For those of you who followed F1 since the late 80s, you would be familiar with the titanic battles between the legends of F1 in the 80s/90s: Prost vs Senna vs Mansell vs Piquet. Those were iconic times in F1’s 60 year history. That was the time that real rivalry in F1 was all about. Between them, these four drivers have won 11 F1 World Drivers Championships, and won countless races. By comparison, the now Great Michael Schumacher has won 7 WDCs in is own right… an amazing achievement… but Schumi has been relatively untroubled by others due largely to the dominance of his Ferrari team (and a unthreatening teammate) and due to the uncompetitive position of his championship rivals in a number of years. So many F1 fans who went through the 80s would still look back to the golden rivalry between the fantastic quartet. Till today, the rivalry still burns…
No love lost there then…
21/12/2005
Nelson Piquet never made any secret of his feelings towards drivers he disliked, and there were one or two of them, most notably Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell.
Talking to our friend Jorge Girão at Sport Motores, the three-time World Champion made it crystal clear that he remains unimpressed with Mansell, who was his teammate at Williams for two glorious seasons in 1986 and 1987, during which time we witnessed many epic battles, not least the sensational fight at Silverstone in ’87.
“I tried to make a war inside the team to divide it,” admits the Brazilian, “because everything I tested and everything I developed in the car he (Mansell) would pick for himself. It was because of this that I made a war inside the team to try to win the Championship and it worked.
“Nigel was fast,” he added, “but he didn’t know how to set up a car, he wasn’t very clever, was very aggressive. But he was a no-brain.”
And they say that time heals.
Article from Pitpass (http://www.pitpass.com): http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=26767
Published: 21/12/2005
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