{"id":953,"date":"2011-06-09T16:27:06","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T15:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seloc.org\/?p=953"},"modified":"2011-06-09T16:27:06","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T15:27:06","slug":"lotus-cars-nigel-been-there-loved-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/2011\/06\/09\/lotus-cars-nigel-been-there-loved-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Lotus Cars – Nigel: Been there, loved it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lotus have put up a piece with Nigel Mansell where he shares his thoughts on Indycar, F1 and Le Mans ahead of a great weekend of motorsport.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The legendary Nigel Mansell gives us his thoughts on this weekend\u2019s Lotus Motorsport triple bill\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nigel, for those of us brought up on Formula One, oval racing is a bit of an anomaly. I know it\u2019s much harder than it looks, but can you explain to us the challenges involved with those cars at those speeds and at those angles.<\/p>\n

Well the biggest challenge is concentration because at those speeds \u2013 averaging 200mph \u2013 if you have an accident, which is all too easy to do, it is going to be a really big one. You cannot relax for one second. After a few laps you\u2019re already into the backmarkers, so there\u2019s always someone in front of you. Then there is the drafting. It\u2019s a different animal altogether from Formula One. <\/p>\n

This weekend we\u2019re at the Texas Motor Speedway. Is there a big difference between one oval and another, or are they roughly the same from the view of the cockpit?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, they\u2019re very individual, with different degrees of banking and different surfaces that they\u2019ve laid the tracks with. So the level of grip is totally different from one track to another \u2013 as is the set-up.<\/p>\n

The grandstands in Texas promise to be filled to bursting. What is the atmosphere like at an IndyCar race and is it dramatically different to grand prix racing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it is. I remember winning at New Hampshire, which is quite a small oval, in 1993. I\u2019ll never forget it because it was August 8 \u2013 the day of my 40th birthday \u2013 and the whole crowd, a sell-out 90,000 of them, sang me Happy Birthday from the grandstands. I\u2019d never witnessed that before at any race in Europe. It was a very different experience, and I was very touched.<\/p>\n

Tony Kanaan won in Texas in 2004 en route to the title. Can he do it again this year with KVRT-Lotus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Based on recent results I think you have to say it\u2019s unlikely, but he had decent pace in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

In Texas, they\u2019re holding two short races back-to-back, and the grid for the second race is being picked out of a hat. Would you have been up for two races in one day when you were racing, and how do you feel about a grid decided by luck and not merit?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, two races at half distance, with split points, that could work. It means more entertainment for the spectators, but it also means more work for the teams. As for deciding the second grid by pulling names out of a hat I have never heard of anything so crazy. There\u2019s some merit in reverse grid qualifying (like they do with the top eight in GP2 and GP3 in Race 2), but as for this raffle draw you\u2019re talking about, I have never heard this happen in professional motor racing before. Some people will get lucky, but most teams and drivers are going to end up being very unhappy.<\/p>\n

Turning to Formula One, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve always seems to host dramatic races. How did you find it personally?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like Montreal, it\u2019s one of the great cities of the world. There\u2019s a great atmosphere between the two rivers. The circuit itself presents some strange challenges. Because it isn\u2019t used much there is very little grip, and the car slides more there than on any other circuit. It\u2019s both a challenging and demanding track, and I think we\u2019re in for a tremendous race. I have good memories from Montreal. A few sad ones too, mind, but some great ones particularly from the turbo era, winning in 1986. Canadians are terrific supporters of motorsport, and I always looked forward to going there.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a mix of long straights and tight turns. Does the emphasis on mechanical grip over aerodynamic grip level the playing field a bit?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It can do on a track like this, yes, and factoring the Pirelli tyres into the mix will make it all the more unpredictable. The word \u2018compromise\u2019 comes to mind, as no one will have the perfect car. You\u2019ve got the chicanes when the emphasis is on brakes and grip, and downforce does come into play, but you also need a car that is slippery and fast enough down the straights so as not to get overtaken. You compromise one for the other, and I think that\u2019s why Canada has thrown up some great races in recent years.<\/p>\n

What do you make of DRS and KERS?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like to see a level playing field, and KERS give some teams an advantage over others. It is a very expensive bit of kit. Some teams do it better than others. Other teams don\u2019t do it at all because they can\u2019t afford it. But, then again, you don\u2019t want to stop progress and KERS is a fascinating technology. The thing is, now overtaking comes down to a technical system, where one driver can keep his wing open and lower his drag and the other can\u2019t. I believe overtaking should come down to driver skill not driver aids. But the jury is still out on both, and I\u2019m going to reserve judgment on this until later in the year when we\u2019ve seen more races.<\/p>\n

Nick Heidfeld has scored two seconds here. How do you rate he and Vitaly\u2019s chances this weekend?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If they can get the balance of the car right and do what I call the most perfect laps they can do, I think they can be up at the front. But they need to be patient and hit the sweet spot of the tyres to take advantage of that one lap. One lap and another can be half a second apart due to the sweet spot of the tyres and how they fall off. That half second makes an enormous difference when it comes to your placing on the starting grid.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve won the F1 World Championship, you have won the Indy Car title. You would still love to wear the laurels at Le Mans, wouldn\u2019t you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, and I would be there again this year but the sponsor support didn\u2019t come through. Last year was my first year doing it, and it was a special experience to do so with my sons Leo and Greg. In the end it was massively disappointing though, for we had a tyre failure at 200mph five laps in. We were on the wrong tyres \u2013 Dunlop did us no favours at all. We should have been on Michelins. If we had, I\u2019m sure we\u2019d have had no problems.<\/p>\n

Sounds like it\u2019s still a sore subject. Is this the toughest race in the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s the toughest, but I would say it\u2019s the most demanding. I\u2019ve done tougher grands prix, in terms of being exhausted at the end. Le Mans isn\u2019t exhausting, you\u2019ve just got to concentrate. But it is very dangerous, and what you\u2019re worried about is what\u2019s going to break. It\u2019s mostly about the endurance of the car rather than the human body. Twenty-four hours flat-out without skipping a beat \u2013 from that point of view, Le Mans is awesome.<\/p>\n

Lotus is excited to be returning to La Sarthe with the new Evora GTE. Have you been following the progress of the Lotus Jetalliance team in preparation for the event?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They have to find a lot more pace from what I understand, but they\u2019re working extremely hard and with time they\u2019ll get competitive. It\u2019s a super car, the Evora, with massive potential, but you don\u2019t make a Le Mans winner overnight. These things, as everything in racing, take time.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lotus have put up a piece with Nigel Mansell where he shares his thoughts on Indycar, F1 and Le Mans ahead of a great weekend of motorsport. The legendary Nigel Mansell gives us his thoughts on this weekend\u2019s Lotus Motorsport triple bill\u2026 Nigel, for those of us brought up on Formula One, oval racing is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[304,334,426,490,514,613],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lotus","category-motorsport","tag-evora-gte","tag-f1","tag-indycar","tag-le-mans","tag-lotus-cars","tag-nigel-mansell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f.seloc.club\/w691\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}