10 reasons why we love Nigel Mansell

Which is why his addition to the Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard line-up, to mark the F1 75 celebrations alongside fellow World Champions and former team-mates Mario Andretti and Alain Prost, guarantees a revival of the ‘Mansell Mania’ that caused such a frenzy during 1980s and early ’90s British Grands Prix.

On his last visit to the Festival of Speed in 2022, you could feel the love for Mansell as fans swarmed to witness the reunion with his 1992 Williams FW14B title winner. He’ll be back in the thoroughbred model this time too, and will also drive his iconic FW11 from 1986 – and we can safely predict both occasions will be crowd-pleasing highlights.

Yes, we all love Nigel Mansell, for all the light and shade of his remarkable career at the pinnacle. Here’s a reminder why.

Fuel bath on his debut

Colin Chapman gave Mansell his first Formula 1 chance – at 27 years old – when Team Lotus ran a third car for the 1980 Austrian Grand Prix. From the start, there was drama and physical agony – running themes through an F1 career that spanned 16 years. Mechanics spilled fuel down his back as they topped up the car on the grid. They drenched him in water in an attempt to dilute it, but it was no good: Mansell suffered severe burns to his backside and legs. His ordeal ended when the Lotus’s Cosworth DFV blew after 40 laps. Then he struggled to walk away; the fuel had shrunk his hamstrings.

The white line at Massenet

In his four seasons at Lotus, Mansell was comprehensively outscored by team-mate Elio de Angelis. And after Chapman’s death from a heart attack in December 1982, he was plugging away in a team that never really had much faith in him. New team chief Peter Warr’s infamous and cruel prediction – “He will never win a GP as long as I have a hole in my arse” – appeared in danger of ringing true. The wet 1984 Monaco Grand Prix only seemed to confirm his ‘nearly man’ status.

It could, and perhaps should, have been his first F1 win. Mansell turned it on in foul conditions and overtook Alain Prost’s McLaren for the lead, then continued to lap 2-3seconds quicker than the rest. Perhaps proving his detractors wrong was spinning around inside his head. Whatever the case, up the hill at Massenet the black car slithered on a white line and slapped the barrier. Over and out. In more ways than one?

Breakthrough at Brands

Only sponsor John Player Special’s insistence that Lotus run a British driver had kept Mansell at Lotus in 1984. But if his F1 career was to continue he’d need a new seat for 1985. When Derek Warwick turned down Williams in favour of staying at Renault, Mansell had his chance – at a team that was on the rise.

New team-mate Keke Rosberg didn’t have much time for him at first. But the 1982 World Champion discovered a new-found respect for Mansell in their single season together. As he’d shown to anyone who had cared to look at Lotus, Mansell was fast, brave and resilient in the face of adversity – which somehow he seemed to face most of the time. Then at the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, the breakthrough: a first F1 victory. And the crowd went wild.

Agony in Adelaide

In some ways, the tyre blow-out 18 laps from becoming World Champion at the Australian Grand Prix in 1986 is Mansell’s defining moment – despite the 31 wins and F1 title that followed. He’d generally held the upper hand over new team-mate Nelson Piquet in the Honda-powered FW11, the quickest car of that memorable season.

But as British fans tuned in to watch the climax on TV in the middle of the night, heartbreak from sheer bad luck was the deflating reality – although how about those instinctive skills to get his bucking Williams to a standstill without a massive accident? What a save. He’d never have such a great chance of winning the World Title again – would he?

The dummy at Silverstone

The second win at Brands in 1986 had been magical – but another defeat of Piquet, this time at Silverstone in 1987, was something else again. The gut-wrenching tyre vibration that required a pitstop left him a near half-minute down on his team-mate. But the frantic chase cheered on by a roaring crowd was utterly gripping. Then came that moment on Hangar Straight, feinting to the left and diving to the inside. It’s one of the great overtaking moves in all 75 years of the Drivers’ World Championship. Pure Mansell!

Mugging Senna

As William briefly dropped from contention when Honda switched to McLaren, Mansell grabbed a new lifeline at Ferrari. An unlikely debut victory in John Barnard’s revolutionary semi-automatic 640 masterpiece in Rio was another moment of pure theatre. But in a season clouded by unreliability, his victory in Hungary from 12^th on the grid topped it.

