Nigel Mansell - Mansell - My Autobiography

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.