Nigel Mansell Autobiography

by Nigel Mansell

  STAYING ON TRACK

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2015 by Nigel Mansell

  This book is copyright under the Berne convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Nigel Mansell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

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

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5022-7

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5023-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5182-8

  Typeset in Garamond by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and supports the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.

  I would like to dedicate this book to the team owners and sponsors who gave me the opportunity to live a dream, which modelled me into the person I am today.

  It is also dedicated to all the sports fans around the world who give sportspeople the excitement and energy to be motivated to win and who, in my personal case, motivated me to deliver 100 per cent performances whatever the team or car I was driving at the time. The fans are the lifeblood of any sport and without them even the teams and sponsors would not exist.

  I would also like to dedicate this to my family, especially my late mother and father, who sacrificed so much time and effort to give me the opportunity to try to be successful. Thanks to all my family and friends for their unparalleled support, understanding and love over all these years.

  A big thank you to Simon & Schuster for giving me the opportunity to write this special book and to all their team, who have worked so hard.

  Finally, thank you to Mart for the wonderful experience of writing a truly special, incredible book together. The cheque’s in the post ... but not signed! Ha ha!

  Contents

  Foreword

  Part I: The Racing Years

  1 My Childhood and Karting

  2 Lucky Breaks in a Young Life

  3 Testing for Lotus and Slowing Down Time

  4 The Lotus Years and Colin Chapman

  5 What Is Going to Happen Next?

  6 Ground Effect and the Psychology of Fear

  7 Challenges On and Off the Circuit

  8 1985 Season, Williams and the Turbo Years

  9 1986: A Big Year

  10 Red 5 Pushes On

  11 Amazing Times at Ferrari

  12 The 1990 Season: A ‘Retirement’ Year

  13 The Most Successful Retired F1 Driver

  14 1992 – The Championship Year

  15 Come to the Wild West

  16 Fun Times in IndyCar

  17 Bouncing Back and Moving On

  Part II: Formula 1 – Then and Now

  18 Past and Present

  Part III: Isn’t Life Wonderful?

  19 Onwards to Woodbury

  20 Life on a Sixpence

  21 The Police

  22 Le Mans

  23 Saved by Magic

  24 On Your Bike

  25 The Consequences of Epic Rides

  26 Exciting Times Ahead

  Afterword

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  FOREWORD

  I am on the grid at Silverstone, my favourite racetrack. To my left is a beautiful red Ferrari. Nearby is a Williams, among a long line of other immensely powerful racing cars. Everywhere I look, race rivals are either sitting in their cars, chatting to their mechanics, or just taking some time alone to prepare themselves for the race. Me? I think I’ll go and get a cup of tea.

  I am at the British Grand Prix, July 2014, ostensibly in my role as an FIA steward, but, mostly – especially at this famous track – as an avid F1 fan. I’ve been chatting to Lewis Hamilton about his push for the world title, and have also spoken with a few of the other drivers. It’s been absolutely fascinating to hear these very talented young men talk about their cars, yesterday’s qualifying, the race strategies they may use, the team’s plans and the rivalries. In that sense, nothing has changed; on the other hand, as I stand on the grid on this day in Northamptonshire, Formula 1 has altered immeasurably since the last time I put my foot to the floor with venom, two decades ago.

  In the ensuing 20 years or so, I’ve had the most wonderful life and enjoyed some amazing experiences, which at times have been as dramatic as anything I ever went through in motor racing. I’ve also undertaken two endurance events that were more demanding and challenging than anything I ever faced on the grid. Poignantly, on occasion, my mortality, and that of precious people very dear to me, has been touched in the most profound ways.

  So I got to thinking: wouldn’t it be wonderful to revisit some of those incredible races I was lucky enough to be involved in, recall the battles on the track, the famous racers I sparred with for world titles and those amazingly physical, and at times brutish, cars that we had to wrestle with? I am endlessly enthralled by Formula 1, so the idea of looking at how my beloved sport has changed since my heyday was hugely appealing to me.

  I started writing this book and, sure enough, as I began to recount the races, the overtaking manoeuvres and various moments of high drama from my career, so much of that era – which feels like a lifetime ago – came sharply back into focus. However, as I kept writing, so many events from outside my time in motor racing also sprang to mind: fun times, sad times and lessons in life that I had either learned through magnificent experiences or sometimes found out the hard way. We are all of us faced with challenges and situations in life that test us, but throughout my career and certainly ever since – as you will see – I have always bounced back. You have to. Life is too fantastic not to do that.

  Having done a few previous books and thousands of interviews over the years, it’s also been fascinating to see how my view of events has altered, mellowed and maybe in some cases stayed the same in the two decades that have passed since I last drove a Formula 1 car in the white heat of battle.

