RORY'S RAMBLINGS - An Occasional Column from the Antipodes

ATLAS TEAM F1
Nigel Mansell
No. 13, 12 March, 1996
by Rory Gordon
Australia

Nigel Mansell.

Just mention the name and you are bound to provoke an emotion. Love him or hate him - it seems that there are no in-betweens with Mansell.

Let's get something straight from the beginning - I am not one of those who love him. I'm not sure that I hate him, but I certainly don't love him; grudging respect, perhaps.

He's had an extraordinary career in F1. Started with Lotus in 1980, moved to Williams in 1985, then to Ferrari for a couple of years in 1989 and 1990, back to Williams for three years, then a couple of years off while he was in IndyCar, then Williams again and most recently McLaren. That's five teams in all.

In all Mansell has had 31 F1 wins, all but three of them with Williams. Thirty-two pole positions, all but 4 with Williams. From a cursory examination of the information, you might be inclined to say that while Mansell was a winner, he was only a winner when he was in a Williams. (Remember that, Nigel, for your next comeback.)

But I don't classify Mansell, as a "natural" driver. Mansell seems to have to try very hard at driving. How many times have you seen him stagger from the car after a race? I remember once when he won had 500-mile IndyCar race, he was soaked in sweat and almost had to be lifted from the car. In the background, there was second-place Mario Andretti, an older chap than Mansell, saying that he wouldn't mind going around for another 500 miles. Mansell seems to have to try hard at everything he does.

In the classic British style, Mansell has "spirit", he's a "trier", he's "plucky" and Britons seem to like their heroes to have that "spirit" - they love someone who gives it all they've got, whether they succeed or not.

Mansell isn't to me in quite the same class as drivers like Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher. But Mansell is still a very good driver. After all, he drives in F1 and how many of us can say that?

After all this, you might well be thinking that this column has managed to stay pretty well on track - after all, it must ... it just HAS to be ... about Mansell. Sorry, you're wrong.

The F1 field isn't made up solely of the brilliant and the natural and the triers. There are other drivers in there too, as you may have noticed! Some of them are naturals, but inexperienced. Others are triers, and yet others are really trying our patience. Yet all of them share one common factor: they are F1 drivers and are driving in the top international motor racing series.

Already I can hear some people saying that some of those drivers have paid for their drives, and so can't be classified as "real" F1 drivers.

But that is not quite true. A little while ago, I had an interesting discussion with Mark Gallagher, while he was with Pacific, and he made a very good point: ALL drivers in F1 are pay-for-ride drivers to a certain extent.

Think about it. Schumacher will be getting a huge amount of money from Ferrari to drive their cars. But, towards the end of the 1995 season, it was announced that Agip would no longer be a sponsor of the Ferrari F1 team after 1995. Why? Because Ferrari had upped the price for sponsorship, as they had a certain Michael Schumacher (to be totally correct, the story that emerged was that Ferrari had "invited" Agip to increase their sponsorship).

By the very signing of Schumacher, Ferrari was them able to - and perhaps needed to - increase their income. Would they have been able to do that by so much if they had not signed Schumacher? I think not.

So, in effect, Schumacher has paid for his ride with Ferrari by allowing Ferrari to increase their income - much of which will then flow to Schumacher.

Gallagher's point, when you look at it in those terms, does seem to have a certain accuracy to it: some drivers bring a bag-full of dollars for the team with them, while other drivers allow the team to drag in a bag-full of money. Which ever way you look at it, the team gets additional money that it would not have had without the driver.

We all know that, these days, to be an F1 driver it isn't necessary to have a great deal of skill. Many times we have seen situations where a talented driver hasn't been able to get a drive because there has been another, better-sponsored, driver available to the team.

And "better-sponsored" doesn't always mean that the driver brings dollars into the team. That may be the effect, at the end of the day, but sometimes a team may have to take a driver in order to secure, say, a "factory team" status with an engine builder.

So, let's loop back to Mansell. All things being considered, why on earth did Ron Dennis sign up Mansell to drive for McLaren for the 1995 season? Mansell has a reputation of being difficult to work with, a whinger and a whiner. Alternatively, Dennis could have signed up Mark Blundell, who has a reputation as being a stolid, steady, cheaper, but not brilliant, performer.

Money ... and lots of it.

There were a number of rumours about the source of that money. It was said that Marlboro told McLaren, perhaps in slightly more flowery words, that unless the team signed a big-name driver, Marlboro might have to consider reducing their commitment. And who was the only big-name driver available?

And there were other rumours that Bernie Ecclestone put up a lot of the Mansell-money. Ecclestone's reasons probably were related to increasing the "spectacle" of F1 at a time when many of the drivers are pretty boring.

Whatever the truth of these, and the other, rumours that circulated around the place, one thing becomes screamingly obvious from all this: that every driver is a pay-for-ride driver. Whatever happens, and whoever is driving for them, every team always needs more money, so that they can - hopefully - become more successful, and then make even more money.

But that's just me.


Rory Gordon
Send comments to: rory.gordon@deet.gov.au