McLaren boss Zak Brown has bought Nigel Mansell’s title-winning IndyCar at auction for just shy of $1 million, adding yet another high-pedigree racer to his vast collection.
The Lola T93/00 is fitted with a turbocharged, dual-overhead-camshaft Ford-Cosworth V8, which powered Mansell to four of the five wins in his successful 1993 campaign, as well as three pole positions.
The car went under the hammer at RM Sotheby’s ‘The House that Newman/Haas Racing Built’ auction at the end of October, billed as ‘one of the most significant race cars of the 20th century’.
Speaking at the launch of the one-off, art-infused livery McLaren will be running at this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Brown told TG the T93/00 was “a car I’ve been chasing for five years".
He explained: “I’d made offers for it over the last five years. Bernie Haas [wife of the late team owner Carl Haas] passed away, and [the family] decided to put the whole collection up at auction.”
And, er, is $995,000 a reasonable figure to pay for a bit of racing history like this? Don’t forget, this was the machine that turned Mansell into the only ever simultaneous F1 and IndyCar champion. “It felt like a good deal to me!” says Brown. “I’m quite happy.”
Brown says the car will be shipped over to the UK, where it’ll sit alongside stuff like the McLaren MP4/6 in which Ayrton Senna won the Monaco Grand Prix (also in ‘93), and another former Mansell car: the Williams FW11 that took Nige' to victory at the British GP in ‘87.
“I have all my race cars up at my race shop in Wakefield, that’s where I keep my race cars,” he says. “And then my road cars, I keep a few at the house and the others at Dunsfold.”
Ah Dunsfold, better known in this part of the internet as the TG Test Track. Will he be taking the T93/00 for a spin once F1 has downed tools for the winter?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” he grins. “For sure. I drive all my cars. Some more than others. But all my cars are ready to be raced. There’s nowhere in particular to race it.”
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