Nigel Mansell, Il Leone - the Lion, divides opinion; love him or loath him. Let us be clear at the outset we at Afterabc love him. He drove like the bravest bull with something to prove, it is staggering that he won just one championship, (1992), he deserved more, and perhaps it is the battling against adversity that made Nigel Mansell one of the most popular drivers in F1 history. His moaning and he certainly moaned a lot, was endearing from afar, but must have made working with him challenging. But his commitment in the car was staggering and that for us more than makes up for all Nigel's antics. Nigel Mansell may not have had the natural talent of others, but he used all the considerable talent he had all of the time.
 

Nigel Mansell had success in Karting and because he was using his own funds was relatively slow in moving into car racing. However, in 1977 he was British Formula Ford champion. He had a very serious accident resulting in a broken neck, doctors advised him he had been perilously close to quadriplegia, and that he would be confined for six months and would never drive again. Mansell discharged himself from the hospital and returned to racing.
 
Mansell raced in Formula Three from 1978 - 1979. His cars were not competitive, but he drove well but he had another serious crash; lucky to survive a broken vertebrae. His driving was noticed by Colin Chapman, owner of Lotus, and shortly after his accident, hiding the extent of his injury with painkillers, Mansell performed well enough in a tryout with Lotus to become a test driver for the Formula 1 team.

Colin Chapman was impressed by Mansell, understandably when as a test driver in 1980 he set the fastest time around Silverstone in a Lotus car at the time. Mansell was given a seat for three drives; at his debut in the Austrian GP a fuel leak in the cockpit developed shortly before the start of the race and resulted in painful first and second degree burns on his buttocks. Car failures forced him to retire from that race and his second and an accident at his third event meant he failed to qualify.

Mansell was unpopular with some members of the Lotus team, but Chapman liked him and Mansell remained with the team for another four years. The Lotus team was past its best and Mansell struggled, he had 59 starts with Lotus and finished in 24. He was on the podium five times but failed to win a race.

Mansell did however negotiate a good contract with Chapman and he was a Millionaire by 1984. A remarkable achievement for a man who had in his early racing years sold most of his possessions including his house to finance his career.
 
Colin Chapman's death in 1982 was a blow to Mansell, they were very close, further Peter Warr, Chapman's replacement did not rate Mansell and relations were strained. 1984 was Mansell's last year with Lotus, and his most memorable race of the season was the Dallas (USA) GP. The race was the hottest on record, and after 2 hours of driving in 104°F (about 40°C) conditions Mansell fainted whilst pushing his car over the line to salvage a sixth place finish (and thus 1 championship point) in a race of which he had led, having started from pole. Peter Warr's opinion of the departing Mansell was encapsulated in his widely published comment, 'He'll never win a Grand Prix as long as I have a hole in my arse'.

Mansell moved to Williams in 1985 to drive alongside Keke Rosberg, by mid season the car and driver were highly competitive, and finally after 72 starts Mansell won his first race, the European GP at Brands Hatch (UK), he won again at the next race at the South African GP. These triumphs helped turn Mansell into a Formula 1 star.

Going into 1986, the Williams-Honda team had a car capable of winning on a regular basis and Mansell had established himself as a potential World Championship contender. He also had a new team-mate; Nelson Piquet. The Brazilian publicly described Mansell as, 'an uneducated blockhead' and had also criticised his wife, Roseanne. Unperturbed by Piquet's mind games, Mansell won five Grand Prix in 1986 and was second at the Spanish GP just 0.014 seconds behind Ayrton Senna.

Going into the last race of the season, the Australian GP Mansell needed to finish in the first three to win the Championship; however on the main straight he suffered a puncture, ending his race. Mansell ended the season as runner-up to Alain Prost.
Mansell won six races in 1987, including the British GP at Silverstone; however, he had a heavy crash in the qualifying round in Japan, severely injuring his back. Mansell missed the remaining two races of the season and finished the championship again in second place.
 
The 1988 Williams was slow and unreliable. Mansell would complete only two of the fourteen races in which he appeared in the 1988 season, both podium finishes.
 
