S1 E7: Mansell at McLaren - what went wrong

Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.9 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2020

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

Nigel Mansell and McLaren never felt like a match made in heaven, and when they joined forces in 1995 the alliance was short-lived. Sam Smith and Jack Benyon join Glenn Freeman to discuss why this partnership went so wrong. How did Mansell go from thinking he had a Williams drive to getting a phone call from Ron Dennis? What were the driving forces behind McLaren taking on a driver who had been one of its biggest rivals? How lofty were McLaren's and Mansell's expectations, and were they justified? What did Mansell think of the car when he first drove it? What were the specific problems he described that made it so unsuitable to his driving style? Why didn't it come to light earlier that he didn't fit in the car? What was Mark Blundell's side of the story of how he found out he was being called up as a stand-in? How did Mansell manage to do over 100 laps of testing in the original chassis before the wider one was available to race? Why did he think the bigger car would solve McLaren's aero problems? How did he stack up against Mika Hakkinen? What was wrong with the car when Mansell parked it in his final GP? What changes to McLaren's radio etiquette were put in place after Mansell's 'performance' at Barcelona? Did McLaren ever get on top of the car's problems?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Nigel Mansell and McLaren, two of the great names of Formula One in the 1980s and 1990s,
0:12.0	finally joined forces in 1995, but it was a marriage that was doomed from the start and only lasted two races.
0:19.0	Welcome to the latest episode of Bring Back V10s, brought to you by The Race.com, where we take a look back at a golden and noisy era of Formula One.
0:28.3	As always, you can get in touch with us through our social media channels using at We Are the Race and the hashtag Bring Back V10s.
0:34.9	And remember, we want to hear your comments and questions for our final episode of the series
0:39.3	where we'll be answering all of your questions about this era from 1989 to 2005, the V10 era, if you will.
0:47.1	On this episode, we're looking back then at why things went so badly wrong and so quickly for Mansell and McLaren
0:53.5	and joining me to look back at one of the more bizarre high profile driver and team combinations,
0:59.8	as Sam Smith and Jack Bennion, both making their first appearance on the podcast.
1:04.3	Gents, welcome.
1:05.3	And as always, we've got our traditional opening question, which we'll throw to you first, Sam.
1:10.2	When you think Mansell and McLaren 1995, what's the first thing that comes to mind?
1:16.2	Surrealness, I think.
1:17.2	I think just the unlikelyness of Mantle driving for McLaren.
1:20.9	Simple as that.
1:22.9	Yeah, yeah.
1:24.6	Somehow that crash helmet didn't look right in Marlborough colours, I think we could say. What about you, Jack? I think sadness is the word. It's just such a, you know, two giants of the sport that should have come together and created such a fantastic story. And obviously it, as I'm sure we'll discuss on this podcast, didn't quite work out as planned. Yeah. And as we say, bizarre and an unexpected alliance, really. So how did it form? Because obviously, at the end of 1994, Mansell had done a clutch of races for Williams. He'd won his last race for Williams at Adelaide. And following the four races he did in 94, he was hoping to get a Williams drive for 1995, but Williams didn't take up that option.
2:03.2	And I think they actually had to pay Mansell some money to not do that.
2:07.0	We won't spend too long on the Mansell Williams saga because that will get an episode of its own in the future.
2:13.7	But Mansell was disappointed to miss out on the drive.
2:16.5	And in one of his many books, he talks about the fact that he found out
2:20.2	a day in advance of Williams telling him because he found out through the media
	...

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