Mansell: My Autobiography

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Sometimes, as happened to me a great deal in the early part of my career, if your car is not up to scratch you are forced to make up the difference yourself. You do not want to be blown off in a bigger way than you have to be. So you delve deep into your reserves of commitment. You have to squeeze the maximum out of your car and out of yourself and whatever that yields is the absolute fastest that it is possible to go with the equipment. You can then go away satisfied in the knowledge that you’ve done the best job you can possibly do. Hopefully, if you are working your way up the ladder despite struggling with inferior equipment, the people who run the top teams will pay attention to you and maybe give you an opportunity in a good car.

It is also very important to be on the limit when testing a car because if you don’t know what a car is going to do when you are on the limit, then you’ll be in trouble when you race it. Anyone can drive at nine-tenths all day, but unless you understand what the car will do at ten-tenths and even occasionally eleven-tenths, then you are not being true to yourself, your car or your team.

When you are testing a car and you are not on the limit, you can make a change which might feel better to you, but which does not show on the stopwatch. If you then say, ‘No, it feels better like that, it’s only slow because I wasn’t pushing it,’ then you might subsequently find that the car won’t work on the limit and in fact you’ve made it go slower by making the change. If you find that out during a race, you’re in big trouble.

Sometimes making a car feel better doesn’t make it quicker, and the name of the game in motor racing is to shave as many fractions of seconds off your lap time as possible and then to be able to lap consistently at your optimum speed. It’s an uncomfortable truth for some, but the only thing that tells you that is the stopwatch.

Motor racing is in general, I think, the art of balancing risk against the instinct of self-preservation, while keeping everything under control. People can only aspire to great endeavours if they believe in their hearts that they can achieve their goals – and to my mind that’s the difference between courage and stupidity.

Courage is calculating risks; when someone sets an objective, realises how dangerous it is, but then does it anyway, fully in control. They have to fight with their feelings and hopefully are honest with themselves when facing up to the dangers inherent in what they are doing. Then there are others who aren’t really in control.

STARTING A RACE

The start of a Grand Prix is a very dramatic moment and there is a lot of chaos and confusion going on around you. But the most important thing you have to think about is your own start and making sure that you get away as well as you can. The first couple of corners in a Grand Prix can make a huge difference to the result. If you have pole position and you get a good clean start, you can open out a lead over the field, because they are jockeying for position behind you. Also it goes without saying that if it’s wet and the cars are kicking up huge plumes of spray, there is only one place to be!

It’s very important at the start to have mental profiles of each of the drivers around you, to know who’s fired up that weekend and who’s depressed, who’s trying to be a hero and who is desperate for a result. If there’s someone who has qualified way beyond expectations, then they will probably want to show that their position is justified so they are probably going to be dangerous. You need to know who is brainless, who is a cautious starter, and so on. You have to put all of this into your brain and let your instinct take you through. It’s like reading the greens on a golf course, or knowing about the going on a race course. It’s the finer points that matter.

Psychologically, the start is vital. In 1992 I had 14 pole positions and at the starts I went off like a rocket. I wasn’t holding anything back. I would open out as big a gap as I could as fast as I could. Sometimes I was two or three seconds clear at the end of the first lap. It was vital to dominate everybody, to intimidate everyone to the point where they knew who was going to win before the race even started. And it worked.

I was on a mission that year. No-one was going to beat me. I had psyched myself up throughout the winter and I was incensed when before the season started Patrick Head said when referring to the Williams drivers, ‘We’ll see who comes out better in 1992.’

That was an insult. My team-mate Riccardo Patrese was a great driver, but my credentials up to that point were a lot better and I had won three or four times as many races as him. What’s more, having spent years as the number two driver, I was finally number one. I was determined to crush everybody. I had to dominate the Williams team and I wanted everybody to know that I was number one. I also wanted Ayrton Senna, the only person whom I perceived as being a threat, to know that I was going to win the World Championship at the earliest possible time. The relentless pressure I applied through qualifying and then at the start helped to cement that idea in people’s minds.

