Nigel Ernest James Mansell (; born 8 August 1953) is a British former racing driver who competed in Formula One from 1980 to 1995. Mansell won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1992 with Williams, and won 31 Grands Prix across 15 seasons. In American open-wheel racing, Mansell won the IndyCar World Series in 1993 with Newman/Haas Racing, and remains the only driver to have simultaneously held both the World Drivers' Championship and the American open-wheel National Championship.
Mansell's career in Formula One spanned 15 seasons, with his final two full seasons of top-level racing being spent in the CART series. He was the reigning F1 champion when he moved to CART, becoming the first person to win the CART title in his debut season, and making him the only person to hold both the World Drivers' Championship and the American open-wheel National Championship simultaneously. Mansell is one of the most successful British Formula One drivers of all time in terms of race wins with 31 victories, behind Lewis Hamilton with 106 wins, and is eighth overall on the Formula One race winners list. He held the record for the most pole positions set in a single season, which was broken in 2011 by Sebastian Vettel. He was the last Formula One driver to win a Grand Prix over the age of 40 with his win at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix, until Lewis Hamilton's win at the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
Mansell raced in the Grand Prix Masters series in 2005, and won the championship title. He later signed a one-off race deal for the Scuderia Ecosse GT race team to drive their number 63 Ferrari F430 GT2 car at Silverstone on 6 May 2007. He has since competed in additional sports car races with his sons Leo and Greg, including the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans, and was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2005.
Nigel Ernest James Mansell was born on 8 August 1953 in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, where his parents, Eric and Joyce Mansell, ran a tea shop. He grew up in Hall Green, Birmingham. He attended Hall Green Secondary school.
Mansell had a fairly slow start to his racing career, using his own money to help work his way up the ranks. After considerable success in kart racing, he moved to the Formula Ford series to the disapproval of his father. In 1976, Mansell won six of the nine races he took part in, including his debut event at Mallory Park. He entered 42 races the following year and won 33 of them to become the 1977 British Formula Ford 1600 champion, despite suffering a broken neck in a qualifying session at Brands Hatch. Doctors told him he had been perilously close to quadriplegia, that he would be confined for six months and would never drive again. Mansell discharged himself from the hospital and returned to racing. Three weeks before the accident he had resigned from his job as an aerospace engineer, having previously sold most of his personal belongings to finance his foray into Formula Ford. Later that year he was given the chance to race a Lola T570 Formula 3 car at Silverstone. He finished fourth and decided that he was ready to move into the higher formula.
Mansell raced in Formula Three in 1978–1980. Mansell's first season in Formula Three started with a pole position and a second-place finish. However, the car was not competitive, as a commercial deal with Unipart required his team to use Triumph Dolomite engines that were vastly inferior to the Toyota engines used by the leading teams. After three seventh-place finishes and a fourth in his last race, he parted from the team. The next season saw him drive for David Price Racing. Following a first win in the series at Silverstone in March, he went on to finish eighth in the championship. His racing was consistent, but a collision with Andrea de Cesaris resulted in a huge cartwheeling crash which he was lucky to survive. Again he was hospitalised, this time with broken vertebrae.
Mansell's driving was noticed by Colin Chapman, owner of Lotus, and shortly after his accident, hiding the extent of his injury with painkillers, Mansell performed well enough during a tryout at the Paul Ricard circuit with Lotus, where he was pitted against a number of other drivers to determine who was going to take the second seat for the 1980 season alongside Mario Andretti, as Argentine Carlos Reutemann was leaving to go to Williams. Driving a 79, the seat eventually went to Italian driver Elio de Angelis, but Mansell was selected to become a test driver for the Norfolk-based Formula One team.
Mansell's skill as a test driver, including setting the fastest lap around Silverstone in a Lotus car at the time, impressed Chapman enough to give him a trio of starts in F1 in 1980, driving a development version of the Lotus 81 used by the team, the Lotus 81B. In his Formula One debut at the 1980 Austrian Grand Prix, a fuel leak in the cockpit that developed shortly before the start of the race left him with painful first and second degree burns on his buttocks. An engine failure forced him to retire from that race and his second, however an accident at his third event at Imola meant he failed to qualify. Team leader Mario Andretti wrote his car off in a start-line accident during the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal, so Mansell had to give up his car for Andretti to compete in for his home race, the final race of the season at Watkins Glen in the United States. Andretti announced he was leaving to move to Alfa Romeo at the end of the season leaving Lotus with a vacant race seat.
Despite Mansell being unpopular with sponsor David Thieme of Essex Petroleum, and much speculation in the press that Jean-Pierre Jarier would fill the vacancy, Chapman announced at the start of the season that the seat would be filled by Mansell.
Mansell's four years as a full-time Lotus driver were a struggle, as the cars were unreliable and he was continually out-performed by teammate Elio de Angelis. Out of 59 race starts with the team, he finished just 24 of them. He managed a best finish of third place, which he achieved five times during the four years, including Lotus's fifth race of the 1981 season, and only the seventh of Mansell's Formula One career. Teammate Elio de Angelis took a surprise win at the 1982 Austrian Grand Prix, and was frequently faster than his less-experienced colleague Mansell.
During the 1982 season, Mansell planned to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans sportscar event in order to earn extra money. At the time Mansell was paid £50,000 a year and was offered £10,000 to take part in Le Mans. Chapman believed that by entering the Le Mans race, Mansell was exposing himself to unnecessary risk and paid him £10,000 not to take part in the race. Chapman extended Mansell's contract to the end of the 1984 season in a deal that made him a millionaire.
As a result of the gestures, such as described above, Mansell became very close to Chapman, who made him equal number one in the team with de Angelis, and was devastated by Chapman's sudden death in 1982. In his autobiography Mansell stated that when Chapman died, "The bottom dropped out of my world. Part of me died with him. I had lost a member of my family." Following Chapman's death, relationships at Lotus became strained, as replacement team principal Peter Warr did not have a high regard for him as a driver or person. In his book Team Lotus – My View From The Pit Wall, Warr wrote about the 1982 season:
After carefully analysing the season just finished, it was completely clear who was the number one. It was Elio. He was faster, he had out-qualified Nigel ten times to three. Elio had seven points scoring finishes to Nigel's two and in addition to Elio's win in Austria, had a tally of more than three times the number of points gained by Nigel. What is more, the margin by which Elio eclipsed his team-mate in qualifying overall was a huge 4.5 per cent. And all this in the year when, as near as can be reasonably achieved, the two drivers were given equal equipment and treatment.