Читать книгу Mansell: My Autobiography - Nigel Mansell - Страница 17

6

THE HUNGRY YEARS

My father didn’t want me to go into single-seater racing. He had been right behind me all through my karting career and it had been his interest in karting that had got me started, but when it came to proper racing cars he decided to draw the line. Karting was fun, he said, but motor racing was serious. He had a good job and a comfortable, although by no means affluent lifestyle and he wanted the same for me. It was clear that he was hoping I would pursue a career in engineering as he had done. He was being realistic, trying to guard against what he saw as the likelihood that I wouldn’t make it in motor racing. And knowing how competitive I was he thought that I would find it hard to bear the disappointment of failure.

After all, the odds against a lad from Birmingham going on to beat the world’s best drivers and win the Formula 1 World Championship were huge. Every year thousands of young drivers start racing and join the ranks of the hopeful. Every season new teenage talents from Europe, as well as from countries further afield like Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, come pouring into England with pockets full of money to race in the most competitive starter championships in the world.

It was common knowledge in racing circles around the world that if you wanted to climb the ladder and get noticed by a Formula 1 team, you needed to race in the British Formula Ford and Formula 3 Championships. Britain has the most powerful motor racing industry and because most of the Formula 1 teams are based here, there is a huge network of information around the industry. A lot of the people who run teams in the junior formulae know people in Formula 1. Formula 3 team managers might tip off their friends in Formula 1 if they see a driver with special talent or someone who has reasonable talent and massive financial backing. For a young driver, being spotted by a Formula 1 team owner is what it’s all about.

Unlike the local kart scene, in Formula Ford or Formula 3 money can make the difference between winning and losing. The cars and engines were all similar, so a few extra thousand pounds could buy you better engine tuning, which in turn would gain you a few precious horsepower over your rivals.

The British series had sent many of its champions on to Formula 1 and it was into this ultra-competitive environment that I wanted to throw myself. Considering that this was the goal of many other young drivers, most of whom had plenty of overseas sponsorship money, the chances of me being successful were less than my chances of winning the pools.

I don’t hold it against my father that he was against me trying. What I was disappointed about was that he motivated me to stick with my engineering job with the promise that if I reached certain goals he would support me in my racing career. Out of the goodness of his heart, because he really did love me, he promised many things which never came to fruition.

I had joined my father at Lucas Aerospace at the age of 16 as an apprentice engineer. By this time I was all fired up to race cars and was desperate to get on with the next stage of my career. Given a fair chance I knew I would be able to make it. I realised that the jump to single-seater cars would be impossible without my father’s help and eventually I persuaded him to make a deal with me. If I passed all my engineering exams, he would help to finance my racing.

It was a hard slog. I worked part of the time at Lucas and the rest of the time I attended classes at various technical colleges and polytechnics in and around Birmingham. It took several years and in the meantime I carried on karting. My father enjoyed my success and was proud of my competitiveness and determination, but I was longing for a chance to prove myself on a wider stage. I would arrive at a local kart meeting with the knowledge that, barring some mechanical disaster I was going to win fairly easily. It was still fun, but really I knew it was pointless. I had outgrown karts and could not wait to get into a proper racing car.

When I was twenty-one I passed the last exam and emerged with a Higher National Diploma in Engineering. By this time I had also made progress at Lucas and I now held the position of electronics instructor. Things looked rosy. I went to see my father to tell him that I had qualified and to remind him of his promise. I was in for a nasty shock.

I found him in the laboratory at Lucas and cheerfully told him that I was going to be a racing driver. He asked me how I planned to finance my venture. When I reminded him of his promise he told me that my chances of making it were nil and that he would not be a part of it. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to reason with him but he wouldn’t budge. He would not help me race and that was that. I was furious. I had spent several years fulfilling my side of the bargain, going to endless engineering classes and now I was back to square one. My goal of moving into Formula Ford began to look distant. I felt bitter and disappointed. It was one of the worst days of my life.