Enzo Ferrari died in August 1988, but prior to his passing he had selected Mansell for the 1989 season, (the last Ferrari driver personally selected by Enzo). The Ferrari fans, the Tifosi, quickly supported Nigel, nicknaming him, 'il leone' ('the lion') because of his fearless driving style. Mansell won the opening race of the season, the Brazilian GP; the home race of his bitter rival Piquet. The rest of the season was dominated by reliability issues of the newly introduced semi-automatic gearbox; he finished the season in fourth place in the championship. 1990 could easily have been Mansell's last, he was frustrated by continued reliability issues with the Ferrari and more so by his new team mate Alain Prost, the reigning World Champion, who took over as the team's lead driver. Prost was not above gaining advantage by under-hand tactics; at the British GP, the car he drove didn't handle the same as in the previous race where he had taken pole position. On confronting the mechanics, it transpired that Prost saw Mansell as having a superior car and as a result, they were swapped without telling Mansell. After retiring from the race, he announced he was retiring from the sport at the end of the season. Mansell obtained only a single win, at the Portuguese GP and finished 5th in the world championship.
 
Mansell announced that he was retiring from F1, but Frank Williams offered him a contract. Mansell demanded a large number of written assurances, primarily that he would be the number one driver and that Williams and the team's suppliers would do all that was necessary to help him win. He also negotiated a fee of £4.6 million a season, a deal which made him the highest paid British sportsman at the time.

Williams were developing a new semi-automatic gearbox and reliability issues in 1991 caused Mansell to retire from a number of races, however, he was victorious in five including the Spanish GP where he was wheel to wheel with Ayrton Senna, with only centimetres to spare, at over 320 km/h (199 mph) on the main straight. Ayrton Senna's consistency meant that Mansell finished second in the Championship once again, this time behind Senna.

1992 would be Mansell's finest season. He started the year with five straight victories (a record equalled by Michael Schumacher in 2004). At Monaco, the sixth race of the season, he took pole on the grid and dominated much of the race. However, with seven laps remaining, Mansell suffered a loose wheel nut and was forced into the pits, emerging behind Ayrton Senna's McLaren-Honda. Mansell, on fresh tyres, set a lap record almost two seconds quicker than Senna's and closed from 5.2 to 1.9 seconds in only two laps. The pair duelled around Monaco for the final four laps but Mansell could find no way past, finishing just two tenths of a second behind the Brazilian. Mansell was crowned Formula 1 Drivers' Champion early in the season at the Hungarian GP, where his second place finish clinched the Drivers' Championship, securing the title in the least number of Grands Prix since the 16-race season format started. This stood as a record until broken by Schumacher in 2002.

Mansell also set the then-record for the most number of wins in one season (9) and highest number of pole positions (14).

Nigel Mansell was finally world champion, and many fans assumed he would defend his title driving for Willams and hopefully win again. However, he had yet another disagreement with a team: Williams had signed Alain Prost, and Mansell had no desire to repeat the bad experience of work with Prost as he had with Ferrari.
 
Mansell retired from F1and went to the USA to race in the CART team of Newman/Haas for the 1993 season. Mansell demonstrated his phenomenal driving skills to win the championship and so became the only driver in history to hold both the Formula 1 and CART championships at the same time because when he won the 1993 CART Championship, he was still 1992 F1 Champion as the 1993 F1 Championship hadn't been decided. Mansell raced the 1994 with less success and following the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994 returned to F1 for the last three races of the season driving for Williams. (He was paid approximately £900,000 per race, compared to Williams' lead driver at the time, Damon Hill being paid £300,000 for the entire season). Mansell took his final Grand Prix victory, the Australian GP, which was the final race of the season having out-qualified the two contenders for the title, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher, in the process.

Williams did not renew Mansell's contract for 1995 and he moved to McLaren. Mansell and McLaren team boss Ron Dennis did not get on well, this, combined with a slow car, resulted in Mansell retiring from F1 after just two races for McLaren.

Nigel Mansell is not a man liked by many who worked with him; he seemed to create adversarial situations as a motivation. He is said to have a 'me against the world' mentality. At Williams, Patrick Head said, 'he thinks everybody is trying to shaft him at all times' and Frank Williams called him, 'a pain in the arse'. Perhaps if he could have played the situations differently he could have won more, however, his aggression and do or die attitude was always a great spectacle to watch.
 
Nigel Mansell said of his racing career, 'I had my fair share of heartaches and disappointments, but I also got a lot of satisfaction. I only ever drove as hard as I knew how'.

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