Our new ‘Racing Rarities’ quiz: Now there’s something for your ears!

Mostly drawn from the archives of our photo partners XPB and Grand Prix Photo, every week from Tuesday we present a little piece of motorsport history. Tell us who you can recognise (Example: Jo Siffert, Monza, 1970) and join in the guessing game for the honour of it – there’s nothing to be won. Send your answer to: mathias.brunner@speedweek.com. The closing date for entries is midnight on Sunday of the current week.

Entry is free of charge. The competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over. Employees of the participating companies are excluded. The decision is final.

Any data provided as part of the quiz will be used solely for the purpose of running the competition and will not be passed on to third parties. Further information can be found in our privacy policy.

For the new quiz: Now it’s time to put your ears to the test! We want to know who is pictured in the photo, when and where it was taken, and why the driver took to the track wearing this strange helmet.

Our clue for the final task was: driver and car – two big names in Formula 1 – but they never went together, nor did the country where this circuit is located match the name of the World Championship race.

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The photo showed the Englishman Nigel Mansell in a McLaren; it was taken at Imola in 1995, during the San Marino Grand Prix.

Nigel Mansell mit seinem McLaren in Imola 1995

Foto: Grand Prix Photo

McLaren and Mansell didn’t fit together from various perspectives: not on a personal level, not technically, and not in sporting terms.

The McLaren MP4/10 was so narrow that Mansell missed the first races of the season whilst a wider monocoque had to be built for him.

When the 1992 F1 champion and 1993 IndyCar champion finally got behind the wheel, it became clear that he could barely cope with the difficult-to-handle car – a car that had also posed problems for Mika Häkkinen.

Mansell had to admit that this was not a winning car; at 41 years of age, he was no longer in his prime either.

After the two Grand Prix weekends at Imola and Barcelona, it was all over; McLaren and Mansell parted ways, and Nigel’s place was taken by Mark Blundell.

Former McLaren mechanic Colin Morgan spoke to our colleagues at The Race about Nigel Mansell: “My fellow mechanic Johnny Ostrowski and I carried out the seat adjustment for Nigel. When you spoke to other mechanics, you knew that Mansell always sat a bit cramped in the car, but this time in the McLaren he was literally stuck.”

“He was unhappy from the start. Even on the very first day, when he came through the factory gates, you got the feeling that he didn’t really want to be there, and the McLaren management didn’t seem to really want him there either.”

“When Ayrton Senna or Alain Prost were at the factory, the management were constantly buzzing around them, but Nigel was largely left to his own devices and just pottered about for a few hours.”

“His body language, his facial expressions, the way he spoke during test drives – it was all dreadful. There was absolutely no ‘I want to do this, I want to do that, let’s give it our all, lads!’. The whole thing seemed pointless – apart from the money, perhaps. Even at his final Grand Prix weekend in Barcelona, Nigel did nothing but moan the whole time before finally pulling the car over to the side, and that was that.”