I discussed it at great length with Rosanne, who by then had become my wife. I was determined to race. I knew that I had talent and refused to be beaten by the circumstances. Rosanne and I decided that, whatever the consequences, we were going to give it a go.

The cheapest and most sensible first move was to try out a Formula Ford car at a racing school. At least then I would know whether I could drive one or not. I might find that I didn’t like it and return to karts, but I had to know what it was like.

We scraped together £15 which was enough for a one-day lesson in a Formula Ford car at the Mallory Park school. Most of the other students there on that day were signed up for a week-long course, but I couldn’t afford such luxuries. I had one day to decide.

I went out in the car and immediately found it to my liking. It was fairly predictable and I felt quite comfortable with its behaviour. Because it was light and had narrow tyres it had a tendency to slide through corners. I quickly got a feel for what it would do next and felt that it was a car with which I would be able to express myself. That day at Mallory was enough to persuade me that my instinct was right. I should move on to Formula Ford racing.

But when he heard of my plan, my father was very angry and wouldn’t speak to me. My mother was upset by the rift that the whole issue had caused and the situation was quite unpleasant for some time.

Rosanne and I went ahead and bought a second hand car which we saw advertised. It had obviously seen plenty of action and had passed through several owners, some not so caring. We scraped together our savings, sold a few items here and there and got the money together to buy the car and a trailer. Rosanne had a nice new road car, but it was too small to tow the race car, so we traded it in for an older but larger model. She was marvellous, always keeping me company in the garage late into the night when I was working either on the race car or on the road car. I remember the latter used to devour clutches in protest at having to tow the race car!

Most evenings I would come home from work at Lucas and go straight over to Rosanne’s brother’s workshop, where I used to make extra cash helping him out with his picture framing business. We used to work late into the evening mounting pictures in the frames, and then around eleven o’clock we would go out to the bars and clubs around Birmingham selling them. It was quite a good business, although the drawback was I often didn’t get home until 3 am and I had to be at work again at 7.30. But the money came in useful – in fact, all money came in useful.

The racing car I had bought was in a bit of a state, but I was able to do something with it which I hadn’t managed in karting – to win my first race. Fittingly it was at Mallory Park, a circuit which had played a big part in my decision to take the plunge. The field of drivers I beat was something of a mixed bag, but it didn’t matter. I was on my way and very pleased about it too.

Although I could see many areas where the car needed improving, I felt comfortable with it and pushed it quite hard. I was not conscious of developing a style of driving at the time, it was more instinctive, but I was winning races and could already see the possibilities. I remember one particular race that first year when I was really charging through the field and came through strongly to win on the last lap. Rosanne told me later that the track commentator had been going crazy at the microphone, ‘Mansell’s coming up on the outside, he’s not going to be able to do it there, he’s on the wrong line. And he’s done it!’ I hope that same commentator was watching fifteen years later when I passed Gerhard Berger around the outside of the infamous Peraltada corner in the Mexican Grand Prix!

That first season went well for us. I won six races in all out of the nine that I entered and I went away feeling reasonably pleased with my progress. But my competitive instinct was gnawing at me. I wanted to win a lot of races and I knew that I needed a better car and a better budget if I was going to move forward.

As I had learned at school and in junior karting, there were a few people, like me, who loved winning and couldn’t contemplate defeat, and plenty of others who were just racing for fun and didn’t mind too much if they didn’t win. It was never a game to me. I could see from that first season that my feelings about racing had been right. I had the ability to win and to make instinctive overtaking moves, which others wouldn’t even dream possible.

Because of my engineering background I had a pretty good feel for the technical side of a racing car and was able to make adjustments to the car to make it faster on each circuit. Those Formula Ford cars were fairly basic technically, and a long way from the highly-sophisticated Formula 1 cars I would drive later. There weren’t many things that you could adjust, but it still required clarity of thought and confidence in your own instincts to make the right changes to the car. From the early stages of my single-seater career I learned to trust what I felt was right and wrong on a car. That’s not to say that occasionally even today I don’t go down the odd blind alley while looking for an ideal chassis set-up, but for the most part I know which direction to head in as soon as I’ve done a couple of laps.

