Club Arnage

'Was taken away in an ambulance, but was later described as "fine" by the organisers'

"fine" = a big girls blouse?

Discuss

Concussed apparently.

Nah, he always talks like that  ;)

Some footage, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtzSZUjXHXk

An erstwhile Mansell fan   ::) ::)

Del

the 24 minutes of le mans.drowned his sorrows in rasberry ripple

It was a necessary precaution. Having had a tyre go at one of the quickest parts of the track, he would be taken to the med centre for evaluation. S.O.P.

Being released as fine is a good outcome.

I did speculate that he may have begged them to take him away in an ambulance because his boys were going to kill him!

Our thoughts were he saw a track-side pie van and was momentarily distracted ;D

Does anyone know how badly damaged the car was?
We wondered if a driver with more experience of endurance racing might have dragged it back to the garage, rather than worrying about a little bump on the head...

Did they tow his car away or just cone it off ;D

That's what I was thinking - think back a couple of years, and you'll remember Alan McNish, barely able to walk, car crabbing, absolutely wrecked - but he got the car back to the pits, and despite the fact that his team mates had to drive 11 and 12 hours each, the team still managed to finish the race, in 3rd position I believe.  I can't believe that Nigel was so badly injured, that he couldn't just limp the car back, get it fixed, and then slump in a corner.......it's not even as if the car was badly damaged. 

Maybe he's so used to F1, where damage spells the end of your race, that he just forgot?
 

Bas Leinders brought the Marc VDS Ford GT back home and that one looked very second hand. The Ginetta didn't look too badly damaged. I wonder what really went on. Why did they send out a fire brigade when there was clearly no fire ? I mean, everybody could see that.

Our grandstand was directly opposite the dumping ground at the end of the pit straight.

Mansells car seemed to have little in the way of bodywork damage and the wing was still on, so we assumed it had been a side impact

The rear right hand wheel did seem to be dragging and the crew could not just roll the car off the ramp, maybe because the other rear tyre was flat or something was broken. I dont think it was mobile under its own power.

The crew did not want pictures taken of the car and kept pushing photographers away before it was covered up.

Just my thoughts........

If you watch the footage, that is linked above, you can see that one of the marshals seems very concerned and repeatedly looks into the face of Mansell, and makes no attempt to get him out of the car, plus is beckoning the medics very enthusiastically.

Also, there appears to be no movement from Mansell either. You don't see his helmet moving about round the side of the intake (but that could be the hans device holding his head up / restricted).

At the time I suspect they reacted as they thought necessary, it is easy for us to sit behind our TV screens fuelled by little green bottles and comment on footage that only shows the tail end of the accident. Has anyone got a link to footage of what led to the first impact on the other side of the track?

When McNish had his big one in 2004, that put him out of the race (but not the car), was it perhaps a case of him simply getting going before the marshals could react properly, or was it a case he was not suitably concussed at the time of impact to prevent him from driving.

All too easy to criticise whingeing Nigel when we don't know the full story.

 ???

I'm another one to agree. While I think Mansell does sound like hes whining more than a gearbox,(think thats down to his 'nasel accent' more then anything) they did spend most of the time repairing the righthand side (track view) barrier of which we didn't see the first bit of his shunt. I for one was looking forward to a whole race from him and hope he comes back next year. There's plenty of people who knock him but for me , hes british and as wikipedia says,

'Mansell was the reigning F1 champion when he moved over to CART, being the first person to win the CART  title in his debut season, making him the only person in history to hold both titles simultaneously.

His career in Formula One spanned 15 seasons, with his final two full seasons of top-level racing being spent in the CART series. Mansell remains the most successful British Formula One driver of all time in terms of race wins with 31 victories, and is fourth overall on the Formula One race winners list behind Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost, and Ayrton Senna.'

The TV commentator I heard was Johnny Herbert who said that particular spot was common for blowouts as the car took off coming out of a corner - it had happened to him - and when it did that, you'd end up with exactly the accident which Mansell had. Eurosport were very quick and sure that it was caused by a blow out at high speed.

While their coverage overall was good, Eurosport actually managed to miss quite a few "incidents" or at best just catch the tail end of them.

Please don't get me wrong - Nigel Mansell is my childhood Idol, I was hoping to see a full race as well, in fact, I really hope he comes back next year - one last outing from our Nige, hopefully when the regs will allow him to shine, would go down VERY well thank you very much!