  I may not be about to dust off Red 5 again, but in writing this book I have immersed my mind back in the pits, in the garages and at the test circuits, cast my thoughts back to the team owners as well as to those remarkable drivers from a racing era when serious injury or worse was ever-present, when some of the greatest drivers the sport has ever seen graced the grid and when, I’d like to think, a kid from near Birmingham tried to make his mark. The British fans always told me that I made them happy, and, let me tell you, they were certainly a very major part of my story. Now it’s my time to retell a few of those tales.

  I was blessed with an amazing career in motorsport and have certainly enjoyed the most wonderful life outside of that profession since I hung up my racing overalls for the last time. Hopefully, you will enjoy reliving those classic moments with me and also discover a few personal stories that, until now, no one has heard about. Either way, let’s
have some fun.

  PART I:

  THE RACING YEARS

  CHAPTER 1

  MY CHILDHOOD AND KARTING

  The overriding memory I have of my childhood is the tremendous love of my mother. She was a very warm, loving and caring mom who lived to give. She was always so supportive – I can never remember my mom pushing me to do anything; she was just there in the background, supporting whatever I wanted to do. My father worked extremely hard and long hours, so I remember him being absent for lengthy periods of time. He was a great dad, though, and soon, when my motor-racing career started in karting, we would have a fantastic relationship, crowding around engines. It was just a shame that he had to work such long hours. He was a senior engineer at Lucas Aerospace and used to get up early in the morning to go to work and not come back till late at night. They both worked very hard. Mom looked after the family home and a tea shop. In fact, it was above this tea shop in Baughton, near rural Upton-upon-Severn, that I was born on 8 August 1953. I was the third of four children, having an older brother and sister, Michael and Sandra, along with a younger sister, Gail. There was an eight-year difference between my older sister and me, with my brother 18 months younger than her.

  We grew up in a very modest, semi-detached home and my family had to struggle and save for everything. Despite the relative lack of money, it was a very happy home. I can remember not really having enough room for us all to fit in and the garden being incredibly small. But we made do, like everyone did in those post-war years. They were good times. I loved my mom and dad, Joyce and Eric, very much; they were fantastic parents.

  Before me, there was no motor racing in my family. It was actually my mother who was the fast driver, and I used to love sitting in the back with my siblings, speeding along, sometimes as quickly as 100mph. She only ever lost it once, as far as I recall, in the snow, but I just loved that sensation of speed. We didn’t have any new cars, ever.

  Unfortunately, life was not so comfortable at school. It’s been well documented that I was badly bullied. My parents moved around a fair bit with Dad’s work. For instance, when I was only three, we relocated to the southern suburb of Birmingham called Hall Green. The regular house moves caused complications because it meant I was always the new kid at school. I never seemed to start the first day of term at any school, which made me an easy target. I would often come in halfway through the year, so I was the perennial new boy to kick around.

  Kids can be very cruel in terms of bullying. Fast-forward to my time spent helping the charity UK Youth (which I will come to later), I can relate to not being able to fit in. At times, I had the most horrendous experiences being bullied at school; it was diabolical. It wasn’t just me they picked on; some of the schools were so rough that I even saw teachers getting beaten up. On one occasion, I saw a tutor pushed to the ground and actually knocked unconscious.

  Aside from the bullying, I didn’t enjoy school academically. I loved sports but little else. I wasn’t particularly studious; quite honestly, I found a lot of the subjects not very interesting at all. Plus I was a very countrified person – I liked being out in big open spaces. I didn’t like towns; I found them very claustrophobic. During my time at the all-boys Wellesbourne prep school, I found great solace in competing, so whether it was cricket, football, athletics, tennis, whatever, as long as it was against other schools I could lose myself in trying to beat them. At numerous times, I was the captain of the football and cricket teams. I was in one school’s chess team for a while, but only because it meant I didn’t have to study Latin. Then halfway through a term, I moved from Wellesbourne to a mixed school called Hall Green Bilateral, where the class sizes doubled to about 30 and the bullying stepped up a notch. Despite not always fitting in, I didn’t roll over; I tended to stand up for myself but, of course, this often just made things worse.

  I always tell people that I tried to put a positive spin on those difficult years at school. If you think about it, despite the bullying, having to regularly start from scratch with new friends and different schools, and being challenged in this way time and again, did at least make me very adaptable as a young kid. It certainly toughened me up. I just wish I could have been toughened up in a less violent way.

