SPECTATOR SPORT
Racing demons
Frank Keating
MERCIFULLY, the banshee din of Grand Prix cars won't be juddering Sunday after- noon television sets for a'few months. The snarling racers (the drivers, that is) have been dicing since well before Easter. The season ends in Adelaide this weekend. The sombre, bilious Brazilian, Ayrton Senna, is already world champion, having driven straight up the backside of his closest rival, Alain Prost, at the first corner in the penultimate race a couple of weeks ago. Senna plays dangerous dodgems out there. They say the only time he smiles is when he spies a shunt in his driving mirror.
Careering along in the slipstream of Senna and Prost has usually been Nigel Mansell. Our Nige is the most unlikely lead player in this conceited, glitzy, girl-greedy jet-set. When he puts his affable gormless oar in at the beautiful people's parties it's like hearing La Doke Vita jarringly dub- bed all through with a nasally thick Brum- magem accent. It irks the svelte, languid Gucci-poochies of the circuit that Mansell — always with nice little wifey in tow — is far more audacious behind a wheel than the lot of them except Senna and Prost. Le Paysan anglais, they sneer, may be fast, but he's slow on the uptake. Don't you believe it. Mr Mansell — sir! had me, as they say, a treat last year. I still quiver with fear at his name. I am not enamoured with motor sport — the un- speakable in pursuit of the unapproachable
— and know nothing whatsoever about gearbox ratios or double declutching. But because someone was sick or something I said, sure, I'd help out and cover a couple of Grand Prix races as best I could. At the Mexico GP I filed back that Mansell had been left at the starting-grid because he'd muffed getting into first gear (which was true) and had been left looking a stranded lemon like you and me at traffic lights. Then, on the way home, the tiresome stewardesses got in a tizz because there was nowhere in first class to dock the whopping great, gaudy, diamante-speckled 6-foot- wide spaceships which were the pair of corny souvenir sombreros Nigel was taking home for his kids; and also that he'd scraped off the béarnaise sauce or whatev- er from his main course and demanded tomato ketchup instead. Just matey, patro- nising, observations. A couple of weeks later, like a clot, I agreed to pen a piece of the usual waffle for some editor or other who wanted Nigel to be dead-heated in first place with Nick Faldo and Steve Davis as Britain's most colourless, boring sports- man.
Just before the Silverstone GP the phone rang. How about Nigel giving me a spin round the course in his new Ferrari F40, a 202mph two-seater, and so the nearest any passenger has ever been to simulating a racing driver's experience? Thanks, nice wheeze, I thought; good ol' Nige, he'll just gently pootle me around, amiably pointing out the curves and the cambers. I only began to twig when he insisted in the pits that I be zipped into a flame-proof suit, and that I was found a decently tight fit of crash-hat. As he checked my seat-belt, twitches of a diabolic grin began to lick around his lips. Then the thing erupted into an excruciating howl of revs and we catapulted out of the pit lane on to the track. Had I ever touched 200, he shouted? 'No, my Ford Escort is regularly overtaken by tractors,' I simpered. It was absolute, ultimate, scarifying hell. Three laps: hurt- ling, full-pelt petrifaction, every smidgin of every sense stampeded with fear, with this bloody Brummie beside me, chortling as he corkscrewed the blood-red, kamikaze capsule up this crazy corridor to, I was certain, the very doors of death. I had lockjaw, and couldn't speak for two and a half hours afterwards.
Delicious revenge. Terrorising revenge. And fair dos.
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