In fact, it was perhaps the greatest drive of his career. You weren’t supposed to be able to pass on the tight Hungaroring, not that anyone had told Mansell. And how sweet for Il Leone and his adoring tifosi that he should catch Ayrton Senna on the hop while lapping Stefan Johansson’s Onyx and pull a dashing pass. Ultimately, his two seasons at Ferrari fell short of expectation, for Mansell himself and his loyal fans. But in red he sure had his moments.

Hounding Senna at Monaco

The return to Williams, just as the team began its greatest and most dominant era, culminated in total domination in 1992. But among the victories, including an easy run to glory for his fourth British Grand Prix win and fifth on home soil, was another agonising defeat that is probably the lasting image of Mansell from that year. Mansell was cruising at Monaco when he suspected a puncture and darted in for a change of tyres.

Now he was hunting Senna, and in a thrilling final three laps darted from left to right behind the McLaren, desperate in his attempts to force a mistake which never came. Mansell never would win at Monaco. His state of exhaustion at the podium ceremony, exaggerated or otherwise given his renowned strength and stamina, was a heart-on-sleeve expression of his bitter disappointment, as Senna raised his record-equalling fifth Monaco Grand Prix winners’ trophy in front of him.

The switch to IndyCar

Mansell has always claimed he was sacked by Williams, but it was his choice to walk away in a fury at the team’s signing of Alain Prost for 1993. His decision to join Newman-Haas in IndyCar instead of defending his crown caused sensation, and proved a shot in the arm for the American series the scale of which hasn’t been seen before or since. In the UK, our only glimpse of IndyCar tended to be highlights of the Indy 500 run a week late on BBC Grandstand.

Now on the back of Mansell’s defection, regular shows from each round were broadcast on Channel 4 as IndyCar briefly became a genuine threat to F1 as the world’s premier motorsport series. That was the power of Mansell. And how he then won the Championship, at the first time of asking, starring on ovals as well as road courses – it tops the achievement of his F1 crown won in a dominant car, and sits comfortably among the greatest feats by any racing driver in any era.

Tin-top shenanigans in the BTCC

In that same remarkable year, Mansell returned to the UK via Ford to race once more in front of his adoring public – in a Mondeo ‘rep-mobile’ saloon! The TOCA shoot-out of 1993 at Donington Park was billed as a glorious homecoming for ‘Our Nige’, but ended in new pain and acrimony at Starkey’s Bridge after a tap from Tiff Needell’s Nissan. Safe to say, Needell remains unforgiven.

Mansell would return five years later for another BTCC cameo, and again brought drama, a degree of comedy and sheer instinctive brilliance in equal measure. His drive in the rain to a podium at Donington in 1998 remains high among the BTCC’s greatest moments.

Too wide for a McLaren

Then there’s how his F1 story ended. Mansell’s Williams cameos in 1994 following the death of Senna culminated in his 31^st career victory in Australia, after Michael Schumacher had blatantly taken out Damon Hill to win the World Championship. Now, in a move that never looked likely to end well, Ron Dennis went against his better judgement and signed Mansell to lead an on-its-uppers McLaren into 1995. Except Mansell couldn’t fit within the confines of the MP4/10’s cockpit – and the team was forced to build a wider chassis. You couldn’t make it up…

Mark Blundell stepped in before Mansell made two lacklustre appearances for McLaren at Imola and in Barcelona. In Spain, he pulled into the garage and simply gave up. Certainly the MP4/10 was among the worst cars McLaren ever built, but in stark contrast to the grit of his fuel-soaked F1 debut all those years earlier, it was an unworthy way for one of the great F1 careers to finish.

Then again, life was never simple with Nigel Mansell, and it was certainly never dull. Such moments are all part of the patchwork tapestry that made Mansell pure box office gold for F1, and such a beloved favourite for so many fans.

It’s a shame it all had to end. But then, he never did officially retire…

The 2025 Festival of Speed takes place on 10^th-13^th July. Friday and Saturday tickets are now sold out, but Thursday and limited Sunday tickets are still available.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.