I felt confident that I had made the right choice in pursuing my racing career and was determined that I would become a professional racing driver as soon as possible.

The turning point came in 1977. I started the year with a slightly better car, although it was still pretty run-down compared to many of my competitors. The car was owned and run by a colourful Irishman called Patrick Mulleady and it was yet another case of trying to do the best I could in a dilapidated old car. At one race I qualified on pole position but, coming round to the grid on the parade lap, the driveshaft broke and fell through to the ground. I was beside myself with anger. I had given everything to put that old nail of a car on pole and here we were losing a race we could have won because of bad preparation. We did win a few races that season with the car, but when eventually one of the wheels fell off while I was leading by over ten seconds, it was clear that we needed help to move forward.

I had started to get noticed by this point and I decided to try my luck and approach a man called John Thornburn, a manager who had a reputation for running a good race team. One day I walked into his office and said, ‘Hello, my name is Nigel Mansell and before you throw me out I don’t want money, I want help.’

I had bought a slightly better car, but it was still pretty worn out and I was anxious to get it prepared as well as possible. John said he would have one of his mechanics take a look at it.

The following weekend I got pole position and a win with it. I rang John up to thank him for his work and he was obviously stunned.

‘What do you mean you won with it?’ he gasped. ‘When we looked at it, only three of the wheels were in line, the other was an inch and a half out of line because of all the shunts it’s had. Either you’ve got a lot of talent or you were driving against a blind school, because that car is a load of crap.’

My next race was at Thruxton and without telling me, John came along as a spectator. He liked what he saw and told me that he would help. He said, ‘You have a lot of natural talent, Nigel. There are plenty of quick drivers out there, but very few really talented racers. Remember that no-one can beat you except yourself.’

I knew he was right. I think it is true for anybody as long as they have equal equipment and total self-belief and have the capabilities or the talent to do the job. John told me that I had to get really fit so that I would be strong at the end of races. He said it was possible to win a race in the last couple of laps when your rivals are beginning to get tired. At the time I was a little overweight, largely because I used to enjoy my beer, but I knew John was right so I stopped drinking there and then. I have been a teetotaller ever since. I also got very fit by going to the gym and running several miles every day. In actual fact I hated running, but I forced myself to do it because I knew it would pay off.

The season was going well and I worked my way up to being a leading contender for one of the national Formula Ford Championships. Because we had no money, Rosanne and I used to sleep in the back of a van at race meetings. We borrowed it from Alan McKechnie who was John Thornburn’s partner in the wine business, so ironically, although I had given up the drink, I went to sleep every night with a stale smell of booze hanging in the air. Not only that, but it was freezing cold in the van and the condensation from the ceiling and the windows used to drip on our sleeping bags. Combined with the wind to which circuits like Silverstone and Snetterton are often exposed, neither Rosanne nor I had ever experienced such extreme cold.

But we didn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t a hardship, it was reality for us at the time. Rosanne and I have a saying: ‘What you’ve never had you never miss.’ If we had had a better life up until that point and then had to do that sort of thing, it would have been a hardship. But the fact is that this was our life. It was how we had to live in order to achieve what we both wanted. It was unpleasant and looking back on it now with all the creature comforts we have today, then it does seem like a terrible hardship, but at the time it was necessary and whatever was necessary we did without a second thought.

Both of us were working overtime to pay for the racing. Rosanne was working for British Gas as a demonstrator and took on evening assignments to get as much money as she could. At times she was working up to eighty hours a week. It was a tough situation. We had very little spare time and certainly couldn’t contemplate taking a holiday. We saw less and less of our friends and our families. Deep down we knew what we were doing was right, but many of the people around us had serious doubts.

We tried to keep our distance from them. It wasn’t a case of cutting them off, we just made a personal commitment to ourselves that we didn’t need negative people in our company, telling us that we would never make it, that we shouldn’t take the risk and how stupid we were to try.

