Читать книгу Mansell: My Autobiography - Nigel Mansell - Страница 13

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THE PEOPLE’S CHAMPION

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.

It was an honour to be able to develop a relationship with fans in Italy, Japan, Australia and many more far flung countries in which Formula 1 racing and its star drivers are celebrated. When I went to the States in 1993 to take on the top American stars, I received a warm welcome from the fans. As the season wore on and I won four oval races I became aware of a wider fan base all around the country. The American fans took to me and I took to them because I am a straightforward person, who is at heart what they would call a ‘pedal-to-the-metal racer’.

I am also a family man and when my children were on holiday Rosanne and I would bring them to races. IndyCar is much more family oriented than Formula 1 and I really enjoyed that. There was a lovely moment on the podium after I won on the oval at New Hampshire. I invited my three children, Chloe, Leo and Greg to join me as I held aloft the winners trophy. Emerson Fittipaldi, who finished second, brought his two daughters Juliana and Tatiana up on the podium as well. The American public appreciates moments like that.

For a professional sportsman in the television age, fame is something which comes with the turf, and being at the very top in Formula 1 means being famous all over the world. In terms of the size of its global audience, the sixteen-race Formula 1 World Championship lies behind only the Summer Olympics and Soccer’s World Cup and these events happen only every four years. In America, however, Formula 1 has only a cult following, while IndyCar and NASCAR racing rule the airwaves. Of course, when I moved to America I became more widely known, both through racing and through commercials and appearances on chat shows like David Letterman’s.

But I remember one occasion not long after I moved my family to Clearwater in Florida which highlighted the differences in attitude to the sport across the Atlantic. I was at a children’s party with my son Leo and during the course of the festivities I broke my toe. Naturally, I went to have it X-rayed at the local hospital, where the doctor on duty said that he needed to ask me a few questions for hospital records. He produced a clipboard and began scribbling.

‘Name?’

‘Nigel Mansell,’ I replied.

‘Occupation?’

When I told him that I was a race car driver there was not a glimmer of recognition. Because I had spent most of my time in the past few years in countries where Formula 1 has a huge following, I had forgotten what it was like not to be recognised. It was nice in those early days in Florida to be able to take the children out for a hamburger without someone approaching me for an autograph or to have their photograph taken. I could spend time with my family and enjoy being completely normal. Alas, this didn’t continue for long.

In the summer of 1994, I came back to England to look at Woodbury Park, the golf course I had bought near Exeter. I took the family down to Exmouth and in the evening we sat on the beach eating fish and chips. Several people walked past and I heard one of them say, ‘Blimey, that bloke looks just like Nigel Mansell,’ thinking of course that it couldn’t be me as I must be in America. I love moments like that.

Six months earlier, around Christmas time, I had come back to London to attend several awards dinners to celebrate my IndyCar title. I went out for a meal with my friends Mark and Iona Griffiths after which, as it was a lovely night, we decided to have a stroll around the centre of London. It was about two o’clock in the morning and cars were pulling over and complete strangers rushing up to congratulate me on my IndyCar Championship. Later, I came across four really drunk guys staggering down the street who, having obviously had a real Saturday night drinking session, didn’t realise they were shouting rather than talking. They were pulling my leg and I was having a laugh with them – the cameraderie was just fantastic. I thought to myself: ‘You couldn’t do this at 2 am in America, Nigel.’

I am interested in people and I take the trouble to talk to them. Fame is something to be enjoyed at times and endured at others. As many young stars of sport and pop music have learned, fame can ruin your life and destroy your privacy. But it can also enhance your life, as I have found through my relationship with the fans. To get a feeling of warmth and respect from total strangers is a unique experience. But you must always be responsible and conduct yourself with dignity.

Being famous has its down sides too. If you make yourself accessible to the fans, there is always the threat of an attack, of the kind suffered by Monica Seles, the tennis star, who was stabbed in the back as she sat in her chair on court between games. Her fear of a repeat attack has kept her out of the game for a long time, but it’s good to see her making a comeback. The incident sent shock waves reverberating throughout the professional sporting world. We realised that when we are surrounded by hundreds of people jostling to get closer, we are vulnerable. It worries any athlete in any sport. I don’t know what motivates someone to make an attack on a sports star. The public must appreciate that sportsmen are not politically motivated, they are simply dedicated to being the supreme athlete at their discipline. There is absolutely no justification for attacking someone who seeks perfection in their sport.

What happened to Seles was distressing to every sportsman and woman in the world. ‘If a star can be attacked in such a way …,’ we all thought to ourselves, ‘it could happen to me as well’ and that was very worrying.

I always have people covering my back and I think that anyone who is reasonably famous takes precautions at times, because in this day and age it’s wise to do so. But I’m privileged to say that over the years with all the fans I’ve met I’ve not once had any major problem. I wish I could say the same about the press.