Sometimes it can all go wrong at the start, as it did in Canada in 1982 when Didier Pironi stalled on the front row of the grid and Riccardo Paletti didn’t see him, hit him and was killed. I was one of the cars who had to dodge Pironi and there was no time to think about it, you just had to act. It’s the instinct of self-preservation. We all have this instinct because we don’t want to die. You know when you race a car that if you don’t do the right things at certain times, you could get killed or badly hurt. The start of a race is one of those times.

STRATEGY AND READING THE RACE

Peter Collins played a major role in helping me reach Formula 1 and he was my team manager for a few years at Lotus and Williams. I always used to laugh at him because he used to like to plan the race in minute detail beforehand and sometimes we would have ten different strategies in front of us. It was complete nonsense because usually something would happen that we hadn’t even considered. Before the start we used to study the grid and he would say, ‘What happens if he gets a good start and what if he gets a bad one?’ But whatever you tried to plan, it all used to change.

Niki Lauda was always a great planner, but what he thought about never occurred either, so he gave up wasting his brain power, relaxed and was ready for anything that came up.

That’s one of the strengths of my driving now. I don’t think about things too much. I’ve had so much experience and so many things programmed into my brain that I’m prepared for anything. When something crops up, you don’t have time to think about it anyway. If you try to think, you’ll be too slow in reacting. A mixture of instinct and experience tells your hands and your feet to position the car so that if something does happen, you’re in good shape. It takes years of experience to develop that ability. It just doesn’t occur by chance.

Once you are in the race, you can read what’s going on pretty well. You can control the race more in Formula 1 than you can in IndyCar racing. In IndyCar you rely on the team manager and the crew to call fuel strategies and the yellow flags can wreak havoc to your progress. You can win or lose a race because of yellow flags and that’s according to the rules. It’s a bit frustrating, but they are there for everybody, the fans and the television and the smaller teams. It can work for you and it can work against you. Does it level out? I’m not sure. I think I had a fair bit of luck in 1993, while in 1994 I had some bad breaks, but I’m happy that it worked out for me first time around.

Formula 1 is quite different. You win and lose a race out on the track. It’s a pure sprint and it’s very rare that a yellow flag or a pace car will intervene to deprive you of a win which you thought you had in the bag. You rely on pit signals and the radio link with the crew, but you can tell a lot from the cockpit about where the opposition is on the track.

OVERTAKING AND RACE CRAFT

The secret with overtaking is that you’ve got to be in total control of what you are doing before you set about passing other cars. If you are on the ragged edge just to keep your car at racing speed, then you are not going to be effective when trying to make up positions and compete with rivals. Some duels can last a long time and you need to be totally comfortable with your car before you can commit the mental and physical energy required to pass a Senna or a Prost on a race track.

When you come to pass someone, you first have to make sure that they know you’re there. Sometimes they do, but will pretend that they don’t and will try to block you or even put you off the track. It’s up to you to decide when and where to engage them in psychological combat.

You first put the ‘sucker move’ on them, showing them your nose and setting them up with moves through certain corners to make them think that this is where you are going to attack. You are saying to them, ‘This is the move which is going to come off,’ when in reality you know that it isn’t. You feint to one side and they think that this is your last-ditch attempt to come through, but it isn’t. You’ve got something else in mind.

You save up your best move and don’t give them any idea what it is or where it will come. Sometimes you only get one chance and winning a race depends on one proper effort. If it comes off you win, if it doesn’t you lose. But to have many attempts and to fail all the time, merely weakens your position. You must show that you intend to come through and in many cases you can psyche your opponent out before the fight begins. Some will say, ‘Oh God, it’s Mansell, I can’t possibly keep him behind me,’ because they’ve had experience of being beaten in the past. This does not work on the real aces however. You’ve got to do something special to pass them and you’ll probably only get one go.

This is one of the strongest areas of my driving and I haven’t had too much trouble in my career passing people, with one exception. Ayrton Senna stood out during my career as the toughest opponent. Our careers coincided and between 1985 and 1992 we both wanted to win the same Grands Prix. When we both had competitive equipment we knew that to win we would have to beat the other.

We had some fantastic scraps, although in the early days he was quite dangerous to race against. He was so determined to win that he would sometimes put both you and himself into a very dangerous situation. It was a shame he did this. He was so good he didn’t need to do it, but he so badly wanted to win.

