The making of Mansell: Brands Hatch race that fuelled him to F1 title

It is hard to believe that four decades have passed since I drove a tatty Honda Civic from Willesden Green to Brands Hatch to watch the 1985 European Grand Prix. Or, to put it more lyrically, 40 Octobers have come and gone since the sun, diffused by Kentish haze, set gently on one of the most emotionally charged moments in British motor sport history. That Sunday — October 6, 1985 — 40 years ago yesterday therefore — at the circuit that he had once visited as a wide-eyed teenager, Nigel Mansell finally stood atop a Formula 1 podium as a grand prix winner.

The headline that shone most brightly on the back pages of the next day’s papers was ‘Mansell wins at last’ (and/or other variations on that theme). But behind it, as with all the best stories in our unforgiving sport, lay layers of character, context, and consequence. Mansell’s maiden grand prix win was more than a breakthrough. It was a vindication – of talent, of doggedness, and of ambition. And, with hindsight, it was the starting pistol for one of the most gloriously unpredictable world championship-winning trajectories in F1 history.

But let’s begin by addressing the man himself – a driver whose legend is too often painted in only the primary colours. He was brave, yes, lionhearted beyond question. But to remember Mansell only for his bulldog spirit and blood-and-thunder heroics is to overlook the nuance of a competitor whose skill behind the wheel was more deft than many ever gave him credit for.

Nigel Ernest James Mansell — born in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, and raised in Hall Green, Birmingham — often seemed, to the metropolitan eye, more blacksmith than ballet dancer. His Brummie accent, his flat cap, his bushy ’tache, and his guileless lack of artifice all stood in striking contrast to the perceived glamour of 1980s F1. But those who watched closely knew; knew that he was more than the caricature; knew that he possessed a rare fusion of guts and panache. He was fearless under braking, yes, but also dexterous in steering input. He was aggressive, undoubtedly, but the elegance of his throttle control, and the mid-corner poise it conferred on a jitterbugging-on-the-limit F1 car, belied his gruff facade.

In October 1985 he was 32 years old. He had started 71 grands prix. He had stood on six grand prix podiums. He had driven two grand prix fastest laps. He had bagged one grand prix pole position. He had outpaced F1 world champion team-mates. Yet grand prix wins had still eluded him. The weight of optimistic aspiration – from the British public, from the press, from the sponsors, and, most important, from Mansell himself – was palpable. So when he powered his Williams-Honda across the Brands Hatch finish line in first place that early-autumn afternoon, 21.396sec ahead of Ayrton Senna’s Lotus-Renault in second place, he not only jettisoned that multi-faceted burden of expectation but also made a powerful statement: he could win, emphatically, beating the best, on merit, and in style.

Qualifying the day before had been great box office, too. Senna, in only his second F1 season yet already the sport’s foremost conjuror of single-lap speed, had delivered a pole position that remains legendary 40 years later: it was his sixth pole of the season and the first 140mph-plus lap of what was then, and still is now, the UK’s finest circuit. To do that on such a twisty, undulating switchback was a proper feat, for Brands Hatch, characterised as it was and is by sweeping bends carved uphill and downhill, its bumps tricky and its cambers intimidating, was no natural home to the nervy turbocharged 1000bhp F1 cars of the time.

In Sunday’s race the narrative shifted. Senna led at the start, closely followed by Mansell’s Williams team-mate Keke Rosberg and Brabham’s Nelson Piquet. On lap seven Senna was slow-ish through Graham Hill Bend, allowing Rosberg to pitch an ambitious overtaking move at him into Surtees — which went wrong. The result was contact between the two cars, light enough to leave the leading Lotus undamaged but heavy enough to flick the Williams into a spin. Close behind, Piquet was unable to steer clear of the melee, and he duly ran into Rosberg’s Williams, crippling his Brabham terminally. Rosberg was able to limp his way around the rest of the lap to the pits, where his crew took almost 20 seconds to replace his punctured left-rear Goodyear.

Mansell was now in second place, and soon he was pressing Senna for the lead. Poetic justice quickly came Williams’ way when, assisted by a furious Rosberg, a lap down and keen to baulk Senna so as to facilitate his team-mate’s ambitions to wrest the race lead from him, Mansell visited upon Senna the exact same move, in the exact same place, that Senna’s pugnaciously elbows-out defence had caused Rosberg to come a cropper trying. But for Mansell the move worked.

Thereafter, he never looked back. By lap 20 he was almost 10 seconds ahead of Senna, by lap 30 nearly 13 seconds up, and, barring disasters, today was going to be our Nige’s day of days. So it was that, at the end of lap 75, Mansell passed the chequered flag 21 seconds ahead of Senna. He had done it, at the 72nd time of asking, and, best of all, he had done it at home.

Beaten by Senna by 37 seconds, Rosberg was third, having driven a storming race through the field after his earlier misadventures. On the podium he hugged Mansell but ignored Senna. Frank Williams, fleet-footed as always before his 1986 car crash, nipped up onto the podium to congratulate his two drivers; he then patted Senna on the shoulder, and shook McLaren’s Alain Prost by the hand.

What was Prost – a fourth driver – doing on the podium, you may well be wondering? Why, he was there because, ever the calculating strategist, he had driven a composed and measured race from sixth on the grid to fourth at the flag, never having taken the risk of engaging in what you might call racing with anyone all afternoon, but nonetheless doing just enough to score points sufficient to clinch his first F1 drivers’ world championship. He was, after all, already ‘the professor’.

So at Brands Hatch 40 years ago two all-time greats completed similar but different rites of passage. Mansell scored his maiden grand prix win, and Prost secured his first F1 drivers’ world championship. Before October 6, 1985, they had both been aspirants, albeit super-talented ones. After that afternoon they both became something entirely different: winners.

Prost would go on to rewrite the F1 record books, finessing his way to three more F1 drivers’ world championships before he was done. And Mansell? From that moment onwards, I felt that he raced with a new expectant intensity. Just two weeks later, at Kyalami, he won again, this time from a pole position that he had earned by dint of a scintillating lap whose average speed — more than 147mph — had made Senna’s Brands Hatch beauty seem pedestrian.

No F1 driver I can think of, other than perhaps Mika Häkkinen and maybe, just maybe, Nico Rosberg, better exploited that psychological shift — that moment of sudden self-belief that a long-awaited first grand prix victory sometimes but not always confers on a talented racer — than did Mansell in the weeks, months, and years that followed.