My relationship with the press over the years has mostly been amicable and positive. I am an open person, I speak my mind and I take people as I find them. Consequently, with real professional journalists I have no problems. As I have already mentioned, I am a racer and I create excitement and this translates into good copy for the newspapers and magazines. Certainly over the years I have generated my fair share of dramatic headlines. But what never ceases to amaze me is the number of so-called experts in any sport who have never actually competed in that sport and who haven’t got a clue as to what they are talking about. I have suffered at the hands of journalists who are unable to comprehend, much less swallow the scale of what I have achieved in motor racing. This is because years ago when I was working my way up to the top, the same people said that I would never make it and now their arrogance will not allow them to accept that they were wrong. There is a small group of journalists in the specialist press who pursue negative angles whenever they write about me and who have tried for many years to make me look bad.

When I got to the top, several of them actually came up to me to apologise for what they had written, because their editors were putting pressure on them to get an interview with me. I accepted their apologies and we sat down to talk. They fulfilled the wishes of their editors by publishing the required interviews and then the following week went back to rubbishing me. I have no respect for anyone who can behave like this.

Years ago, as I climbed the greasy pole, the things these people wrote in their magazines had an influence on my life. Now when they go to work on me, they make themselves look pathetic. You cannot argue with the history books, which reflect achievements whatever the sport. These people are annoyed because they are jealous of success.

I believe that sportsmen who have achieved a great deal and who have created history should be given the benefit of the doubt. They shouldn’t have to put up with silly criticism. If it’s objective or if they’ve done something wrong then there’s no problem with that because they can learn from it. But to criticise for the sake of it is ridiculous.

Most famous people suffer to some degree at the hands of the press. I am relieved to say that I have not encountered the mauling or the total invasion of privacy suffered by some sportsmen, like Paul Gascoigne or Ian Botham. I have had my share of problems, but I have also had pleasure in working with some real pros.

As a professional sportsman I have a major responsibility towards the public and I think that the press have got to stand up and be as responsible because by reporting some of the things they do, they’re not helping anyone. There’s a lot of cheap journalism out there. The hacks forget how they earn their money and forget their obligations.

There are a few incredibly unethical people in journalism who are only interested in helping their bank balance and if motor racing gets undermined as a result, they’ll move on to another sport or personality and start making things up about them. They’ll concoct some sensational headline because they think it’s clever and it will sell papers, regardless of how much trouble it causes everybody and how little evidence there is on which to base a story. They then go out and try to get a story to substantiate the headline. They’re not interested in telling the news as it actually is. There is a great phrase among some newspaper editors: ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a great story.’ I think that says it all.

A lot of people rubbish stars and then want to make money out of them. Over the years several scribblers have taken it upon themselves to write books about my life story. They claim to be my friends, to be close confidants of mine and to have unique insight into my character. They write poorly researched, hastily assembled potboilers with the simple aim of making money out of my name. How can people like this write a definitive book about my life without coming to me for the truth? What do they know of my past, my family life, my innermost thoughts? How can they have the barefaced cheek to rubbish me one minute and then become my ‘biographer’ the next? It’s beyond belief, but is nevertheless true that some of my biggest critics have also made a lot of money out of me.

The sad truth is that they get paid good money to rubbish people. If you’re in the spotlight then you’ve got to expect that this will happen. It comes with the territory. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in racing or soccer or an actor or a pop singer. For sure there are plenty of knockers out there, but you have to see the wider picture. Outside of the publicity you have to put up with, there are many levels of life and experience and although it’s irritating, I don’t ever let it put a large cloud over my life. In any case I have also had the pleasure of working with a great many professional journalists, who I am sure despair of the dross written by their low-life counterparts as much as we sportsmen and women do.

I saw the bigger picture long before I entered Formula 1. I paid close attention to what was written and said about the successful and the famous, especially in racing, so I would be prepared when I came in. But then even when I was in FF1600 I had journalists approach me saying that they could do a lot to further my career, raise my profile, or even proclaim me a ‘future World Champion’ if I would slip them some backhanders. So right there, in my formative days I got a good glimpse of the wider picture.

I later learned how to deal with the pressure of fame a lot better at Ferrari because the pressure is much greater there than at any other race team and the Italian press are very persistent.

I have always had my feet on the ground and have listened carefully to the advice of people I respect. I was lucky enough to meet the actor Sean Connery in the early eighties, just after I became a millionaire for the first time. He said to me that whenever you get money and success you will suddenly find lots of friends you never knew you had, all wanting you to finance some plan they have or lend them a few quid. The secret, he told me, was to keep your money, because you might never get another pay cheque like it.

Those words rang true to Rosanne and I and that’s why we left England in the early eighties. We were paying 70% tax at the time. I said to Rosanne that my Formula 1 career could end at anytime. As hard as it had been to get in, we knew that it was the easiest thing in the world to be booted out. You only have to fall out of favour with someone or injure yourself and you’ll be forgotten and your whole career is over.

Motor racing is a fickle business. I have worked hard for the success which I’ve achieved, but it could so easily not have happened.