A Rookie in the Colonies

INDIANAPOLIS —  He doesn’t look like a race driver. The Prime Minister, perhaps. A colonel in the Khyber Rifles. One of the Queen’s Own Fusiliers. He wouldn’t look out of place in a monocle. You want to address him as Your Lordship. Cricket should be his sport.

Ronald Colman would get the part. He’s stiff-upper-lip English. You figure Clive of India looked like this. His wife might be the duchess of something or other.

What he’s doing in an Indianapolis race car is something for him to answer. And he’s tired of answering it.

You ever think you’d live to see a race driver at Indy named Nigel?

Indy race drivers don’t come out of English drawing rooms. Garages in Torrance are more like it. You’d never mix one of them up with an Oxford graduate. His diction is less than Oxonian, more Texan. He says “you was.” He eats with his hat on and drinks coffee with the spoon in, wears high-heeled boots even though he has never been near a cow and he’s been around cars so much he doesn’t bleed, he leaks oil. Chances are, he was born in a lube rack and he feels undressed without a wrench.

So, what is Nigel Ernest James Mansell doing in this company of gum-chewing ruffians? Shouldn’t he be in a racing sloop or playing polo? Or shouldn’t he be in one of those races where you hit trees, not walls, and drink champagne instead of beer?

Mansell is simply, by definition, the best race car driver in the world today. He’s the reigning “world” champion, a title European racing arrogates to itself. He won a whole bunch of Grand Prix races at places like Monaco, South Africa, Brazil, Spain and Germany. He won 14 poles.

At Indy, he’s a rookie. That tells you all you need to know about Indy. You don’t win here, you’re merely a teamster. This is the testing ground. Win here, you’re a race driver. Headwaiters know you. You get invited to the White House. This is the heavyweight championship of the sport. This is the people’s race. No elite here. Prost and Senna wouldn’t win this every year. This is not racing for the baccarat set. This is six-pack and barbecued chicken racing. The winner gets a million dollars and the respect of every guy who ever changed a spark plug.

Mansell seems to fit more the silk scarf racing of the Continent. He says “pro-juice” for “produce.” He notes that he was “introjuiced” to Indy car racing in Australia this year and he won.

A lot of people think he was really “introjuiced” to Indy car racing at Phoenix. He crashed into the wall. “I made an eight-inch hole in a 12-inch wall at 185 miles per hour,” he recalls smilingly. A lot of people thought that was his official welcome to Indy racing.

He might know which salad fork to use and how to kiss a lady’s hand, but there is no danger Mansell will be too much of a gentleman for the Speedway. In a race car, he’s as aggressive as Mike Tyson. He goes toe-to-toe. Mansell dives for the corners with the best of them and has the scars to prove it. He broke his neck once in a Formula Ford accident but left the hospital by the fire escape when the doctors told him he should never race again. That was in 1977. He crushed a vertebra in Japan 10 years later. The doctors simply sighed.

The eyes give him away. They are questing, probing, as alert as a fox’s. They destroy the British shopkeeper’s image or the unprepossessing figure (at 5 feet 10 and 170 pounds, Mansell is no threat to Schwarzenegger in a bathing suit). Mansell is as predatory as the British lion. In fact, the Italians nicknamed him “Il Leone.”

Indy could not believe its good luck, getting Mansell in the tournament. It was a piece of good fortune, like getting Seve Ballesteros in your Open. They even bent the rules to get him his trademark red No. 5 on his car. He probably shouldn’t be in a race car yet. He had a 100-stitch operation on his back in April. He plays with pain, gets in a car screaming.

He will be racing on an oval track for the first time in his career. He will be turning counterclockwise for the first time in his career. And he will be in a race that’s more than 2 hours long, another first. He finds none of this daunting. He finds it amusing that he had to pass a rookie test, rather like making Tom Kite qualify for a British Open or Nick Faldo for ours. “I even had to pass the Florida drivers’ test,” he says and smiles. “I thanked the inspector profusely. ‘Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if I’d failed it?’ I asked him.”

Indianapolis is not Monza or Monte Carlo. It’s not a hand-kisser’s run through the boises of France in the company of marquises and guys with “vons” in their names. It’s a brutish slugfest, a dock fight. With the new configuration, the first turn Sunday may turn into Dempsey-Firpo. Bloody nose racing, no place for a gentleman.

It’s a long way from the land of Shakespeare and Shelley. It’s a long way from the Isle of Man (henceforth known as the Isle of Mansell), where Nigel makes his home.

Mansell turned to Indy car racing for reasons of honor and pride. He felt his Formula One sponsors were asking him to defend his world championship in inferior equipment. He was insulted. I mean, that’s no way to treat British royalty. They didn’t get that empire sending Sir Francis Drake out in a leaky frigate.

Mansell took the act to the colonies, where they appreciate guys who don’t give up the ship. It might be like fighting a wildcat in a closet, taking on the good old boys on an oval. A.J. Foyt has already given him a good piece of advice: “Just don’t turn right, boy.”

They won’t need Paul Revere to tell them this redcoat is coming. He will be right on the tailpipes of these Yankee Doodle Dandies, getting even for Yorktown. You look at Mansell in his red flameproof suit, and you know there will always be an England, all right. The Union Jack might fly over Victory Lane Sunday night for the first time since Graham Hill and Jimmy Clark routed our automotive Minutemen almost 30 years ago.