When you want to turn the tables and be successful in an environment which is already tough enough, you can do without that kind of negative influence. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, but if it’s really negative, then it is far more constructive to keep it to yourself. It doesn’t help anybody to come out with that sort of thing.

There were people whom we hardly ever saw, but if something went wrong they would come up to us and say, ‘I could have told you about that. I could have told you that wouldn’t work.’ It’s amazing how many people we’ve run into with that attitude.

If they were more constructive in their approach and came to us saying, ‘Listen Nigel and Rosanne, we love you a lot, but we’re concerned about what you’re trying to do and that you might get hurt,’ and maybe even make a few tactful suggestions about other ways of going about things, then I can respect that kind of opinion. As it turned out, our true friends were fabulous and kept us going, while gradually the ones who didn’t believe in us dropped away.

I have always been a positive thinker and I have never been able to tolerate people who are negative. Perhaps that is the root of my problem with some of the motor racing journalists I have encountered over the years. In any case, it is something to which I really hardenened my attitude during those difficult early days in Formula Ford.

Meanwhile, things began to look up. A guy called Mike Taylor offered me a newer car, on condition that I used my own engine. I jumped at the chance and drove down to his workshop to fit my engine into his car. It was very late when we finished and I only managed a couple of hours sleep before I had to go to Thruxton to race it. Although I was exhausted, I won the race, which was immensely satisfying. It was to prove a major turning point.

The car was made by a company called Crossle, which was based in Ireland. When John Crossle heard what had happened at Thruxton he called John Thornburn and said, ‘Tell me honestly, John, how good is this bloke Mansell?’

‘Well from a Formula Ford point of view,’ John said, ‘he’s the best there’s ever been. But he’s got no money.’ Crossle thought for a second and said, ‘I suppose I’d better give him a car then.’ To which John replied, ‘Well, if you don’t someone else will, because he’s going to win whatever he drives.’

Crossle sent a car over and we managed to persuade one of the top engine tuners to work on the engines for free. Things were beginning to come together and at this point I made the biggest decision of my life.

I was in the position of manager at Lucas, even though I was only twenty-two, and it was a well paid job. The problem was they wanted me to make myself available to work Saturdays and Sundays if the workload required, but they weren’t prepared to pay any overtime. At the time I was racing most weekends during the season and winning a lot. I pointed this out to my boss and he said, ‘Well, Nigel, you’ve got to decide whether you’re going to be an amateur playboy racer or a mature man in a sensible job.’

That night I went back to Rosanne and told her about my conversation at work. We thought about it until late into the night and agreed that we would only be young once. If we didn’t at least try to make it in racing we would have to live with the regret for the rest of our lives. Every element of the discussion brought us back to the same answer – we had to go for it.

The next day I went into the office and handed in my notice. My boss almost fell off his chair. He really hadn’t expected it. I said to him, ‘Look, I’m young and I’ve got to give racing a try. I’ve got all my engineering qualifications, so if it doesn’t work out I can always come back here or to a similar place.’

He was quite good about it and I think he could see that I meant it. So I walked out of the door and left my job behind me. There was no turning back, we had taken the plunge. I was now a professional racing driver. It was a strange feeling as I drove home that night. I was satisfied knowing that I had made the right decision, and nothing would shake me from my belief that I was going to make it. But I knew it was going to be tough and I had just given up a healthy source of income. When I told Rosanne we smiled at each other. We had taken charge of the situation. From now on it was down to us.

Three weeks later I broke my neck.

Many people are faced with that difficult choice between doing something they love or playing it safe and going for the secure, tried and trusted route. Some decide, like we did, to go for it. Others choose the safe route and perhaps encounter a degree of regret later in life. I don’t know what advice I would give someone faced with that choice. It depends on so many things. You must have the talent, of course, and you must be able to focus totally on one objective. But more important than that, you must believe in yourself. When Rosanne and I look back we wonder what gave us the strength to carry on believing at times.

