Nigel Mansell recently spoke about his active racing career. The lion, as his nickname was, believes Lewis Hamilton and his colleagues don’t even know how real F1 feels.
The 1 F2019 generation racers will never experience how a real Grand Prix sport car feels. So claims former world champion Nigel Mansell, who recalled his active racing career and believes F1 has lost much of its charm.
Mansell spoke to FIA magazine "Auto" about his active career from 1980 to 1995. He himself believes that the F1 will never return to racing cars that he was able to drive himself in the turbo period of the 80s. "Driving these turbo racing cars was the most fun but also scary feeling you can feel in life."
While Hamilton, Vettel, and colleagues were complaining about heavy racing cars at the time, Mansell was able to race with significantly lighter and more powerful work tools in his day. The 1987 Williams weighed only around 540 kg and was around 200 kg lighter than current race cars. Mansell remembered the Williams FW11B car the most. “Nothing in the world can come close to this race car. F1 will never return to this period. Really, today's racers don't even know how a real F1 car feels. ”
In qualifying, Mansell also had up to 1.500 horses at his disposal. “And then the wheels spun in sixth gear across the plane and at 290 km / h,” says Mansell, who is still impressed by the feeling today. “As a racer, you can’t describe it in words. At every turn, all you thought about was that the car wanted to kill someone. ” Excursion zones were not a topic at the time either. Mansell remembers the old Silverstone trail. “If you were driving on the Hangar plane in the qualifying Boost, then it was at a speed of over 320 km / h. We drove into the Stowe bend at full throttle. ”
In this bend, as a limit of the track, stood 15 cm wide pillars wrapped in wire. “Then you drove through the Club and you didn’t cut the gas here either. When you came out of this bend, you first took a deep breath. ” First of all, because you could breathe again then, because the lateral forces were very large in this bend. Secondly, you were out of breath for relief. "You came out of a bend and just thought, 'I did it!'