One of our group who was listening to Radio LM mentioned something about a suspension pick-up pulling out of the tub - something they'd had issues with before.  Not sure if that was speculation or fact, but could explain the seemingly unexpected nature of the shunt.

Personally I'd rather they checked drivers were properly OK before allowing them to drag wounded cars back to the pits, particularly if it was a high speed impact.

ba-dum-tish!  ;D

The headline on Sunday in one French newspaper was:

'Mansell - Le 17 minutes du mans!'

always taken piss over his size but a good racer.saw him win first g.p. in 85 at brands.and blindin catch up and overtake at silerstone in 87.gave nelson a kick up the arse.but in the sand at estoril with missing wheel standing next to a load of brummies was great.also the driver who overtook senna the most.great driver bit of a twat.

As regards the behaviour of the marshals, they acted completely correctly. If you remember Marc Gené last year, when he destroyed the Pug at Porsche Curves, the marshals were quick to get him out of the wreckage. The result was that they were summarily thrown out of the circuit and will never marshal at Le Mans again. It is strictly forbidden to help a driver out of the car unless he/she is in mortal danger, which is what happened with the 61 car at Mulsanne when it caught fire. As regards the suspension pulling out of the tub, that was Sebastien Bourdais' Pug, not the Mansell car.

On TV they didn't catch the initial impact so its hard to tell just how big of a hit it was, but the car did look fairly undamaged as it was being taken away.  As for Mansell, was anyone seriously expecting anything other than hysterics and drama?  Remember the days of falling down in Dallas, or cutting his hand on the trophy at Rio, or staggering all over the place in front of the royal box at Monaco?  The biggest drama queen the sport's ever known.  I've made my feelings about Mansell known many times on this forum.  I thought he was a very good driver, not as great as some would believe (most of his success coming in equipment that a monkey could have driven to victory, in ordinary cars, he looked very average)  But for me his ability & success has always been overshadowed by being one of the most obnoxious, complaining, paranoid, persons to ever sit in a racing car.
Fax

Change the freakin' record - I don't think anyone really cares what you think of him!

He mostly kicked the arse of any team mate using the same equipment including Mario Andretti & Alain Prost who stole his Ferrari chassis only for Mansell to still beat him!

Your missing the point and the spirit of the Mansell's doing Le Mans - British family using a relatively small British company's chassis and engine and investing their own money to enter the greatest race in the world. One could argue that an LMP2 would have been the better route but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

I and many, many British fans hope they will be back to do it again!!

Robbo, last time I checked Prost has four world titles to Mansell's one, and during their year together at Ferrari (1990) Prost won five races to Mansell's one, Prost finishing second in the final standings, Mansell fifth.  Hardly blowing Prost into the weeds there Robbo.  And how the f**k do you believe Prost "stole Nigels' car"?  And yes, Mansell won the '93 CART title, fortunately for him in a car largely tested and setup by teamate Andretti, since Nigel rather than helping out with the development was largely preoccupied with playing golf with buddy Greg Norman.
Good for Nigel, he blew a sh*t-pile of money to buy his kiddies a ride at Le Mans, since they couldn't actually earn one on merit, only to stuff the car in the first hour, made me laugh one we realized he was okay...
Fax

Just a little bit of a dilemma here as I actually agree with a lot of what you both say and no I am not sitting on the fence, perhaps just a bit. Good stats Fax but a lot of what Robbo says is pretty right as well. I thought,at the time, that NM was pretty good and being a little patriotic, at the time I did not realise that I had no English blood but was more French and Canadian!
Well Jacques was Canadian and raced withe the number 27 as I did, pure coincidence.

Back to dinner...

>Martini...LB

British Family, British chassis and engine,  yup thats great to see, but Mansell money?  I doubt that very much.  Nigel doesn't part with his money easily, in fact he does like to charge for absolutely anything and everything, witness the prints on sale at the Beachdean-Mansell merchandise truck, £100 without signatures £150 with!!!

Yep, I would like to see the team back next year, but with a decent pro-driver in the line-up, they've done the father and sons thing now.

Poor old Nige'. So sad that he crashed out in the first few minutes of a 24 hour race.

From my own standpoint, I have a feeling that it would be better for him to rest upon the laurels of his 1992 World Championship that he worked 12 years in F1 to achieve and his CART Championship win in 1993. His ill-fated return to F1 in Williams and McLaren was a sign of the future. He was not re-signed by Williams who opted for Coultard in 1995 and his pace in the ill-fitting McLaren couldn't match that of Mika. Despite his disastrous TOCA shoot-out in 1993, he returned to touring cars in 1998 but never really made any impression and quietly faded into the background.

