Nigel Mansell, English race car driver
Nigel Ernest James Mansell, (; born 8 August 1953) is a British former racing driver who won both the Formula One World Championship (1992) and the CART Indy Car World Series (1993). Mansell was the reigning F1 champion when he moved over to CART, becoming the first person to win the CART title in his debut season, and making him the only person to hold both the World Drivers' Championship and the American open-wheel National Championship simultaneously.
His career in Formula One spanned 15 seasons, with his final two full seasons of top-level racing being spent in the CART series. Mansell is the second most successful British Formula One driver of all time in terms of race wins with 31 victories, (behind Lewis Hamilton with 103 wins), and is seventh overall on the Formula One race winners list, behind Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Fernando Alonso. He held the record for the most poles set in a single season, which was broken in 2011 by Sebastian Vettel. He was rated in the top 10 Formula One drivers of all time by longtime Formula One commentator Murray Walker. In 2008, ESPN.com ranked him 24th on their "Top 25 Drivers of All Time" list. He was also ranked No. 9 of the 50 greatest F1 drivers of all time by the Times Online on a list that also included such drivers as Prost, Senna, Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark.Mansell raced in the Grand Prix Masters series in 2005, and won the championship title. He later signed a one-off race deal for the Scuderia Ecosse GT race team to drive their number 63 Ferrari F430 GT2 car at Silverstone on 6 May 2007. He has since competed in additional sports car races with his sons Leo and Greg, including the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans, and was inducted to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2005.
1953Aug, 8
Nigel Mansell
Choose Another Date
Events on 1953
- 28Feb
Francis Crick
James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's Nature (pub. April 2). - 6Mar
Joseph Stalin
Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. - 8Apr
Jomo Kenyatta
Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by British Kenya's rulers. - 19Aug
1953 Iranian coup d'état
Cold War: The CIA and MI6 help to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. - 30Oct
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.