S11 E3: 1991 Portuguese GP - More title misery for Mansell
Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories
The Race Media Ltd
4.9 • 764 Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2025
⏱️ 82 minutes
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Summary
Nigel Mansell's 1991 F1 championship charge effectively ended at the Portuguese Grand Prix that year, when a wheel departed from his Williams as he pulled away from his pitstop.
Host Glenn Freeman is joined by Edd Straw and Sam Smith to look back in detail at what went wrong in the pits for Williams at Estoril, on a weekend where Mansell's team-mate Riccardo Patrese took an 'easy' win, and Ayrton Senna banked valuable championship points while also taking a swipe at Mansell's aggressive driving at the start of the race.
We also look back on Jordan sacrificing its competitive aims for 1992 to make sure it stayed afloat, serious trouble for the Leyton House team, Ford's complaints about F1's engine war, how badly a Minardi-Porsche partnership would have gone, and how Max Mosley caught Jean-Marie Balestre out ahead of their battle for the presidency of FISA.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic |
| 0:02.7 | As F1 reached the business end of the 1991 season, |
| 0:14.2 | the championship momentum seemed to be swinging towards Nigel Mansell, |
| 0:17.7 | but that all came to a shuddering halt |
| 0:19.8 | when his Williams also came to a |
| 0:21.6 | halt in the pit lane at that year's Portuguese Grand Prix, having lost a wheel. |
| 0:26.7 | Mansell's championship challenge would never recover, and to rub salt into the wood, he was black |
| 0:31.5 | flagged for a pit lane infringement for the second time in three years at Estereil, |
| 0:36.2 | although this time he did at least see the flag |
| 0:38.5 | and come into the pits rather than colliding with Aetton Senna, as he did in 1989, a race we've |
| 0:44.2 | already covered on Bring Back V10s. So to help me, Glenn Freeman, go back through Mattel's |
| 0:49.4 | heartbreak and everything else that was going on in F1 at this stage in 1991. We have Ed Strawer and Sam |
| 0:56.1 | Smith. Ed, welcome to your first appearance of season 11. It feels like we've made you wait |
| 1:01.9 | quite a long time by your standards by keeping you hanging on until episode three. But you're here |
| 1:07.4 | now. So when you think of Portugal 1991, what's the first thing that |
| 1:11.7 | comes to mind? I'm pleased I'm here to bolster mid-season interest. Well, it's Mantle, isn't it? It's |
| 1:16.9 | the pit stop. It's effectively being knocked out of the championship fight, not mathematically, but in |
| 1:22.0 | real terms, by some bizarre incident. He doesn't lose championships in a boring way, does he? It's always exploding |
| 1:28.2 | tires or big airborne crashes or pit lane disasters. So yeah, this is all about Mantle. That's |
| 1:34.2 | absolutely what's in my mind. Portugal 91. Pit lane, no right rear wheel. Oh dear. |
| 1:39.6 | Exploding tires, a hint there of something that may be coming up soon in this series. |
| 1:44.0 | Sam, good to have you back as well. |
... |
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