Nigel Ernest James Mansell was born on 8 August 1953 in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire. After a long and dramatic Formula One career spanning fifteen seasons — including five years at Williams, two at Ferrari, and a second Williams stint culminating in the 1992 World Drivers' Championship — Mansell found himself without a competitive F1 seat for 1993. His high salary demands and a contract dispute with Williams led him to announce his departure from Formula One following the 1992 season, during which he had won nine races and secured the title with an unprecedented fourteen pole positions from sixteen rounds.
Mansell signed with the Newman/Haas Racing team to partner Mario Andretti, replacing Andretti's son Michael who had moved to Formula One and McLaren. The move represented an enormous leap into the unknown: CART oval racing, including the Indianapolis 500, was far removed from the road circuits that had defined Mansell's entire professional career, and the transition from Formula One machinery to the turbocharged CART cars of the era demanded a complete adjustment of technique.
The debut could scarcely have been more dramatic. At the season opener held on the street circuit at Surfers Paradise in Australia, Mansell became the first rookie in CART history to claim pole position and win the opening race of the season. The achievement immediately announced that the F1 champion's talent translated to American conditions.
A few weeks after Surfers Paradise, Mansell suffered a substantial crash at Phoenix International Raceway that severely injured his back and threatened to derail the season. He recovered and continued competing, and at the 1993 Indianapolis 500 he led the race before finishing third after losing the lead to Emerson Fittipaldi and Arie Luyendyk following a poor restart.
The championship campaign produced five race victories in total. One of the most memorable came at New Hampshire International Speedway, where on his fortieth birthday Mansell won a 200-mile race in what he described as perhaps his most exciting CART victory. With consistent high-placed finishes supplementing the wins, the points accumulated sufficiently for Mansell to clinch the series championship — and when he did so, he was still the reigning Formula One World Champion, the F1 title having not yet been decided for 1993. This made him the sole holder of both championships simultaneously, a feat unprecedented in the history of the sport and never since repeated. He also received the 1994 ESPY Award for Best Driver in recognition of the achievement.
Mansell retained his association with the red number 5, which had been his identifier at Williams. Newman/Haas secured the use of the number 5 from Penske — it had previously been Emerson Fittipaldi's number — fitting naturally into the team's livery colours of black, white, and red used by main sponsors Texaco and Kmart.
Mansell's second CART season with Newman/Haas in 1994 proved far less successful. The car suffered repeated reliability problems that cost him points and wins. Relationships within the team also deteriorated, particularly with Mario Andretti, who later reflected that Mansell had been the most difficult teammate of his career. A part-time return to Formula One disrupted the campaign: Williams obtained permission from Newman/Haas to bring Mansell back for the French Grand Prix and the final three races of the 1994 season following Ayrton Senna's death, paying him approximately £900,000 per race. Mansell signed with McLaren for 1995 but departed after just two races when the car proved uncompetitive, ending his active single-seater career.
Mansell's CART championship achievement sits uniquely in the record books. The breadth of skill required to win both the Formula One World Championship and the CART title — the premier series on two different continents, on completely different track types with different machinery — remains unmatched. His arrival injected substantial European attention into CART at a moment when the series was drawing considerable international talent, and his rookie-season championship demonstrated that talent at the highest level needed no period of adjustment to master a new environment. The 1993 CART season stands alongside his 1992 Formula One title as the twin peaks of Mansell's competitive career.