Missing out at the last still haunts Mansell

One man knows exactly how Lewis Hamilton will feel if he falls at the last hurdle in his bid for the Formula One world title next Sunday in Brazil.

Nigel Mansell was robbed of the crown in the sport's last three-way battle 21 years ago, when his tyre exploded spectacularly with just 44 miles left to race, and he is still haunted by it.

"At the time it was horrible — and even today it's not nice to talk about,' said Mansell, who led the 1986 drivers' championship by six points from Prost and seven from Nelson Piquet going into the season finale in Australia.

"It was lap 65 in Adelaide when the rear left tyre exploded. It took me nearly a quarter of a mile to bring the car under control. I was sitting comfortably in third, which was all I needed to do and, after a whole season, it was down to the last race . . . and the last 44 miles of that race. It was the biggest disappointment of my whole career.

"I was invited by the FIA to the end-of-season world championship awards in Paris. At the ceremony I sat next to the clerk of the course. He asked me if I knew what would have happened if I had crashed and I told him I would have broken both legs, or worse.

"He replied: 'If you'd crashed there would have been debris all over the track and the race would have been stopped. The rules stated that the race would not have restarted because two-thirds of the distance had been covered, so you would have been crowned world champion'. So I lost the world title twice in one day because I didn't know the rules."

Mansell does not believe the same fate will befall Hamilton, 22, who he is sure will earn many more world titles than he did.

"Lewis is a win-win situation," said Mansell, who got over his that disappointment 21 years ago by becoming world champion driving a Williams car in 1992.

"If he becomes world champion — and I firmly believe he will — he will round off what has been an astounding first season in F1.

"If either Fernando Alonso or Kimi Raikkonen pip him in Brazil then it's still been the most remarkable season by a rookie ever, and Hamilton will know, just as I did in 1986, that the world title has merely been delayed a year or two."