Our Career Retrospective series returns for a fourth year, as we have another batch of past IndyCar drivers to consider. We will look at a few drivers and how they ended up in IndyCar, what they did while competing in the series and how the series changed between the driver's first appearance and today.
There is another theme in this year's set of drivers. It might not seem obvious, but it will become obvious once we get to the end.
The final part of this three-part series takes us to the most famous of the three drivers in this year's series. His career spans well beyond IndyCar. Most people probably only know him for what he did prior to arriving in IndyCar at the age of 39. It was quite a career, you can forgive those if they forget about his time in IndyCar, but this move was a pivotal point in global motorsports. The World Drivers' Champion left Formula One for IndyCar. The rest is history.
It is Nigel Mansell.
Formula One, and a lengthy career at that.
Mansell debuted in 1980 with Lotus and remained with the historic team for one of its low points through the early part of the decade. Lotus was not what it had been in the 1960s or 1970s. Plagued with unreliable cars, Mansell was struggling for results. He became the defined number two driver to Elio de Angelis in 1983 and 1984.
Frank Williams hired Mansell to join Keke Rosberg at Williams F1. Driving with a Honda engine, Mansell was a more competitive driver, and he closed the 1985 season with his first two grand prix victories at Brands Hatch and Kyalami.
With five victories in the 1986 season, led the championship entering the season finale from Adelaide. Eighteen laps from the finish and in third place, Mansell suffered a tire puncture and it cost him the title to Alain Prost. Mansell made another championship push in 1987 with six victories, but an accident in qualifying from Suzuka ended his season two races early.
Honda left Williams for the 1988 season, and Judd engines were placed in the Williams and were highly unreliable. Mansell retired from 12 of 14 starts. In the other two, he was runner-up and he missed two races due to the chickenpox.
Enzo Ferrari selected Mansell to drive the team for the 1989 season just prior to Ferrari’s death in 1988. Mansell won on debut in Brazil, but the car could not regularly compete the McLarens. He had a strong summer, but finished fourth in the championship. Results dipped in 1990 with Alain Prost as his teammate. Prost competed for the title while Mansell scored one fewer points and finished one spot worse in the championship than in 1989.
Mansell announced he would retire after the 1990 season, but Williams came offering a seat. Mansell demanded number one status in the team, and an assurance the organization and its engine supplier Renault. Williams agreed to the terms.
Ayrton Senna and McLaren were still on top, but Mansell and Williams gave the Brazilian fits over the season. Mansell and his teammate Riccardo Patrese ended up second and third in the championship.
Williams further developed the FW14 into the FW14B, and it became one of the most dominant cars in series history. Mansell opened the season with five consecutive victories. He won eight of the first ten races. A runner-up finish in the 11th round, the Hungarian Grand Prix, clinched Mansell the world championship with five races remaining. He ended the year with a single-season record of victories. He won 14 pole positions, 88% of the races, and that remains the highest pole position percentage in a single year.
What did IndyCar look like when Mansell started in the series?
IndyCar was still primarily North American-based. The 1993 season was only its third trip to Australia. While it raced at Surfers Paradise, it also ran in Nazareth, Pennsylvania and a new track in Loudon, New Hampshire. Of the 16 races, six were on ovals, six were on temporary courses and four were on permanent road courses.
World champions were nothing new to IndyCar. Mario Andretti was well into his second stint in IndyCar. Emerson Fittipaldi had been present for nearly a decade. Along with those two, there were a few Formula One veterans on the grid, including Raul Boesel, Two Fabi, Stefan Johansson and Roberto Guerrero.
Six different teams had won the previous six CART championships. Three of those teams were single-car operations. Five of those champions were American drivers, and 13 of the first 14 CART seasons had an American champion. Chip Ganassi Racing was entering its fourth season of competition. It had yet to win a race.
Six other drivers who made their IndyCar debuts in the 1993 season opener. They were Andrea Montermini, Robbie Buhl, Mark Smith, Marco Greco, Gary Brabham and Andrea Chiesa.
How does IndyCar look now?
IndyCar competes exclusively on the North American continent. It has been just over 11 years since it has raced somewhere other than the United States or Canada. There are no races at Surfers Paradise, Nazareth or Loudon. Nazareth is grown over. Of the 17 races in 2024, seven were on ovals but there were only five oval circuits. There were four temporary venues, but there were supposed to be five. Six permanent road courses host a race.
In the 2024 season, no past World Drivers' Champions competed in a race. It has been four years since a past World Drivers' Champion ran an IndyCar race. That would be Fernando Alonso in the Indianapolis 500. Prior to Alonso, the most recent past World Drivers' Champion to start an IndyCar race was Jacques Villeneuve, who made a one-off start in the 2014 Indianapolis 500. There has not been a past World Drivers' Champion full-time in IndyCar since Emerson Fittipaldi in 1996, a year in which Fittipaldi's career was cut short due to an accident at Michigan with four races remaining in the season.
Two teams combined to have won the last 12 championship. Three teams have combined to win the 17 championship since reunification. Chip Ganassi Racing has four of the last five titles, and 11 of the last 17 championships. The Ganassi organization has won 16 IndyCar championships.
There has not been an American championship in the last five seasons, and American drivers have combined to win only three of the last 17 titles.
What did Mansell do in-between?
Mansell started with a bang, winning on debut from pole position after a back-and-forth race with Emerson Fittipaldi at Surfers Paradise.
A practice accident at Phoenix knocked Mansell out of the car for the second round, but he only missed one race and he finished third at Long Beach. At Indianapolis, he qualified eighth, and he was a front-runner the entire race. He led 34 laps, but was passed on a restart with 16 laps remaining and fell back to third. He managed to finish third despite brushing the wall in the closing stages.