Sometimes you over-estimate your opponent and this can have dire consequences. For example you might be lapping a back marker, thinking that he will react a certain way, the way you would react if you were in his shoes. If he reacts in a quite different way he might collide with you and then you’ve thrown away the race because you attributed a higher level of intelligence to a driver than he actually possesses. It is a far greater weakness, however, to under-estimate an opponent, for obvious reasons.

There is no doubt that at the pinnacle of the sport there are some very forceful competitors.

Mike Blanchet, a former competitor of Nigel’s in Formula 3 and now a senior manager at Lola Cars: ‘Nigel likes a car with a good turn-in. He likes a more nervous handling car, which would frighten most drivers. Most of them like a neutral car with a little understeer, which feels safer. Because of his reflexes and his physical upper body strength Nigel is able to carry a lot of speed into corners without losing control of the car. A lot of people would spin if they tried to take that much speed into a corner.’

Peter Windsor, a former Grand Prix editor of Autocar magazine and Nigel’s team manager at Williams in 1991/92: ‘Nigel drives a little like Stirling Moss used to. Moss always said, “Anyone can drive from the apex of a corner to the exit, it’s how you get into the apex that matters.” Nigel got a feel early on for turning in on the brakes, crushing the sidewall of the tyre and thereby getting more out of a tyre. From the outside he makes a car look superb and his technique is very exciting to watch. He gets on the power very early on the exit of the corner. If the track conditions change suddenly or unexpectedly then Nigel is more at risk than other drivers because he’s more committed early on and more blind than others.’

Derek Daly, driver, turned TV commentator: ‘Mansell’s style is an aggressive style more than an efficient one, but it’s very fast. He makes an early turn-in; he gets his business sorted out in the apex and gets out of the corner as soon as possible. The key to being quick is the time it takes from turning in to reaching the apex and then the momentum you carry through the apex and out the other side. That is an area of the track where a lot of people slow down too much. Mansell doesn’t do that. He goes to the apex as soon possible, carrying lots of speed, lots of momentum and gets on his way. It is an unusual style – he often uses different lines through corners, but always the same cornering principle.’

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THE BEST OF RIVALS (#ulink_30914796-94ee-5a3a-9c5a-bdedf47339a5)

When I first started in Grand Prix racing there were many top names involved, each of which will always strike a particular chord in the hearts of Formula 1 fans around the world: Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter, Gilles Villeneuve, Didier Pironi, Nelson Piquet, Patrick Tambay, Alan Jones, Carlos Reutemann, Alain Prost, Elio de Angelis, Jacques Laffite, Keke Rosberg, to name but a few. A lot of those drivers were either World Champions at the time or became champions in the next few years. Thirteen of them had won Grands Prix. I was lucky to enter Formula 1 at a time when there were far more significant names around than there are today.

In the late eighties there were only four ‘aces’ – Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet and myself. Into the nineties and by the end of the 1994 season, Prost had joined Piquet in retirement and Senna had tragically died, so it was down to three: myself and the emerging talents of Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher. The new breed of drivers have not been able to establish themselves yet, either in the record books or the public’s perception, and their reputations remain unproven.

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.

Gilles Villeneuve was a great driver, but more than that he was a great friend. We got on really well. When I first arrived in Formula 1, he took me under his wing and showed me a lot of things about how the Formula 1 game worked. We shared a lot of confidences. Like me, he was a plain speaking man and he always said what was on his mind. I understood where he was coming from and respected his judgements on people in the paddock. My arrival in Formula 1 coincided with the power struggle between the governing body and the constructors and Gilles encouraged me to go to the drivers meetings and take an interest in what was going on. He helped me a lot.

We had a lot of fun together, both on the track and off. The racing was pretty raw and competitive in those days and it was always cut-throat. The best man and the best car won on the day, but we had some massive scraps and then we would talk and have a laugh about it afterwards.

His road car driving was legendary and there are some great stories about him told by people who travelled with him at enormous speed on road journeys. I also travelled with him in his helicopter and because he was so fearless and such an accomplished person he could carry out the most extraordinary dives and manoeuvres as a pilot.

