There is a moment called a ‘wet footprint’ when you are flying across a large expanse of water, which means you get to a certain point in the crossing where you have insufficient fuel to turn back and make it to land. So you have to carry on regardless of the weather or the plane’s status; there is literally no turning back. The point of no return, so to speak.
On the flight in question, we didn’t have enough endurance to get straight to England so we had to refuel in Iceland. The weather was acceptable and perfectly safe for flying so that was the plan. We called in before the wet footprint, and that was all okay, but then about 20 minutes after the point of no return, the weather just went down the toilet in the matter of a few minutes.
In a heartbeat, we were in the middle of freezing, blizzard conditions, a freak storm whipped up, the temperatures changed and the barometer suddenly dropped; the forecasted drizzle and then heavy rain instead became a thick blanket of snow. Almost instantly, visibility was reduced to near-zero, a complete white-out, and conditions were deteriorating to a very serious level. The air-traffic controllers were absolutely fantastic because the airport had to be closed, but because we had nowhere to go and couldn’t ditch the plane, they let us land there. The plane was really being battered by this winter storm; it was terrifying for all of us. We came into the approach for the runway over the sea but couldn’t see a thing; it was just a wall of white. I was thinking, We could easily get this wrong and ditch in the sea, then we’d all be dead. Then, at just 70 feet, we managed to make out the runway, thick in snow, but at least we could at last see the ground. There was a vicious crosswind and the plane was lurching from side to side. It was just awful.
Bill and I were both captains of the plane, but on that leg of the journey, I was in the left-hand seat. When Bill finally saw the lights of the runway, which was totally snow-covered tarmac, we were about 70 degrees to the runway because of the crosswind, so I could see nothing out of my side. I knew at that moment that unless the plane worked to perfection in every way, we’d be in the poo. Thankfully, by the grace of the Lord, we somehow managed to land the plane on the snow. I don’t mind saying it was excellent teamwork; we did a great job. That’s not to say we both didn’t experience a little of the ‘pilot’s shuffle’ in our seats, but we got down safely.
The snow was so thick by now that it took us a full 20 minutes to taxi through the drifts towards the main building. We finally parked up, and were preparing ourselves to disembark so that we could catch our breath, refuel and wait for the storm to lift. My dear friend Dr George Morris said that he would go out first and see what was going on. We were all mostly wearing flip-flops and shorts as we had been in Florida, so we weren’t exactly dressed for the conditions. George, on the other hand, was perfectly ready; he’d got all the gear. ‘I will sort it out,’ he said valiantly. ‘I will go and find somebody.’
We were just happy to be on the ground and delighted that George had volunteered to go out into the blizzard. We watched him zip up his thick winter clothing, get himself ready, unlock the plane’s door like a conquering hero about to go forth and bring us salvation. Then he stepped off the plane . . . and promptly disappeared from sight into the deepest snowdrift I’ve ever seen. It’s a bit naughty, but we did laugh. It was hilarious.
At least it was hilarious right up to the point we realised we had to go out there in temperatures of minus 25 and a blizzard to dig him out.
Fast-forward a little to my time racing in America and it’s fair to say that the children enjoyed being around IndyCar perhaps more than F1. They were a little bit older and those races were, in my opinion, more family orientated. Loads of drivers brought their children to races; there was a real family atmosphere. One time in Cleveland, Ohio, I had a great race with Emerson Fittipaldi and afterwards all our respective children clambered up on the podium with us. Lovely! My children really had fun with IndyCar.
Sometimes having the children with me wasn’t quite as soothing as I might suggest. I remember once we were going to the track so we packed up all Leo’s baby stuff, but then almost as soon as we’d set out, we realised we’d left all his bottles in the fridge in the hotel, so we had to turn round and go back. It was quite comical in a way. By my mid-thirties I had three young children and was racing at the sharp end of Formula 1. Never mind having 26 cars on the grid, having three children under five at the same time is what I call busy.
One element you can’t prepare for is how your children will react to your job as they grow older. Specifically, you know they are becoming increasingly aware of the risks involved in Daddy being a racing driver. A very significant moment in my life came in 1987, when I was paralysed from the waist down for six weeks after suffering spinal concussion and swelling on the lower part of my spine, following an accident at Suzuka (I will come to the accident and its consequences later).
The reason I remember this period very clearly is that Chloe, who was just a toddler at the time, was really upset that I couldn’t play with her. I couldn’t even get out of bed, so Rosanne had to explain that Daddy was poorly and his legs didn’t work properly. We weren’t sure how Chloe would take it, but she was devastated, really upset. Bless her; she got me to promise that I would never hurt myself again. That incident really made me realise for the first time the impact that my chosen career had on my family.
I was able to keep that promise until I had another biggie, in IndyCar at Phoenix in 1993, which was ugly. Fortunately, this time Chloe was older and seemed able to process the situation a little more easily. She was still bothered, but not as horrified as the first time. I could at least walk and, although I wasn’t about to go down the park on the swings with her anytime soon, she was brilliant. So, yes, although as a family we were used to the risks of my job to a degree, young children can be affected very deeply by worrying about the dangers and their parents’ welfare. I was ultra-conscious of that. Of course, years later, when it came to my own two sons going racing themselves, the tables would be turned.
