Once you are in the race, you can read whatâs 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 thatâs according to the rules. Itâs 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? Iâm not sure. I think I had a fair bit of luck in 1993, while in 1994 I had some bad breaks, but Iâm 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. Itâs a pure sprint and itâs 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 youâve 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 youâre there. Sometimes they do, but will pretend that they donât and will try to block you or even put you off the track. Itâs up to you to decide when and where to engage them in psychological combat.
You first put the âsucker moveâ 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, âThis is the move which is going to come off,â when in reality you know that it isnât. You feint to one side and they think that this is your last-ditch attempt to come through, but it isnât. Youâve got something else in mind.
You save up your best move and donât 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 doesnât 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, âOh God, itâs Mansell, I canât possibly keep him behind me,â because theyâve had experience of being beaten in the past. This does not work on the real aces however. Youâve got to do something special to pass them and youâll probably only get one go.
This is one of the strongest areas of my driving and I havenât 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 didnât 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 youâve 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 Nigelâs in Formula 3 and now a senior manager at Lola Cars: âNigel 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.â
Peter Windsor, a former Grand Prix editor of Autocar magazine and Nigelâs team manager at Williams in 1991/92: âNigel drives a little like Stirling Moss used to. Moss always said, âAnyone can drive from the apex of a corner to the exit, itâs how you get into the apex that matters.â 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 heâs more committed early on and more blind than others.â
Derek Daly, driver, turned TV commentator: âMansellâs style is an aggressive style more than an efficient one, but itâs 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 doesnât 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 â he often uses different lines through corners, but always the same cornering principle.â
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 âacesâ â 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 publicâs 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 â Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Jim Clark, Stirling