Gilles was a very special man, who lived his life to the full and who always drove at the limit. Looking back, the best race I had with him was at Zolder in Belgium in 1981. It was my first visit to the circuit and I managed to beat him for third place to claim my first podium in only my sixth Grand Prix start.

The following year we returned to Zolder for a rematch, but we never had the opportunity as Gilles was killed in an accident during qualifying. It was an awful incident in an awful year. Driving past the scene of the crash, I could see that it was serious as bits of his car were strewn all over the track and the surrounding area. I didn’t stop because there were already a lot of people there and the emergency crews had arrived in force. I was practically in tears as I drove around the rest of the circuit, repeating over and over again to myself, ‘Please, please let him be all right.’ It was shattering blow when I found out later that he was dead.

Gilles has been sorely missed in Grand Prix racing ever since that terrible day. He brought a magic to it, a sparkle, which is what endeared him to Ferrari and the passionate Italian fans.

I was very happy when Gilles’s son, Jacques landed a drive for Williams having moved over from IndyCar, where I raced against him in 1994, straight into one of the two top Formula 1 teams. It’s a real piece of history and I’m happy for Jacques. I was slightly amused when I heard he signed because I remembered Patrick Head, Williams technical director saying something about IndyCar drivers being fat and slow … then all of a sudden he’s signed one up!

Another driver for whom I have great respect – and I believe the feeling is mutual – is Niki Lauda. He is a total professional, very analytical, with tremendous courage. He was a superb racing driver who won many races through his intelligent handling of the car.

Niki was very good at getting himself positioned within a team and he was one of the few drivers to get the best out of Ferrari. He told me that if I had used my head differently I would have won more championships and he’s right. If I had been more political I would probably have won two or three more championships, but that’s just not the way I am. I’m not the sort of political manoeuvrer that some of my rivals were. I’m more romantic than that. I like to think that I am what a racing driver should be. I like to win by having a fair race and a fair fight with someone. If there has been some skulduggery in the background which means that a fair fight isn’t on the cards then that isn’t my scene and I don’t think it’s worth as much. I’ve gained more satisfaction from what I have won and the things I have achieved. I do try to look after my interests a bit more these days. But when it comes to politics, I’ll never be on the level of Alain Prost.

Alain Prost is the expert political manoeuvrer. He has won 51 Grands Prix, more than any other driver in the history of the sport, and he has four World titles, one less than Juan Manuel Fangio. You have to respect Prost’s record, but at least one of his titles was won more by skilful manoeuvring away from the circuit than actually out on the track.

Prost almost always had the best equipment available at the time: he drove for Renault in the early turbo days, then switched to McLaren, who dominated the mid-eighties with their Porsche-engined cars and the late eighties with the support of the Honda engine.

He’s a bit of a magpie. He uses his influence to pinch the most competitive drives. At Ferrari in 1990, Prost worked behind the scenes pulling strings and getting the management of Ferrari and its parent company FIAT on his side. At the end of 1989, Ferrari was my team and I was looking forward to a crack at the world title. Prost came along and tried to ease me out. The ironic thing is that Prost himself was fired by the management of Ferrari at the end of 1991.

When we did race on a level playing field he would rarely beat me. That’s why he didn’t want to compete with me on equal terms. Getting himself into a position where he doesn’t have to compete on equal terms is part of his strength. That’s part of the game, but it’s more romantic and far more satisfying for everyone if you have equal equipment and say ‘Let the best man win’. You have to be clever to get the car in shape, but to use political cleverness away from the circuit to get an advantage is not good for the sport.

It was disappointing not to be able to take him on in a fair fight either at Ferrari in 1990 or at Williams when he took my seat at the end of 1992. But it’s not the end of the world because I know how good I am. I raced alongside him in 1990 and knew that the only way he could be quicker than me was when the equipment wasn’t the same. I’m not interested in political manoeuvring or in working to disadvantage my team-mate. Naturally, I want success for myself and to win, this is positive, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of the person with whom I am supposed to be collaborating. I am simply not motivated like that. It’s so negative.