Some of our travels around the world were really fun, some tiring and some just downright hilarious. Once, we were coming back on a long flight with all the children in tow and, at the time, I’d employed a guy to manage a lot of my affairs; to look after the practicalities and generally lift a weight from my shoulders by taking care of the logistics. He was a good guy and very helpful, so this one time we had arranged ahead that he would be there to pick us all up at the airport. We landed on time and then disembarked, collected our luggage and made our way through customs. With three children, loads of suitcases and just the general chaos of a family of five after a long-haul flight, we were keen to get home. We walked out of Arrivals and spotted the newsagent’s where we had agreed to meet.
There was no sign of him.
We waited for ten then 15 minutes, but he still wasn’t there. So I phoned him up.
‘Hey, it’s Nigel. I’m waiting outside the newsagent’s. Where are you?’
‘I’m waiting outside the newsagent’s, too! Where are you?’
It was really baffling.
‘I’m next to the newsagent’s, just down from the coffee shop, opposite Arrivals, like we said.’
‘Well, this is weird, Nigel, but so am I. I can’t see you at all. I wouldn’t mind but East Midlands airport isn’t exactly that big . . .’
‘Hang on . . . did you say East Midlands airport? We’re at Birmingham!’
CHAPTER 9
1986: A BIG YEAR
This was a big year. In 1986, I had a brilliant car and a fantastic team. Okay, it’s fair to say that I didn’t exactly see eye to eye with my new team-mate, the double world champion Nelson Piquet – let’s just say he is an ‘indifferent’ person, to put it politely. He was the team’s number one driver and being paid much more than me, but I had no problem with that, or racing against someone with his track record, just as I didn’t with Keke previously. Frank always let us race to win, so it was up to me to show what I could do.
Howev
er, the difference between Keke and Piquet was that Nelson was never going to win any ‘Nigel Mansell’s Favourite Team-mate Award’, which I don’t mind mentioning. He played a lot of psychological games; he criticised me on many occasions, but he would also go on to say the most insulting things, and was even once very nasty about my wife. That’s out of order. He was trying to psychologically rattle me, but it was never going to work. I learned that in order to rise above it and still perform to the very best of my ability, I had to pigeonhole comments like that – you take them and put them away, then get on with your job. In fact, I would go further and say that I used to try to breathe in the negative energy of people like that and turn it into positive energy. That way, for every hurtful word they said, it felt as if they were fuelling me, making me go faster and faster.
More importantly, however, the Williams FW11 car that year was wonderfully quick. Nelson was perceived as the pre-season favourite, but I knew I could make an impact so I let him do all the talking. I trained hard in the off season and enjoyed testing a brilliant car. Frank stood by me, too, when he was under pressure from Honda, and once again we were allowed to race freely and for wins. Horribly, in final testing, Frank Williams had a dreadful car crash on the way to the airport. I was one of several people on the scene shortly afterwards and it was a really terrible incident. I went in the ambulance to the hospital. The accident shook everyone to their very core, obviously, but Frank had instilled such a culture of determination in his garage and factory – the same determination that saw him bounce back from his own dreadful injuries – that his Williams team displayed the most incredible resolve and will to win. That year Williams would take the Constructors’ Championship; given the circumstances, that is pretty special.
This was also the year when Ayrton and I took part in the closest ever finish in a Formula 1 race, in Spain, when he beat me (damn!) by 0.014 seconds, which equated to a distance of approximately 93 centimetres over a race of over 200 miles. There had been tension at the preceding race, the season opener in Rio, when Ayrton pulled what I felt was a sudden move on me as I was overtaking him, hitting my front right wheel and sending me off and out of the race. The close finish in Spain was just more of the same attempt to intimidate me, but I refused to be unnerved by these tactics. I’d overhauled Piquet and had to manage my fuel levels, but I was in the lead when I suffered a slow puncture and some diffuser problems with only ten laps to go. Eventually, I had to pit and it was a massive effort to reel Ayrton in after I rejoined the race. With one lap left, I was still 1.5 seconds behind, but we came out of the last corner with me all over the back of him and then it was just a straight fight to the line. It is true that I later said maybe we should have had 7.5 points each, which I thought was a very fair and excellent idea, but sadly the suggestion fell on deaf ears!
I was accumulating points all year. I managed to get five wins for the season, my best ever string of results, and the car was just flying, helping me on my way to a bagful of front-row starts and fastest laps. However, as well as Frank’s dreadful accident, the entire year was also overshadowed by the death of my dear friend Elio de Angelis.
Sometimes in life you get a sense that something bad is about to happen. It has happened to me on a number of occasions; some people put it down to coincidence, others to a developed sense of anticipation, call it what you will. It is a very personal thing, but I do know that I have had this feeling several times.
