AT&T Williams F1

1991 was another epic year in Formula One. Nigel Mansell and Riccardo Patrese were challenging the Championship for the team in the legendary FW14s and the Spanish Grand Prix was a truly memorable race. Stewart Prattley was one of Nigel Mansell's mechanics that year and takes us down memory lane. 

We went into the Spanish Grand Prix on the back of a bad race in Portugal the previous weekend. Nigel [Mansell] lost a wheel in the pitlane at Estoril and was disqualified for receiving outside assistance, which gave us just a few days to pick ourselves up ahead of the race in Barcelona.

Nigel was 24 points behind Ayrton [Senna] going into Barcelona, the last race European race of the season, and it never crossed his mind that his World Championship challenge might be over. That was the thing about Nigel: he never gave up and we knew that he'd wring the neck of the FW14.

Having said that, we had a scare during the build-up to the race because Nigel twisted his ankle in a charity football match. Initial reports were quite bad, but when he told us that he'd be okay to drive we knew that he'd put the injury to the back of his mind and get on with the job. Nigel always had an ailment of some kind!

Nigel qualified on the outside of the front row, behind Gerhard [Berger] and ahead of Ayrton. I remember the grid being quite a tense time because it stopped raining during the build-up to the race and everyone wondered whether or not to use dry tyres. Nigel, like the other front-runners, elected to start the race on wets.

Ayrton got the jump on him away from the line, but nothing separated them during the early laps and Nigel eventually pulled that amazing pass on Ayrton down the pit straight. He had the inside line and their cars were separated by millimetres for what seemed like an eternity - not that I saw move live. In those days, there was only a little screen in the garage and there wasn't enough room for all of us to watch, so I just paced up and down like an expectant father. The first I knew of Nigel's move was when the people surrounding the screen cheered.

Nigel went on to win the race easily and the only tense moment for us was in the pitlane. I was on the left-front wheel gun and after what had happened the previous weekend, we were all a bit nervous about changing tyres. But we had no problems and Nigel took one of his greatest wins. It wasn't as good as his victory at Silverstone in '87, but it was right up there among his best.

With Senna finishing only fifth, the Championship remained alive for another weekend.