31 Days Until the 2008 Australian GP
February 12th, 2008 | by Waldorf |
Nigel Mansell was an improbable Formula 1 star. After paying his way through lower formulae, with little encouragement from his family and less from sponsors, suffering a broken neck and back, Mansell finally impressed at a test with the Lotus F1 team. Although he was not generally well thought of in the F1 paddock, he had impressed Colin Chapman, who finally gave Mansell a very rich contract. After Chapman’s untimely death, Mansell was again almost friendless in the paddock, but the value of an aggressive English driver was not lost on sponsors. Even so, his time at Lotus was frustrating and unsuccessful.
Fortune changed when Mansell moved to the rapidly-improving Williams in 1985. In this car, Mansell took a pair of impressive wins, and became somewhat of a favourite among fans, if not among his peers. The following year, Mansell removed any doubt about his talent, missing out on the championship only because of a tire failure in the season finale. An injury in 1987 handed Nelson Piquet the title in the last Williams with the mighty Honda engine.
After a dismal 1988, fortune seemed to smile on Mansell again when he was chosen to join Ferrari. Indeed, he was a natural fit for the team, which at that time seemed to value style over results. Mansell had loads of style, and was enormously popular among Ferrari fans. But the car itself remained hopeless.
Happily for all concerned, Frank Williams welcomed Mansell back in 1991, where he enjoyed three very competitive seasons (interrupted by two in CART, where he was successful if unpopular), winning the World Drivers’ Championship convincingly in 1992. His final full season was 1994, in which he was unable to match the performance of the relatively inexperienced Damon Hill. After some embarrassing performances in 1995, the writing was on the wall — Mansell’s always exciting F1 career came to a close, with a single World Drivers’ Championship and a very impressive 31 race wins. An unlikely champion who fought his way into F1, loathed by Mario Andretti, despised by Nelson Piquet, schooled by Alain Prost, but supported by Colin Chapman, Frank Williams, and millions of fans. He showed that a driver who drove every race like he was running from the police, and never saw an overtaking opportunity too improbable to try, could enjoy enormous success.
Tags: nigel mansell, race wins