I was in the press room at Le Mans scrutineering and overheard him being interviewed. He was clearly optimistic about the project (but I suppose he would be) and spoke of his wish to make his mark and that of his boys on the 24 hours of Le Mans. The consensus of the assembled CA web team was that Nigel had underestimated the difference between a 1000km  race on a permanent circuit and a 24 hour race on public roads. I did have a slightly embarrassing moment when standing at the press coffee facility and one of our cohorts asked me from a few feet away if I was going to interview Mansell. In reply I said (in a raised voice) something flippant and mildly disrespectful of our formerly moustachioed Brummie hero, only to turn around and see him standing right behind me. Eeek! Dave has red face and Nige' smiles indulgently at my discomfort.

TBH I share Fax's sentiment on mansells past, good driver but marred by a huge chip on his shoulder.

However I do think he has maybe changed, according to those that where there is performance at the drivers parade hinted at a more relaxed Nigel.

As for driving at Le Mans, maybe he did underestimate it, was that because he was 'sold' on the deal by the team owners who had their own agenda, it cant have hurt thier bank balance to have mansell on board?

I dont see anything wrong in someone setting up deal to race with his 2 sons, who may or may not be anygood. Given the right situation, I would like to think I would be the first person to enter a team codriven by my twin daughters, I doubt we would win, but i would have fun trying.

I hope he does not give up on the project, as it represents a good deal for his sons, who by all accounts seem to have topped out ability wise, after all McNish, TK, Biela, Lehto etc never set the world alight in F1 one but have done okish at other levels!

Oh yes it could......

I've spent a bit of time googling for pictures of Mansell's accident or the car up against the barriers while he was extracted but haven't been able to find any.

This is the closest I could find. As commented earlier, I've certainly seen cars in much worse condition crawl their way back to the pits :

(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a400/Jager1994/201005GinettaZytekc.jpg)

Has anyone else seen any pictures online they could share ?

According to Andrew Howard the damage was worse than first thought http://www.planetlemans.com/2010/06/29/beechdean-mansell-will-return-to-lms-in-hungary/ (http://www.planetlemans.com/2010/06/29/beechdean-mansell-will-return-to-lms-in-hungary/)

I don't think the issue was the state or condition of the car.......it was more the condition of the driver. Suffering from concussion, I doubt he was up to the task, and I suspect the medics put a stop to any idea he might have had of trying to get the car back to the pits.

I watched it live, and obviously saw as much as everyone that was watching TV, and obviously saw more than most that were there (which would have included me if I were in situ) I do not believe that NM made any move to either get out of the car or move it and sat in the car until he was carried out, at which time the commentators thought that he might have hurt a leg or three. Not the case. He hurt his head - perhaps his head was: a. too big for his helmet, B. too big for the car, c. to big for his boots... who knows perhaps he was just unlucky, which I perhaps hope was the case and that he and the team will return next year. As long as it does not increase the crazy gang that turn up, all for the good.

One thing for sure his appearance certainly helped with the media exposure, and did a lot for his sponsor. There must be teams that have been going for years that would love, and deserve, that type of exposure.


>Martini...LB

martin
my answer is c
thats my final answer

Having previously raced, sprinted, hillclimbed in the UK. My ultimate ambitition was to do the 24hr.

There was no way I could endure the stress these guys go through.

Agreed, I wasn't good enough even to be considered unless I had money and big corporate finance.(But could I do it? No way) I would just like to race the circuit. I gave up my national lisense in '92.

It's suprising that at a slight angle impact at high speed can create little damage, but the 'personal and physical' can be immense.

Just hope that the Mansell family with their squillions will fund another entry.

The 'stats' I read, was that 55K Brits went this year. It would be good for the marketing angle to ensure that the Mansall's booked thier next year.

Mansell was interviewed on BBC1 as part of the F1 coverage today.  I thought it was a good interview, and he came over very well.  He certainly said that the accident was a lot bigger than caught on the TV, and he said it was the first accident he had which as the car headed towards the barrier he thought he wasnt going to survive it.

He is also doing a cycling challenge and they showd some coverage of his training and showed him being held by other cyclists whist cycling.  He said it was due to the effect of the concussion which meant he couldnt see properly whilst cycling. He did take the mickey out of Eddie Jordan suggesting he should be fined for his shoes, and out of DC who he said took his car IN f1