In my early Formula 1 days we got on reasonably well and played golf together occasionally, but as soon as I began to beat him on the track and to pose a serious threat to him, he didn’t want anything to do with me, which was a shame.

Ayrton Senna was one of the best drivers in Grand Prix history. I was probably the only driver consistently to race wheel to wheel with him and there is no question that he was the hardest competitor in a straight fight; I wouldn’t say the fairest, but certainly the hardest. You knew that if you beat Ayrton you had beaten the best.

He was often described as being the benchmark for all Formula 1 drivers. I believe that whoever is quickest on the day is the benchmark and it can move from race to race. Admittedly, because of his qualifying record Ayrton was more often the benchmark than I was. But it tended to move between Lauda, Prost, Piquet, Senna and me.

Ayrton tried many times to intimidate me both on and off the circuit. Once, at Spa in 1987 I told him to his face that if he was going to put me off he had better do it properly. We even had conversations where we started to respect each other’s skill and competitiveness and agree not to have each other off. But he would then forget about the conversation or make a slip and have me off or hit me up the back. It must have been premeditated, because he was too good a driver to do it by accident.

It was unnecessary for Ayrton to act in this way, but I always took it that the fact he did it to me meant that I intimidated him. Nevertheless we did respect each other. We weren’t bosom pals and we didn’t run each other’s fan clubs, but when both of us had anything like a decent car he knew that he would have to beat me if he was going to win and I knew that he was the one driver I would have to beat.

Ayrton was a natural racer and was willing to push the limits. Something terrible happened at Imola. There was no question that he was right on the limit when he went off. Perhaps something let him down on the car. He certainly pushed the limits and enjoyed it. We had that in common, we both enjoyed working on the ragged edge. That was where we would set our cars up and where we would drive when the need arose. If you are an honest professional racing driver that is what you have to do.

On my victory lap at Silverstone in 1991, I picked him up after his car had broken down at Stowe. I could see that he was getting a hard time from the crowd and I know what that’s like from my own experiences in Brazil. So I thought I would help him get out of a tricky situation. It was amazing the criticism I received after that show of support. One magazine said that I was stupid to do it because I allowed him to see the Williams cockpit and to see what was on the dashboard display. It was so small-minded of them. There are some people who are going to criticise you no matter what you do.

When he won his third World Championship at Suzuka in 1991, I hung around after retiring from the race to congratulate him. Later we had a chat and it was probably the closest we ever got. There was a deep mutual respect between us and that’s how I’d like to remember him.

Nelson Piquet was the other big name in Formula 1 during the late eighties. He was my team-mate at Williams in 1986/87, but it was an unhappy relationship. Nelson is a big practical joker with an annoying sense of humour; he also worked at splitting the team’s loyalties and getting people to side with him.

When he joined Williams in 1986 he obviously thought that he was going to win everything, but I showed him up over the next two years and took a lot of wins away from him. Williams has the capability of running two cars close together because of the very high standard of their engineering and the way that Frank Williams and Patrick Head run things. You still have a number one and a number two driver in the sense that the team leader has priority on the spare car and so on, but the number two at Williams always has a good chance of winning races, as I did over those two years.

Nelson didn’t like this and he tried to get Frank to give team orders, something which Frank refused to do. Nelson claimed that Williams was displaying favouritism towards its British driver, which wasn’t true at all. To be fair, Nelson was a hard competitor when he wanted to be. He could be devastating on fast circuits. Although I beat him at Brands Hatch in 1986 and at Silverstone in 1987, he snatched pole position from me at both with some very committed laps. In a straight fight and when he felt like it, he was somewhere between Prost and Senna.

Michael Schumacher is obviously going to be the star of the future, but I know less about him. I remember when he arrived in Formula 1 he made a big impact, not least when he and Ayrton had a set-to during a test at Hockenheim. I always said that he was very talented, very quick and brave and perhaps now he is settling down to become a good, if not yet great driver. Winning his first World Championship has helped his cause, but only time will tell whether he’s got what it takes to become a real ace. Unlike some champions he’s not had to struggle as he made his way through the ranks. What’s more, he has not had the opposition during his career that many of us had. But all credit to him, you’ve got to take your opportunities when you can and he certainly did that in 1994 with Benetton.

