Hamilton title bid recalls bitter memory of Mansell

Lewis Hamilton was only a year old the last time Formula One witnessed a three-way battle for the title. The 22-year-old Briton, who can become the glamour sport's first rookie champion as well as the youngest in Brazil on Sunday, will not, however, want to be reminded too much about that 1986 showdown.

There are some striking similarities between the McLaren driver's current situation and Nigel Mansell's at Williams all those years ago, and it would be too painful to take the parallels any further.

Hamilton leads his unhappy Spanish team mate Fernando Alonso by four points ahead of Sunday's finale at Interlagos, with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen a further three behind. In 1986, Mansell was also leading the championship and fighting a disgruntled Latin team mate -- Brazilian Nelson Piquet -- on and off the track while Frenchman Alain Prost made up the triumvirate.

Like Alonso, Piquet was a double world champion who thought that he deserved top billing. And like Alonso, he accused the British team of favouring the Brit. Mansell went to Adelaide in October for the season-ending Australian Grand Prix with a six-point lead over Prost and needing to finish only third to be champion. He was comfortably in third place when 18 laps from the finish, in what still ranks as one of the most agonising moments in British sport, his left rear tyre exploded as he accelerated at around 300kph. He was out of the race, title hopes shattered.

"Even today I still cannot believe the way that the 1986 championship was lost," the 1992 champion said in a 1995 autobiography. Williams made such a terrible mistake in not letting mecome in for tyres. I wanted to change them, there was no reason not to pit, but they told me to stay out. When I finally brought my convulsing car to a stop at the end of the long back straight after my tyre exploded it suddenly struck me like a thunderbolt that the world championship had gone," he added.

"I had been a mere 44 miles (70 kms) away from clinching the title. I was destroyed. I felt a deep sense of despair in the pit of my stomach. It was without doubt the biggest disappointment of my entire life."

Williams then called in Piquet, who had been leading, for a precautionary tyre change and Prost won the race and the title for McLaren.

"My whole life I had waited for this opportunity...I had touched it briefly but then it was gone. My head was full of a million 'what ifs' but none of them meant anything at all,"recalled Mansell.

The burden of expectation at home that the moustachoied Briton was under then was similar also to what Hamilton is undergoing now. In 1986 it was 10 years since Britain had last had achampion, McLaren's 1976 winner James Hunt. The gap is slightly greater this time, with Damon Hill the last in 1996.

Hamilton can at least comfort himself with the thought that he may have already had his 'Mansell moment', and maybe without the catastrophic consequences suffered by his luckless predecessor. The Briton could have wrapped up the title in China at the beginning of the month but skidded out on his approach to the pits while wrestling with tyres worn down to the canvas following his team's decision to delay a change. His 12-point lead was down to four but he can still hope his destiny is in his own hands. If all goes well on Sunday, the rookie may find himself on the same podium as Alonso and it will be interesting then to see whether the Spaniard leans over and whispers similar words to those spoken to Mansell by the late Brazilian champion Ayrton Senna in 1992 when the Briton finally secured the title.

"He put his arm around me, hugged me and said: 'Well done,Nigel. It's such a good feeling, isn't it? Now you know why I'm such a bastard. I don't ever want to lose the feeling or let anybody else experience it," Mansell recalled.
REUTERS