I broke my neck in my first race with the new car. It was at Brands Hatch and the chequered flag had fallen to end the qualifying session. I was on my slow-down lap when I came up behind a car going much more slowly. The track surface was mostly wet, but there was a single dry line which we were both using. Rather than hit the slower car I swerved and immediately the car became loose on the slippery surface. I went off backwards and in the ensuing accident I broke two vertebrae in my neck.

The accident at Morecambe had been pretty frightening, but this was worse. I was actually paralysed for a few hours and the fear you experience when you cannot feel your arms and legs is truly shocking. I looked at the X-rays of the broken vertebrae and shuddered. The doctors had very serious expressions on their faces as they told me that I was lucky not to have permanent paralysis.

Rosanne went back to Birmingham, because she had to go to work the next day. I think that the shock hit her quite badly. She was tired and despondent. We had been burning the candle at both ends to support ourselves and now we were left wondering whether it was all worth it.

I hated being so far away from her and the rest of my family. The hospital was in Kent, over 200 miles away from my home. I felt isolated and depressed. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and get home. After a few days, I tried sitting up and the following day I told one of the nurses that the doctor had said I could walk to the toilet if I felt strong enough. He hadn’t said anything of the sort, of course, but I wanted to speed up my release from the hospital. The short walk to the toilet and back took nearly an hour. I was roasted by the doctor when he found out. He said that I should be flat on my back for several months, not walking around. Didn’t I understand how serious an injury I had?

The walk to the toilet had been like rolling in broken glass, but it gave me the confidence to discharge myself, much to the dismay of the specialists. I’d had enough of lying around in the doldrums, I wanted to get going again. I was in a position to win the Formula Ford Championship and I couldn’t do it from a hospital bed.

Back home again, things didn’t look too bright. With me having quit my job a few weeks before, we had only Rosanne’s salary to live on. The situation only served to harden our resolve. The accident had been a setback for sure, but we were not going to let it get in the way of our objective. As the weeks passed I took longer and longer walks every day and gradually my neck began to feel better. Seven weeks after the accident I was back in a racing car.

I had missed a few rounds of the championship and had dropped a few points behind the leaders, but I managed to pick up the pace when I returned and soon began winning again, although in my first race back I had a bit of a scare. On the second lap I took off over the back of another car and flew through the air for a short distance. Luckily I got away with it.

As the season wound to a close I was back in contention for the title. My main rivals were Trevor van Rooyen and Chico Serra, the much fancied new Brazilian driver. Both had well-funded teams and plenty of equipment. Van Rooyen always seemed to have a few more horsepower than the rest of us and although everyone suspected that he had something special in his engine we could never prove it. Before the last race at Thruxton, which would decide who was champion, John Thornburn asked the stewards to announce that they would seal the engines of the top four finishers after the race and take them away to be checked. They agreed.

To win the championship I needed to get pole position, win the race and get the extra point for fastest lap. It was a tall order. Luckily van Rooyen didn’t seem to have any advantage on the straights that day and through qualifying and the race I was able to pick off my objectives one by one. I started from pole. It was a very close race, but my determination saw me to victory and I became 1977 Formula Ford Champion.

It was hard to believe that only a few months before I had been flat on my back with doctors giving me little chance of racing again that season. It was not the first adversity I had encountered in my racing career and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but I had overcome it. I had set myself an objective and achieved it, which was immensely satisfying. In all I had competed in 42 races that year and won 33 of them. I felt that I had proved something to the people in the business who were watching. Rosanne and I allowed ourselves a little time to enjoy the satisfaction before turning our attention to the next step.

I wanted to drive in Formula 3, so I became a window cleaner and then we sold our house.

It is hard to imagine, looking at all the rewards I have around me now, that I was once a homeless window cleaner. I didn’t have to do it, no-one was forcing me, but racing will make you do some crazy things once you get hooked.

