had to go to the awards ceremony in Paris, as they’d put on a prize for me being second. I didn’t want to go, but I was warned I’d be fined if I didn’t show up. At the prize-giving, Bertie Martin, the clerk of the course for the Australian Grand Prix, offered his sympathies but then told me that had I crashed, there would have been so much debris they’d have had to stop the race. “You’d be world champion,” he said! The moral of the story is to read the rulebook at [320kph] and make the right decision. I came home from the ceremony more depressed than when I’d come home from Australia. A lot of people were saying I’d never get another chance—it’s funny how the knockers come out to shout at these tough, tough times.
Piquet as Williams’s No. 1, with you as his No. 2, was not a match made in heaven, as it turned out…
Not that long ago, I read an article in which Nelson admitted he had deliberately called my wife names to try to destabilise me, because he couldn’t get to me on the track. It’s a shocking indictment of what people will stoop to.
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Lotus Legends
Lion Heart
Nigel Mansell, the fastest man to ever wear a flatcap, fought harder than any other driver—in and out of the cockpit.
By Malcolm Folley
I’m assuming it was particularly pleasing to catch and overtake Piquet at the British Grand Prix in 1987, then?
I think the British public appreciated who I stuck it to! I pitted for tyres with 24 laps to go and was trailing Piquet by about 24 seconds. To pull a second a lap from him seemed—well, almost impossible. But over the last 15 laps, I broke the lap record 11 times.How was the team reacting to your charge?I was being told over the radio to slow down, but the radio wasn’t working in the car. A pit board was telling me, lap after lap, that I was running low on fuel. I just turned up the turbo-boost as far as it would go and drove qualifying lap after qualifying lap; if I ran out, I ran out. If not, I’d catch Piquet.When you got onto the rear of the Brazilian’s car, with 100,000 people urging you on from the grandstands, what was on your mind?I knew I had to sell Nelson a dummy at [320kph] on the Hangar Straight. As soon as he moved his head to look in one mirror, I moved to the other side of him. I knew as long as I didn’t hit him up the backside, I could slingshot past. We touched wheels going into Stowe Corner, but then I was gone.The response from the crowd was euphoric. How was it for you?There weren’t too many people happy with me at Williams. I was supposed to know my place! People forget I went to the British Grand Prix many times with no hope in hell, so I was going to seize this chance.That same year, at Spa, didn’t you march down to the Lotus garage to grab Ayrton Senna by the throat?Did I?!For a quiet chat?It was a great moment. I had the red mist, as he scared me to death knocking me off as hard as he did. Obviously, the discussion led from one thing to another, and soon he was changing colour momentarily. I am quite strong, actually!Did Senna throw a punch at you?He did—but he had four mechanics holding me at the time. The point was, we had a healthy exchange of words. Drivers make mistakes, but there are “mistakes” that are not mistakes. What he did, turning into me at high speed, was totally unacceptable in my book.Senna never took any liberties with you again?I was privileged to drive against men like Niki Lauda, Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost, Gilles Villeneuve, Carlos Reutemann, and Jacques Laffite, but I’d have to say Senna was the best. He took so many victories from me and knocked me off the circuit so many friggin’ times. He was the hardest and toughest competitor. With Ayrton, Alain, Nelson, and myself, we had most races covered for a number of years.Did you watch with amusement when, in 1988 and ’89, Senna and Prost spectacularly fell out at McLaren?As great a team as McLaren was, they gloated at other people’s problems—so we enjoyed it when Senna and Prost became, shall we say, the best of enemies. McLaren was so dominant at the time that if they took one another out, you had a chance of winning instead of coming in third!How flattering is it to be the last driver ever signed by Enzo Ferrari, for the 1989 season?I went to dinner with him a couple of times. If he lifted a hand—and there could be 20 people at the table—everyone stopped talking instantly. Quite extraordinary.Sadly, the great man died before you made your Ferrari debut in Rio. You expected to be on the early afternoon flight home, didn’t you?Yes. The car had not run for more than seven laps before the Brazilian Grand Prix. My team-mate Gerhard Berger’s car only lasted five laps in the race, and when I passed his car I thought, “Right, a few more laps and I’ll be off to the airport.” But the car kept going—until the steering wheel went crunch. I must be the only driver to come in to the pits to change five wheels! After the stop, I went back out and won. It was seven races before we finished again.
