Mansell: My Autobiography

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

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

‘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

MY PHILOSOPHY OF RACING

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.