  I decided at eight years of age that I was going be the Formula 1 world champion. As early as that. If you were to ask me how I came to that conclusion, the truthful answer is I haven’t got a clue; it was just there, in my head. Like many children my age, I was a big fan of Formula 1. What I loved about the sport, apart from the racing, was the characters. I didn’t have one specific hero on the track; there were several drivers who really fascinated me. The late, great Jimmy Clark was just astonishing; Stirling Moss too, also Sir Jackie Stewart, as well as the Argentinian legend, Juan Manuel Fangio. What can you say about drivers like that? If you push me to choose one, I would say Fangio is probably the driver who stood out the most for me back then because I just couldn’t get over that he was racing without a helmet, without goggles, without seatbelts, without anything really, he was just . . . wow! Later on in this book, I will talk at length about the very real dangers of racing in my era, but the risks he was facing were just on a whole other level. I also loved Jim Clark, who was the most stunning starter of grands prix and raced in a way that was so inspiring. I loved watching as well as reading and hearing about all these drivers and their amazing achievements on the track. Perhaps naturally, that was what I wanted to do, too.

  My own motor-racing story starts, as it does with many drivers, in a kart. My dad was involved in the local karting scene and raced for a while, and I was captivated as a young boy by the speed, the sounds, the smell, the whole experience. I nagged my parents to let me have a go and they eventually relented, hoping it would be a novelty that I quickly became bored of. However, I loved everything about it. From the very first time I sat in a kart, I was totally hooked. Even at that tender age, I felt that this was my destiny – to be a motor-racing driver.

  In the modern era, karting is a highly commercialised and very expensive sport. By contrast, back in those days it was certainly far less expensive, consisting mostly of families enjoying days out together, and there was a real community spirit. Of course, everyone still wanted to win, but if you were short of a part or needed some help, people would be only too willing to oblige. It was a great atmosphere.

  My first kart was powered by a lawnmower engine bought second-hand for £25. There was an allotment near where we lived and kids would race around that on a makeshift dirt track. I took part in my first properly organised race underage, at just eight – you were supposed to be older but I fibbed about my age. Some of the lads racing that day were a lot older. Isn’t it funny that when you are younger you want to be older and when you are older you want to be younger! That karting debut at Edgehill near Banbury didn’t go well. As I headed down one particular straight I suddenly lost all power. The reason? My engine had fallen off and was lying behind me on the track!

  I also remember another race when I had no gloves and just a cloth racing suit, and the rain was so cold on my hands as they gripped the steering wheel that I was crying from the pain. Those early races were a big shock because I was used to winning around the allotment, but on a proper track I was finishing one or two laps behind most of the other boys. My initial karting struggles quickly made me realise that there was a whole world of things that needed to be done before I could be competitive, stuff I had never even contemplated. I can vividly recall saying to myself, Well, this is a lot harder than I thought. It was a sharp learning curve.

  My father was on a limited budget, of course, but we were able to gradually upgrade my kart and get better equipment. My grandparents would often buy spare parts for the car or help out when it was Christmas or my birthday. I spent all of my spare time tinkering with my kart; I was obsessed straight away. My dad was fantastic. He used to take me everywhere racing and do all the engineering and mechanics on the kart. We used to have a blast, and through ka
rting we shared a wonderful relationship. I have some great memories of coming home and eating a quick tea before going straight into the garage and working with him all evening.

  As I improved, my father, my mother and I started to travel to races all over Britain. Places like Chasewater, Shenington, Little Rissington, Morecambe and Rye House. Quite quickly, I started winning races and being seriously successful. I was delighted when I was chosen to represent my country at junior level, and then we began racing in Europe and Scandinavia. It was all a big family adventure at times. My sisters would come along and we’d have great fun on all the ferry trips, enjoying the foreign travel. I remember driving all around England back when there was hardly any traffic on the roads. I also remember that when we braked too hard in the car it used to pull left or right because the braking was so dreadful, so maybe getting to the track was actually more dangerous than the race itself . . .

  One time I was due to race for England abroad. The school announced the exciting news in assembly one morning that I would be going to Holland for two weeks to race for my country, and that I had been given a special two-week leave of absence. This did not go down well with the bullies. That afternoon, I was attacked viciously with a cricket bat in the playground, which put me on crutches for six weeks.

  I think that attack probably finished me off in terms of self-esteem at that point. I never realised at the time but, as I sit here now looking back, I think I was probably in shock for some time afterwards. I just didn’t understand what had happened; I wondered what I’d done wrong. I’d worked hard and been successful enough to be picked for the British karting team. I thought the other children would be proud of me. How wrong can you be?

  Let me tell you about the time I told a priest to get lost. Yes, you’d think that’s not one of my finest moments, not least because I am not a fan of swearing and I have a lot of respect for the Church. However, I do have an excuse, of sorts.