You’ve no doubt heard stories of people who won’t catch a plane on a particular day, or they won’t get on a bus or train that they normally get every morning, for whatever reason. They can’t explain why, but they decide they will stay at home or catch the next one. Then, they find out there’s been a catastrophic failure and terrible accident that morning. How do you explain that? I’m not quite sure, to be honest, but I do believe it is something within us all and that we are sometimes guilty of not listening to ourselves.
In May 1986, I was testing at Paul Ricard in France before the Belgian Grand Prix. Elio was there with Brabham, the team he had switched to from Lotus. Strangely, the night before the test I just felt awful; I knew something was wrong. I didn’t understand why, but I was really upset and had this overwhelming sense of dread about the next day. The feeling got worse when I drove into the circuit the next morning – I knew instantly it was going to be a bad day. It turned out to be among the hardest few hours of my life.
That was the day that my ex-team-mate Elio was killed in a terrible accident.
Elio’s car suffered rear-wing failure and cartwheeled over a barrier at high speed, before catching fire. He was in the car for a long time. The accident was compounded by a series of unfortunate problems; nothing worked, nothing went in his favour. He was eventually helicoptered to hospital but died later.
I remember sitting on the kerbing in the pit lane after Elio had been taken to hospital and I knew he was dead. I was stunned, shocked, tearful. We’d been team-mates for a long time. One of my best friends in the paddock was dead. During the 1982 drivers’ protest, Elio had entertained the drivers in a hotel with his beautiful piano playing – he was a concert-standard pianist. At the end of 1986, Keke Rosberg retired from Formula 1 and it is said that Elio’s death was a major contributing factor in that decision. Elio was an enormously popular figure in the paddock.
Now he was gone. Sitting there on the kerb, I just said to myself, If I am going to stay in this game, I have got to make it successful. I have got to win and make it pay, otherwise I am going to get out. This is not fun anymore. Elio’s accident was one of many I witnessed in my career, but it was the one that changed my life from that day on. I will come back to that unsettling sense of foreboding I felt the night before Elio’s death. For now, I just want to say that he was a wonderful human being; he was much loved, a dear friend and I was absolutely shattered by his death, as were so many other people who knew him.
After that terrible day, I sat myself down and resolved to continue in Formula 1 only if I had a genuine chance to compete. The risks were too great to simply make up the numbers. It was a life-changing moment.
The race after Elio’s death was in Belgium and I won. I dedicated the victory to Elio. With Patrick Head as my race engineer, we also scooped some very clever strategic wins, such as the next race in Canada. When the grand prix show rolled into France at the same Paul Ricard circuit where Elio had been killed just a couple of months earlier, it was tough. But I managed to win again.
The 1986 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch is one of my favourite victories. Emotions were running high as, remarkably, Frank had recovered enough to return to the circuit for the race and he got a standing ovation from the assembled journalists at his press conference. The team was delighted by all this and I was also super-excited about the massive British crowd of 115,000. I was desperate to win in front of them.
In my opinion, the win that day was pretty much textbook. I got pole position, was happy with my car, and when the lights changed I had an incredible burnout off the grid, which is what you are supposed to do. Then suddenly a driveshaft let go, so I had no drive at all. Crap! Sadly, because I was stranded, I contributed to people having to go around me, and then the middle of the field had a coming together which was an almighty accident. This was a great shame particularly for Jacques Laffite, who broke both his legs in the accident, which ended his career (regulations introduced shortly afterwards ensured drivers’ feet were behind the front axle line; before this race, our feet were sometimes only about nine inches away from the nose of the car).
The race was immediately red-flagged because we hadn’t completed one lap, so technically the grand prix hadn’t officially started. I went back to the pits to find out what was wrong with my car, but it was impossible to repair it in the time. There was only one option: use Nelson’s spare car. This car was set up for the team’s number one driver, with his settings, his seat, his pedals, gearbox, springs and so on. They only had time to put my seat in the car and a
djust the seatbelts, nothing else. Although I knew it would be exceptionally difficult to drive competitively, I couldn’t jump in the car quickly enough. I was back in the race.
I got off to a shaky start because on the warm-up lap the car stepped out on me a couple of times, which was hairy because there were no run-off areas at Brands Hatch. It is a super circuit but it was horrendously dangerous back then, in my opinion. So I was very wary of the car, and at the restart I dropped down a few places within the first laps. I was behind Gerhard Berger, but then I managed to overtake him. Then I overtook Prost as well and realised I was staying pace with Nelson, who was winning the race. Eventually, I got more trusting and confident with his spare car. I had to adapt my aggressive driving style to a more ‘softer-entry’ style on the corners. I like to go into a corner really aggressively and hustle the car round, and try to carry the speed through, but if I’d hustled Piquet’s car it would have definitely stepped out on me. It is a fact that as soon as you are opposite locking a car, you are not going forward, you are going sideways. That might look great on TV but in reality it means you are slow. Also, your anxiety level jumps up through the roof because you think you’re going to have an accident.
Nigel Mansell Autobiography Page 12
