Guess who’s back…

I have been on a secret mission. I feel a little like Tintin, travelling unexpectedly into unfamiliar territory again, briefed to separate the fact from the fiction. Unlike Tintin, I have no help from the resourceful Captain Haddock.

Anyway, my cover has been blown, the secret is out. Another well known motor racing magazine must have followed my tracks. So I am now at liberty to tell you that I send this dispatch from the Circuito Estoril in Southern Portugal and it is very hot in more ways than one.

I have spent the last two days with Nigel Mansell, his sons Leo and Greg, and the boys from the Chamberlain Synergy sports car team. What, you will ask, is the Mansell clan doing at Estoril in the heat of the Portuguese summer?

Well, as I said, it was a secret mission. No journalists, no photographers and no spectators. Only Motor Sport magazine, our sworn-to-secrecy photographer and the other teams taking part in a Dunlop test session. Nigel Mansell called this “ an exploratory experience” for him and his son Leo. Yes, Greg is here too, but he’s still a bit concussed after hitting the wall very hard at Mont Tremblant and he’s spent his time egging his brother on to go quicker than the ‘old man’.

Quicker in what, you want to know? In a Lola-AER 06/10 LMP1 sports car, that’s what. And let me tell you straightaway, this was much more than an “exploratory experience”. Mansells do not do things by halves, they do not – by nature – go about their business in a shy and retiring fashion.

Talking of retiring, that’s what Nigel did all those years ago, right? Wrong. I reckon he’s about to make another spectacular comeback, this time with his sons, in LMP1 sports cars. Heavy hints were dropped as often as the Dunlops were bolted onto the Lola. This evening, as the track temperature cooled to a mere 40 degrees, Nigel called for the new-generation rubber. He wanted three sets, please, and then he would show the manufacturer just how good is their new rubber. The next two hours were as electrifying as a tyre test can be.

And it was then that the call came through to team owner Bob Berridge from another magazine. We’d been ‘in camera’ for nearly two days and now the cat was out of the bag. Nigel, out of the car now having set the fastest time of the entire Dunlop test, took the call and told our rivals – well, not very much.

If you want to know the full and unexpurgated story of the latest dramas surrounding this extraordinary family, then make sure you see next month’s Motor Sport (out on August 1). My money, such as it is, is on Nigel Mansell making one last spectacular comeback before he finally slopes off to the golf course. Judging by his performance at Estoril, he has lost not one tiny tenth of his speed.

Perhaps more surprisingly, it was his son Leo who made the biggest impression. After two days at Estoril, the youngster was way less than a second off his Father’s best time. He’d never driven a sports car before, never seen Estoril and never sat in something with so much horsepower. It is very possible that Leo Mansell is on the verge of surprising a great many more people.

More next month. I’m off to cool down.