I am delighted for Damon Hill that he has been able to come on as strongly as he has. He’s certainly grown in stature and is getting better all the time. When you drive for a top team with the best equipment and you have the opportunity to win consistently, you can improve a lot as a driver. When I did four races with him as his team-mate in 1994, I honestly believed I helped him and that gave me a lot of pleasure. To my mind, he has all the ingredients to win a World Championship, and I really think he’s ready to win it. The pressure he is under is immense – only drivers at the front know what the pressure is like – and I think the way he and his wife Georgie have come through it is brilliant.

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THE PEOPLE’S CHAMPION (#ulink_164c283f-4b4e-546b-9c04-188610bd39c1)

Perhaps the biggest satisfaction I have derived from my success has been the relationship that I have developed and maintained with the people who follow motor racing on television and in the grandstands around the world – the fans.

After the Australian Grand Prix in 1986, where I lost the World Championship when my tyre blew out, I received hundreds of letters from all over the world. Many said, ‘In our eyes, Nigel, you are the champion because you were the best this year. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t win it.’ This was the biggest accolade I could have received, because it came from the people who really count. I was immensely proud of their recognition. To this day I have a special relationship with the fans. They let me know, by letters or in person at the race tracks, that I have touched their lives and I try whenever possible to show them that it works both ways. Perhaps more than any other driver in Formula 1, I relate to the fans and I go out of my way to be in touch with them.

I am a racer and an entertainer. When I race I create excitement. It’s a trait which I sometimes wish I didn’t have, because people always expect the impossible. The fans enjoy watching me race because they know that I always give 100% and never give up. As long as I’m in the race, there’s a good chance that something exciting is going to happen. I make them laugh and cry and make them chew their finger nails with anxiety, but above all I try to make them feel that there is someone out there on the track with whom they can identify and who is giving it everything he’s got.

In Formula 1 there is a rather snobbish tendency among the insiders, especially the press, to look down on the fans. Formula 1 is quite a closed world and the fans sit on the outside, fenced off from the paddock. But what links all of us, fans, drivers, journalists and insiders is a shared passion for the sport and we should never lose sight of the fact that without the support of the fans, we would all be out of work.

Being a professional sportsman, I feel a tremendous responsibility towards the public. If they are good enough to buy a ticket and support me, I feel I must try to deliver for them both on and off the track.

I was born in England so naturally I have an affinity with my home country. I have a large following there and I have been lucky to be able to share a great deal of success with them. The English fans are extremely loyal; many have supported me since my early days in Formula 1 and I see a host of familiar faces whenever I appear in England.

Much of my success in motor racing came at a time when the national teams in other sports were doing badly. I won my back-to-back Formula 1 and IndyCar world titles at the same time as the English soccer team failed to qualify for the World Cup and the cricket team was also going through a rough patch. Nobody likes to see their national team do badly in any sport. It lowers a country’s self-esteem.

I became conscious during this period of being one of a few English sports stars out on a world stage who was actually delivering for the fans back home. Along with Nick Faldo, Linford Christie and Sally Gunnell, I felt responsible for carrying the torch. The public wanted someone to win for them and I was at the front of the line.

Having that kind of responsibility can be terrifying. Going into a Grand Prix weekend I would be aware that millions of people were looking to me to fly the flag and this would pile up on top of the expectations of the team, the sponsors and myself. But I have always maintained that pressure comes from within. You may be under pressure from all sides, but the secret is to control it, close your mind off to it and as you focus your mind on the job in hand, apply only as much pressure on yourself as you feel is required. A top sportsman must be able to control his emotions in this way and to keep all outside influences in perspective.

That said, I actually enjoy having a weight of expectation on me and it is something that I take very seriously. I rise to a big occasion and I thrive on the excitement of trying to win a major international race, whether it be the British Grand Prix or the Indianapolis 500. You can’t have the satisfaction of winning an event of this kind without having experienced the terror which comes from the possibility that you might fail and let down the fans. I have had so many years of carrying the flag successfully that I am now less terrified of failure. Although I would never rest on my laurels, I feel I’ve been there long enough that I should be allowed some leeway to get it right again.

