The Athletic

Imagine the reigning

Imagine the reigning

F1 champion falling out with his team, quitting F1 entirely and storming off to IndyCar,

then going on to win on his debut, fight for victory at the Indy 500 and win

the championship, all while doing most of his winning on ovals rather than road courses.

In the modern day, that seems unthinkable, yet 30 years ago, that's exactly what happened,

when Nigel Mansell sensationly followed up his 1992 F1 championship by winning the IndyCar title as a rookie the following year.

For one week before Alan Prost sealed the 1993 F1 crown, Mansell held both championships.

Back then, Nigel wondered aloud when such an achievement might happen again,

and 30 years on, it seems less likely than ever to be repeated.

There are, of course, no V-10 engines on the IndyCar grid, but we're making an exception to do an episode about a golden era of US single-seater racing.

And whether you know the story of Mansell's remarkable 1993 or not,

we hope you'll enjoy hearing it get the full Bring Back V10's treatment with Ed Straw and Karun Chandok, joining me, Glenn Freeman, to take a look back.

Now, Corun, you and Ed were both fiercely keen to be on this episode.

So tell us, when you think back to Nigel Mansell's 1993 three IndyCar season,

what's the first thing that comes to mind? The crash at Phoenix and then the amazing recovery to,

which culminated for me, not necessarily when he won the championship at Nazareth,

but when he won that

amazing race in Michigan on a, you know, bumpy, fearsome awful. It had everything that you'd

imagine from Mantle. Yeah, there's lots of points in this episode where we could stop off and say,

well, that's just classic Mansell. Ed, when I put this question out on Twitter, you responded

...