Although I had a firm offer on the table for a well-funded works drive in Formula Ford for 1978, I knew that I had to move forward into Formula 3. That was the stage on which true talent was often recognised and I was confident that, given a fair shot in a decent car, I would be spotted by a Formula 1 team owner. The problem was that the stakes were much higher in Formula 3. It would cost several times my old salary just to compete for a season and I didn’t have access to that kind of money.

I took a job with my friend Peter Wall, who had an office cleaning business. I did a little administrative work, but mostly I cleaned offices after the workers had gone home for the night. My speciality was window cleaning. It was actually great fun and quite satisfying when you saw the sunlight gleaming off a freshly cleaned window. The only problem was that the business was based down in Cirencester, some two hours drive from home, so I often had to stay at Peter’s house overnight, away from Rosanne.

I spent the rest of that winter looking for sponsors to help foot the bill for my move into Formula 3. Despite sending hundreds of letters I got nowhere. It was a fruitless search and although I learned a lot from it, I was still no closer to a Formula 3 drive and the 1978 season was approaching fast. So that’s when we did what any right thinking people would do under the circumstances – we sold our house.

It was a tough decision, but as we could see no other way of raising the money we were left with no alternative. Rosanne was still working long hours as a demonstrator for the gas board and her salary supported us as we moved into rented accommodation. It was sad to let our place go as we had been happy there, but we both knew that it was the right thing to do.

We raised £6000 from the sale of the house and added another £2000 from the sale of some personal items. We were staking everything we had. I took the money to March, who had promised to help me if I could get enough cash together to start the season. They were confident that they would pick up enough backing along the way to mount a challenge.

The season started well. I was on pole position for the first race and came through to finish second behind Nelson Piquet. Little did we realise at the time that our careers would become closely linked in years to come.

On race morning I was practising standing starts on the Club straight when I was approached by two people. One of them I recognised as Peter Windsor, an Australian journalist working at the time for Autocar magazine. Peter introduced the other man to me as Peter Collins, another Australian, who had a job at Ralt cars, but who was soon headed for the Lotus Formula 1 team as assistant team manager. We chatted for a while and I think that they were both impressed by my single-mindedness. They told me years later that they had never encountered anyone at that stage of his career who had such a clear focus on where he wanted to get to. We hit it off immediately and they said they would keep an eye on my progress. It was to prove one of the most important meetings of my life so far.

The Silverstone race was an encouraging start, but after that, things went downhill fast. It was a very poor car and although I’d been able to hustle it around Silverstone for that first race, I couldn’t get it going quickly anywhere else. March blamed me. I knew that it wasn’t me who was at fault. I did four more races and picked up some minor placings but all too soon I was told that the money had run out. They had found no backing, so that was it. End of season. Close the door on your way out.

Rosanne and I were devastated. We had blown everything in six weeks and there was nothing left. We had hit rock bottom.

John Thornburn, Nigel’s team manager in Formula Ford: ‘Alan McKechnie and I had decided to take a break from motor racing after a bad experience with a sponsor. Then Nigel showed up. When I realised that he was winning races with a car which we knew had a twisted chassis, I decided to go and have a look at him racing. I went down to Thruxton and stood on a couple of corners and it was obvious that he was very special. He was bearing everybody in an old nail of a car. So we decided to help. We used to turn up with the McKechnie Wine Company van with the race car on a trailer behind it and he’d go out and beat the pants off all these kids in state-of-the-art cars with huge transporters. It was brilliant.’

Peter Windsor, journalist on Autocar magazine: ‘Nigel is unbelievably competitive and always had this incredible desire to succeed. When I first met him he was running ten miles a day in army boots and firing off five letters a day to sponsors. He had total commitment and talent. To my mind there was no way that the guy would fail to make it. He was always looking forward. I covered Formula 1 for Autocar and Nigel used to ask me lots of questions about how Grand Prix drivers operated, how they travelled, whether they had managers and so on. Then he’d say something like, “I’m going to be winning Grand Prix races soon and I’ll have a house in Spain. “It wasn’t a romantic notion, it was the way he wanted to live.’