Nowhere have I ever felt a greater weight of expectation than in front of the home crowd at the British Grand Prix. When you perform before your home crowd the sense of excitement about the whole weekend is even more intense than usual. Right from your first laps of the track on a Friday you can feel the energy of the crowd. All the way around the circuit, it is as if they are in the cockpit with you or adding power to your engine, It lifts you and gives you strength to push harder to achieve your goal. When race day arrives the atmosphere is positively electric.

Perhaps the most amazing atmosphere I ever experienced was the British Grand Prix in 1992, when over 200,000 people packed into Silverstone. We had set some quick times in testing before the weekend, but nothing prepared me for the speed which we found during that weekend. At every corner of every lap during qualifying I could feel an energy and a passion, willing me on to take pole position. It all came together perfectly. The car felt right, I felt right and I had this extra force on my side which seemed to put extra power under my right foot on the straights and extra grip in my tyres around the corners. I managed a wonderful lap, which put me comfortably on pole, two seconds faster than anyone else was able to manage.

Afterwards I was in the transporter with Williams technical director Patrick Head and my engineer David Brown when Riccardo Patrese, my team-mate came in. He walked over to where we were talking and grabbed hold of my crotch.

‘Hey, get off,’ I yelled. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Nigel,’ he said laughing, ‘I just wanted to feel how big those balls really are because that lap was unbelievable.’

That’s quite a tribute coming from your team-mate because he is the only one who knows what the car is capable of.

The whole weekend had that magic about it. After I won the race, everyone went crazy and the crowd invaded the track. It was an incredible spontaneous outpouring of emotion. On the podium I almost cried I was so proud of what we had achieved. I felt completely at one with the crowd. They had willed me on to win and I had won for them. Now we could celebrate together.

I triumphed on home soil five times between 1985 and 1992, including my first ever Grand Prix win, the European GP in 1985. The crowd was amazing that day too. During the final laps of the race people in the crowd were counting me down the laps, holding up four fingers, then three, then two … It had been two and a half seasons since a British driver had won a Grand Prix and they weren’t going to let this one get away. I have special memories of all my home wins and of the support I had each time from the crowd.

The fans have given me a great deal of spiritual support, but I have also been lucky enough to receive several prestigious awards which reflect wider public recognition and which are very important to me because I am intensely patriotic. I was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year twice, received the OBE from the Queen and I was sent a personal letter of congratulation by the Prime Minister when I won the World Championship. These are mementos that I treasure and they mean as much to me as any of my racing trophies. They symbolise something which goes beyond success in a sporting competition; they say that I have done something for my country, something of which I and the people of my country should be proud.

As I climbed up the ladder in Formula 1, I became increasingly aware of support for me in other countries, like Japan, Australia and Italy. I can’t begin to describe what it feels like when you realise that people from different nations are getting behind you and giving you their support. It is a strange feeling, but also a deeply moving one. It heightens your determination to succeed, but moves everything onto a much wider playing field. Where before you identified with your home crowd because of shared origins and shared culture, now you realise that you have a much greater responsibility to a much larger number of people.

When I signed to drive for Ferrari in 1988 I was given the nickname Il Leone (The Lion) by the Italian fans. It was the biggest compliment that I could imagine. The Ferrari fans, or tifosi as they are called in Italy, are one of the most powerful groups of supporters in all of motor racing. They have had several British drivers to cheer on over the years: in the fifties Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn were both Grand Prix winners and favourites with the tifosi, Hawthorn becoming Britain’s first World Champion in 1958 while driving for Ferrari, and in 1964 former motorcycle racer John Surtees won the title for them.

Obviously when I joined Ferrari I was aware of all the history and I had deep respect for the seriousness with which the tifosi follow the team. I was touched when they gave me that nickname. It was obviously significant to these passionate and committed people, so as the object of that passion I knew that it should be significant to me. It was certainly a flattering label. The lion is a symbol of power, strength and aggression. It has, of course, a strong historical association with England, which has a lion in its national emblem. It was also an appropriate nickname as, having been born in August, my star sign is Leo.