Premature Celebration

The 1991 Canadian Grand Prix was a race full of surprises. Despite winning the first four races of the season, Ayrton Senna had qualified in third. That made way for Williams duo Riccardo Patrese and Nigel Mansell. By the last lap, Mansell had taken pole position...but a spur-of-the-moment decision would put his entire race in jeopardy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Canada, nineteen ninety one. It's race five on the Formula
One calendar and Anton Senna is leading the season. In fact,
he's taken top spot on the podium for the first
four races and everyone's already thinking the championship is his.
But today at Jilverneuve in Montreal, the starting grid has

(00:28):
had a shakeup. Senna qualified way back in third behind
a surprise speed run from the Williams team britt. Nigel
Mansell has qualified second behind his teammate Riccardo Patresi. But
Nigel is about to learn an important lesson. Make sure

(00:50):
you've actually won before you start celebrating. Hey, welcome to
the pool room, where we celebrate the winners, losers and
the weird stuff between. I'm Tony Armstrong. The nineties were

(01:28):
iconic for Formula One. In those years, the starting grip
could include names like Senna, Prost, Schumacher and pi K
legends of the sport. But let me take you back
to the Canadian Grand Prix in nineteen ninety one. Nigel

(01:49):
Mansell is quick off the line. He slips ahead of
his Williams teammate Ricardo Petrezi and the pair maintain a
one to two formation. With Nigel's lead widening, he can't
put foot wrong and for sixty eight flaorless laps, he
dominates the Canadian track. The rest of the grid is

(02:10):
not so lucky. The race is a disaster of technical
issues for the other teams. Berger retires on lap five
with battery trouble, Moreno spins out on ten. By lap
thirty five, Senna drops out with a busted alternator, Prost's
s gearbox fails and a Lacey's engine dies. No such

(02:34):
trouble for Nigel as he enters lap sixty nine, Everything's
going right. By now, Petrasi has dropped back to third
and Nigel's found a full minute between himself and the
next fastest driver, Nelson Pika, his notorious rival. Nigel's win

(03:07):
seems certain, and the commentary box agrees. Legendary commentator Murray
Walker announces the last victorious lap before Nigel's even halfway
around the circuit. The crowd is deafening. The V ten
Renao engine screams. Everything points to a win for the
Williams team. So convinced is Nigel of his impending success,

(03:37):
in fact, that he takes a brief moment at this
critical stage of the race to wave to his adoring,
cheering fans. He's waving to the crowd, goes Murray Walker,
practically hysterical with excitement. He's going to win again. It
certainly seems that way. Nigel charges past the Concord Bridge

(03:59):
and into the line last hairpin, just a final straight
to go with the lake to his right and victory
upperhead and then his car suddenly decelerates. Murray Walker's beside himself.
He's taking the hairpin very he's stopping. It's an unbelievable scene.

(04:23):
Thumping his steering wheel. Nigel Mansell comes to a complete stop,
only a few hundred meters from the flag and short
of his first win of the season. Nelson p K
takes his Stephen Brabery moment and slips past the stationary
Williams to claim victory for himself, as it turns out

(04:46):
his last win before retirement. PK is not sympathetic, telling
the press afterwards, I don't feel sorry for nobody. Nigel
Manseill cont leave it. He'd got into the headpin exactly
as he had in the previous sixty eight laps, changing

(05:06):
down from fifth gear to fourth. Then he says it
just went into neutral and the engine cut out quote
like there was an electrical failure. Exactly what happened is
still a mystery. Some claimed he'd waved so enthusiastically his
hand accidentally hit the engine kill switch. Others reckoned the

(05:26):
waving made him forget to change gears, causing his revs
to plummet. The theory being at more than three hundred
k's an hour, the engine thought things were about to blow,
so to protect itself and the driver from becoming a fireball,
the car shut down. The official line from Williams was

(05:48):
a gearbox failure. Whatever the truth, it ended Nigel's race.
After crunching the numbers, he was classified sixth. Thankfully for
Nigel and for Williams, he wasn't going to let humiliation win.
In nineteen ninety two, Nigel Mansell started the season with

(06:09):
six straight wins. It would be a glorious year full
of podium appearances and record breaking feats. He became the
then most successful British driver of all time with twenty
eight wins, bumping down champion Jackie Stewart. Then he set
the record for the most wins in a season and
the most pole positions records not broken until the two

(06:31):
thousands plus. Age thirty nine, Nigel claimed the drivers' championship
in only the eleventh round, the fastest anyone had ever
clinched the sixteen round season. It would be his first
and only F one crown. Today, Nigel lives a quiet
life away from the spotlight, emerging occasionally for a round

(06:52):
of golf, but the nineteen ninety one Canadian Grand Prix
lives on in infamy and Nigel Mansell goes down in
history as the first Formula One driver to lose a race.
He held for every lap until the last. Thanks for

(07:20):
listening to the ballroom with me, Tony Armstrong. This has
been an iHeart production. Join me next time for more
cracking sports stories. See you then,