The irony of the Mansell/Williams saga

In the days after the Italian Grand Prix, the Club International des Anciens Pilotes de Grand Prix celebrated its 30th anniversary, and the venue chosen for two or three days of happy reunion was Venice. It was my great fortune to be invited to the festivities, and fine antidote they made to the dreary political machinations of Monza.

On the Tuesday morning around 40 ex-Grand Prix drivers and their wives, plus a journalist or two, clambered aboard a launch for a gentle meander through the Venetian canals. And any racing aficionado out for a stroll might have fancied he had taken a little too much rosso the evening before.

At a glance, here was just another group of tourists, posing for photographs by the waterside - but... surely, that's Stirling Moss! And Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham and John Surtees and Carroll Shelby and Tony Brooks and Roy Salvadori and, and, and...

We got on our way. I had bought an international selection of papers, and soon they were passing round the boat.

Time was it used to take a fatal accident for motor racing to make the front page of The Sun. But that was before Nigel Mansell was invented. 'Betrayed' it now screamed. How could that horrid Frank Williams refuse to give Mansell 'the wages' he demanded? Hadn't he won the World Championship? Risked his life for the Williams team? What were a few more millions, give or take?

On another page, dwarfing such trivia as the events in Bosnia, the setting up of a 'Save Our Nige' campaign was announced. By the hour the pound may have been plummeting, but all that mattered was that 'Nige' was being expected to scrape by on only three million.

The campaign - apparently aimed at reinstating Mansell in the Williams Fl team - seemed to fall on mainly stony ground. A protest 'demo' was announced for noon on Thursday, and the journal published a map of the Didcot area ('How To Get There'), even listing suitable trains and coaches from places far afield.

'Nige stunned by support of Sun readers', the journal trumpeted. The first 200 to present themselves next morning at the paper's offices, it advised, would receive 'free coach travel and refreshment on a day trip to the Williams base.'

Whatever next? I wondered. A phone-in (moan-in?) line to let readers hear a recording of Mansell and Williams in financial dispute?
I am told rather fewer than expected availed themselves of the offer. Who knows, perhaps rather more than expected believed those unworthy folk who saw the paper's campaign primarily as a cynical exercise in self-publicity. Imagine that.

Whatever, I was able to fight off my disappointment at the low turn-out, primarily because I had thought unspeakable the exhortations of The Sun that its readers should boycott products manufactured by any Williams sponsor. Here was an attempt to jeopardise the well-being of a British company which employs more than 200 people. Other people.

At all events, many of those who paraded outside the factory must have wondered why they had bothered, for the following day it was announced that Mansell had signed for Newman/Haas.

Back to Venice, earlier in the week. In the morning (lower case) sun, we drifted by St Mark's Square. Was it really but 48 hours since that announcement in the Monza press room?

"Boy, these negotiations are a big deal now, aren't they?" Tim Schenken said. "I remember, at the Italian Grand Prix in 1971, this woman came up and said Ferrari wanted to talk to me about driving sportscars in '72. I waved her away - thought it was a wind-up.

"Later it happened again, and I ignored it. Then, next day, she said, 'You must come now if you want to drive for Ferrari.' So I thought OK, maybe this is serious, and I went with her. All the way I was looking for people laughing behind their hands...

"We get there, and Peter Schetty, the team manager, says, 'What have you been doing? Mr Ferrari has been waiting two days for you!' And he had. We met, and did the deal on the spot. They must have thought I was so cool..."

The Anciens Pilotes were much interested in the goings-on of contemporary Fl, but occasionally floundered as I tried to explain some of its more Machiavellian aspects.

Mansell's decision to quit was lost on Clay Regazzoni, that lovely man, who saved confrontation always for the track. "I love the way Nigel charges all through a race," Clay said, "but I don't understand how he can leave simply because of money - particularly when he had the chance to stay in the best car."

He paused a while, looking out over the water. "Fl has changed so much, hasn't it? I had six years with Ferrari, and then they took Carlos Reutemann instead. At the time I was very sad, of course, but from there I went to drive for Morris Nunn and his little Ensign team - no money at all, but such happy times.

"I never really thought about money too much; for me, always the thing was to race. And it was fantastic someone would pay me to do what I loved."

A contented bunch of people they looked, I thought, as they photographed each other in St Mark's Square. Not many had grown rich from motor racing, but now obviously they remembered it well. From all over the world they had come - at their own expense - to see old friends again. This camaraderie was real, not staged

"You see," Stirling murmured, "there was a time when racing drivers liked each other..." And someone said, yes, but wasn't it a shame that, in 20 years, the Club des Anciens Pilotes would be gone. "After all," he mused, "can you see Senna, Prost and Mansell all joining the same club?"

The Sun passed into Innes Ireland's hands. "World's gone bloody mad," he muttered. It seemed as good a summing-up as any.