Despite the Indianapolis disappointment, Mansell won the next race at Milwaukee. He had six podium finishes in the first eight races. He won back-to-back races at Michigan and Loudon, the latter occurring on his 40th birthday. These victories put Mansell in control of the championship with five races remaining.
Consistent finishes followed and victory at Nazareth in the penultimate race of the season clinched Mansell the CART championship with a race to spare.
Returning for the 1994 season, Mansell started well with two podium finishes in the first three races. His second Indianapolis 500 ended just prior to halfway when Dennis Vitolo spun under caution and collided with Mansell's car, parking the year-old Lola on Mansell's shoulders.
Despite sitting third in the championship with three podium finishes and five top five finishes through the first eight races, Mansell had yet to win in the 1994 season. The second half of his year was rocky. He retired from five of the final eight races. His best finish was seventh despite starting no worse than fourth over that stretch. In 14 of 16 races, Mansell started inside the top four with his worst starting position being ninth.
This poor run dropped Mansell to eighth in the final championship standings on 88 points, 137 points behind champion Al Unser, Jr. Mansell was two points behind Raul Boesel and nine points ahead of Teo Fabi.
During the 1994 season, Mansell returned to Formula One to drive for Williams. David Coulthard had taken over a race seat after the death of Ayrton Senna. Mansell ran the French Grand Prix during a break in the CART season. He qualified second, 0.077 seconds off teammate Damon Hill, but a gearbox failure ended his race after 45 laps.
Mansell returned for the final three races of the season and he finished fourth in Japan and he won the Australian Grand Prix from pole position after Hill and Michael Schumacher tangled as they battled for the world championship.
After the 1994 season, Williams decided to run Coulthard full-time in the 1995 season. Mansell signed to drive for McLaren, receiving help from Bernie Ecclestone to get Mansell out of his Newman-Haas contract. Mansell missed the first two races as he could not fit in the car. A widened McLaren MP4/10 was ready for the San Marino Grand Prix, but he finished tenth clashing with Eddie Irvine while competing for points. He retired from the Spanish Grand Prix due to handling issues, and he decided to retire for good from Formula One then and there.
What impression did Mansell leave on IndyCar?
It remains the mountaintop for IndyCar.
The World Drivers' Champion left Formula One for IndyCar. It does not get bigger than that, and it hasn't come close.
Mansell took a healthy IndyCar Series and turned it in an international phenomenon overnight. Formula One viewership suffered and was particularly low come 1994 after the death of Senna combined with the absence of any past world champions. Prost was on sabbatical though he would never return to driving. Mansell was drawing bigger crowds in the United States than any of these venues had ever seen, and there was increasingly more interest from outside the United States in CART.
The best driver in world came and did what you expected the best driver in the world to do. Mansell won immediately, but he also adapted. Four of his five victories came on ovals, an entirely new discipline for him. He nearly won the Indianapolis 500, but he won the Michigan 500 in dominating fashion, leading over 90% of the race. He won on the short ovals at Milwaukee, Loudon and Nazareth. His road and street course form was still stellar, but he didn't fall back on his known skill set to win the championship.
There has been no free agent signing that has come close to matching what Mansell did for IndyCar. Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson moved to IndyCar and that was barely a blip in comparison to Mansell's move almost 30 years prior. Part of that has to do with how far IndyCar has fallen since The Split. A good portion of that has to do with how seismic of a move Mansell to IndyCar was.
For as memorable as this was, the Mansell years were only two. He only won in one of those seasons. Like Mark Blundell and A.J. Allmendinger, Mansell was a one-year wonder, but he was the greatest of them all.
A driver moving to another series on the verge of 40 years of age was never going to stay for long. Mansell did not become a staple on the IndyCar grid for a decade, someone a fanbase could grow up with. It was a brief moment that vanished. All the good that it did was quickly lost when The Split happened.
It is hard to fathom something like this happening again. There is too much money in Formula One and nowhere near as much in IndyCar. Formula One drivers have no desire to leave even if the schedule has expanded to an exhaustive length. As much as Formula One drivers would like to leave that circus, they also know it is far more money they could make anywhere else. As much as they may wish to try the Indianapolis 500 or 24 Hours of Le Mans or any other motorsports series, they can make money in Formula One. It is far from a guarantee they can do that elsewhere.
Mansell hasn't been around IndyCar since he left IndyCar. We do not see Mansell drop in for a random race at Mid-Ohio or Gateway. I don't even know if he attended any of the many anniversary Indianapolis 500s we had around the centennial celebration and centennial running. For as great as his one season was in IndyCar, it is not the defining moment of his career even if it was the defining moment for motorsports in the early 1990s.
For as great as Roger Penske is in 2024, he couldn't do what Paul Newman and Carl Haas did ahead of the 1993 season. Sadly, Penske wouldn't have the ambition either. Penske would have to pay the equivalent of double entire season prize fund to get Max Verstappen to run for one season or Lewis Hamilton to join the series or have Lando Norris or Charles Leclerc switch at the start of their primes. Frankly, I am not sure any of them would leave.
Formula One has been their dreams. If they are making $20-40 million a year to race in Formula One, I don't think $60-80 million a year, or $100 million a year in the case of Verstappen, would get them to switch to IndyCar. Yes, it would be more money, but I don't think their hearts would be in it. There might be some prestige in Indianapolis, but outside of that, no race compares to even the most passionless grand prix.
We will never see the equivalent of what Mansell did. Never is a strong word to use, but unless there is a major shakeup in the motorsports world, this will remain a one of a kind event that will only become more inexplicable as time goes on.
