A Nigel Mansell rampage and an iconic move grab a famous win – 1987 British Grand Prix

Dickie Stanford spent several decades as Williams’ team manager – but back in 1987, he was the gearbox mechanic on Mansell’s car.

“I remember it as being one of those weekends that was very nearly perfect. The cars in ’86 and ’87 were relatively simple, but we’d usually be working in the garage until 2am. At Silverstone that year, we were done by 6pm, looking at each other wondering what to do next. It helped that we were so close to the factory, but even the Sunday morning warm-up went perfectly.

“Often after those, we would be changing things on the car right up until the race start, but that year Nigel did a couple of laps in the spare car, and then the rest of the warm-up in his race car, and everything worked smoothly. The only thing that went wrong was not taking pole position – and of course, the problem he had with the vibration.”

Prost rolled the dice on Lap 29 by coming in for fresh tyres, but Piquet and Mansell, never separated by more than a couple of seconds, weren’t expecting to make a pit stop – but Mansell was having trouble. The vibration – later traced to a dislodged wheel weight – got progressively worse, to the extent he was struggling to maintain the pace, and so, on Lap 35, pitted for new tyres. Well clear of Senna, running third, he retained P2, but emerged with a 29-second deficit, and with 29 laps to make up the ground…

A tough task

“To be quite honest, we felt, or at least I felt, we weren’t going to catch Piquet,” says Stanford. “Nelson had too big a lead… and then Nigel breaks the lap record, then breaks it again, and again, and again.”

Tweaks around the Woodcote and what became Luffield corners meant a lap record was always going to be set during the Grand Prix, but Mansell’s assault was mesmeric. He set a new benchmark on his first flying lap out of the pits.