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Lotus Legends
Lion Heart
Nigel Mansell, the fastest man to ever wear a flatcap, fought harder than any other driver—in and out of the cockpit.
By Malcolm Folley
Photograph by Pascal Rondeau/Getty Images
But after Brazil, Ferrari’s Tifosi had a nickname for you that has stuck, hasn’t it?
I became Il Leone—it’s a great honour.
What happened when Ferrari announced Prost, a golfing partner of yours, as your new team-mate for 1990?
I had outright No. 1 status, but I sold that out to Ferrari [in return for the car in which he won the 1989 Hungarian GP, along with a substantial raise]. What I learned is that when you have a world champion as a team-mate, as Prost was, they will cease to be your friend when you keep beating them. Alain is a different beast to Nelson, a lot more pleasant; but he took our rivalry from the track and extended it into the politics of the team. He didn’t just want the team around him—he wanted them against you. Even after all this time, I was naïve.
Isn’t it true, though, that as a team-mate you were a nightmare because of how hard you raced, how bloody-minded you were?
That’s a fair assessment. But my conscience is clear. I was a very hard competitor, but an extremely fair sportsman.
But things escalated at Ferrari, and you announced your retirement at Silverstone after mechanical failure at the 1990 British GP…
My qualifying car had been swapped with Alain’s without me being told—but I still put it on pole. Then in the race, the car was jumping out of gear. I’d had enough of all the nonsense and threw my gloves into the crowd, feeling really happy with my decision to retire at the end of the season. I’d had a wonderful career, won some races, and was leaving almost sane!
But no one believed you—least of all Frank Williams, who picked up the phone to get you to return, didn’t he?
He asked me for a wish list. I told them I wanted to be outright No. 1, to have the pick of engines and gearboxes, a two-year contract, and control of my destiny. Everyone told me I was asking for too much, but I said that was fine—I didn’t want to come back, anyway. I’d been there, risked my life, and seen a lot of good people die. It’s not a sport to play at.
So that was it—you retired?
No—it just seems to take three weeks to arrange the impossible.
Williams director Sheridan Thynne came to see me at our house in Portugal with a wad of contracts. Everything I asked for was guaranteed.
And in 1992 you finally achieved your ambition of winning the world championship, becoming the happiest man in Britain—right?
I won the title in Hungary, and at lunchtime on Monday, Sheridan called to say he was terribly sorry to have to tell me I didn’t have a drive for next year. That evening, Sheridan resigned and eventually came to be with me. Williams were required, for political reasons due to their Renault engines and Elf sponsorship, to run a French driver: Alain Prost. I understand it now, but that doesn’t make it right. In my whole career, the hardest thing to accept is that I was never afforded the opportunity to defend my world championship. It sucks. But that’s life.
Weren’t you hiding a secret in 1992?
I was. I drove the entire year with two toes in my left foot splintered. I damaged them at the end of the previous season and couldn’t afford the recovery time to have surgery—so I just wore a carbon fibre insert in a bigger boot on that foot. I’d lived my whole life for this and was not going to throw away the opportunity. I don’t seek any acclaim—but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention I won the championship with a broken foot.
What possessed you to go to America to race in the IndyCar series on oval tracks that you had never seen?
I’d say oval racing is two or three times more dangerous than Formula One—sadly, British driver Dan Wheldon was killed on an oval in the States in October. But I saw it as a challenge. My second race, on the one-mile oval at Phoenix, could have ended my career when I hit the wall at about [290kph]. I needed 148 stitches in my spine.
Did you frighten yourself on ovals?
Shit, yeah. Doing [400kph] on the straight at Indianapolis going into Turn One in a five-car tow—it’s frightening when you turn in and nothing happens. Never did that again.
How did the Americans take a Limey winning?
They didn’t understand it, and they didn’t like it! I saw a lot of black flags—if Lewis Hamilton thought he was in trouble in 2011, I was right in the manure. You know my motto: Stuff ’em!
Did Paul Newman offer you a movie?
No, but he was a lovely man—a true legend who came to see us at our home in Florida. I wouldn’t swap those times.
To win in the United States after winning the F1 title will never be repeated, will it?
It’s a pretty neat bit of history.
All in all, you must be a proud man.
Absolutely. I loved the fact that I was a racer—and that, through all the adversity Rosanne and I faced, we achieved what we did and came out the other end revered by the public.
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http://magazine.lotuscars.com/issues/issue-5/lion-heart
