Photo credit: Indianapolis Motor Speedway
We still have a week to go before the IndyCar season
(finally!) gets under way with the race at St. Petersburg.
Twenty years ago, almost to the date, the season started in
Australia with the reigning world champion, Nigel Mansell, joining the circuit.
For 1993, Formula One and IndyCar essentially “traded” top
drivers as Michael Andretti, series runner-up to Bobby Rahal in 1992, left
Newman-Haas for McLaren.
Andretti, to say the least, had a difficult season overseas.
Mansell, on the other hand, jumped into Andretti’s Lola-Ford and won the
IndyCar championship in dominating fashion – clinching the title with one race
left in the season. For a week, he was simultaneously the Formula One and
IndyCar champion.
Mansell won the season-opening race at Surfers Paradise, in
part by taking advantage of a stop-and-go penalty to make a fuel stop. A cagey
move, and one that was outlawed soon thereafter.
In May, I’ll revisit Mansell at the Indianapolis 500, which
was one of the most interesting stories I ever covered during my sports-writing
days.
No comments:
Post a Comment