THE CAR THAT BIRTHED A TRADEMARK! The Story of Red 5 and the Williams FW10 

Fun fact, if you swap any 2 digit numbers around (e.g. 19 to 91) it'll always have a difference that is a multiple of 9 (91-19=72 which is divisible by 9).

Mansell Mania is the reason I started watching F1. His interview with Jodie Kidd is well worth watching, to hear the great man himself talk about his injuries is eye-opening.

When you showed the 1984 season results my jaw dropped at the number of retirements. I'm so used to seeing only two or three retirements, at most, from a driver in a year that seeing a sheet that looks 50% purple shocked me.

As you mentioned Star Wars, I can also recall a film "The Big Red One" - the number Mansell so deserved yet never had in F1 - with Mark Hamill in one of the leading roles.

I actually checked this out a couple of years back, since I’ve always had a great interest in the 1985 season due to it being a cracker, especially in the early rounds. It was at the 1985 Canadian GP that Nige first ran the Red 5 on his car. It feels like this season transformed his career in so many ways! Excellent video Aidan 🙌

seb brought the red 5 to silverstone last year, sounds incredible

Nigel Mansell and the red 5 were an iconic paring similar to NASCAR's icons like Dale Earnhardt and the 3 or Jeff Gordon in the 24.

Haha. Cars that were "less killy" were very likely much appreciated at the time. Nice description. 👌

Odd bits of history are always interesting. You also always manage to add something I didn't know, even when it's a story with which I am familiar. So yes, more please!

Red 5 standing by!

When I saw the tittle my eyes lit up by the end they'll be full of tears, miss these years mire than you will ever know Red 5 ftw❤

Nigel also ran a red 5 on a Jordan at the London F1 Demo in 2003

This is a positive comment for the RU-vid Al Gore Rhythm.

I usually add a 5, even when it's not needed, on my usernames because of .... well Sebastian Vettel. But Seb chose 5 to tribute to the famous red 5. So I guess in a way I'm also paying tribute to this iconic number.

FW10 is my all time favorite F1 car ever! Keke driving the wheels off it is my favorite driver car combo, from silverstone fastest average speed lap ever recorded, last to third at brands being a lap down, win at US gp, P2 at Kyalami banging fastest laps at the end to winning at Adelaide. If Keke and Nigel had that end of year reliability from the start of 85 I don't think mclaren would have had that season all their own way!!

Williams also had a carbon fibre gearbox , but it failed everytime they used it,till they worked out the paddle shift gearbox.

Whenever people talk about historical F1 things that are relevant because of Murray Walker I am always like: well, I am not from the UK, my broadcast did not feature him (yet we had our own legendary commentator: Heinz Prüller) and I didn't even know who he was before he passed away.

Where was the Human Intervention "Red Five" baxking track on this video? 🙂. (I had it on cassett!) Great video as always.

Mansell was my hero. He was definitely to me the British Senna. Deserved more championships than just the 1 in 1992.

I think another reason why Nigel got a red 5 also had to do with the helmets of Rosberg and Mansell. As long as Laffite drove the second car Williams had no problems to identify their drivers from the pitwall. Laffite had a darkgreen helmet, while Rosberg had a white and blue helmet seen from the front. When Nigel joined Williams they suddenly had two drivers with similar looking helmets - at least from a long distance. When Thierry Boutsen replaced Mansell for the 1989 and 1990 seasons there was no reason for Williams to stick to a different colour of the starting number. Boutsen wore a black helmet, while Patrese's helmet was white.

It took me a long time to figure out numbers in F1, but it didn't really matter to me because I could barely see them anyway and went by livery and the commentary to figure out who'd crashed (and sometimes I'd remember which driver was supposed to have a red T-camera and which one was supposed to have neon yellow, so that helped). I came to F1 from NASCAR, where numbers are chosen and held by the teams (so if a driver changes teams, they get a new number too); it's also a lot easier to see numbers on a stock car, so they meant more to me there than in F1. Since I couldn't see F1 car numbers anyway, I liked the "assigned by points" system because it meant that I could see how a team was progressing (or not) just by looking up their car numbers and dividing by two, but it didn't affect my ability to understand the race at a glance. Changing the system so drivers hold their numbers permanently was initially frustrating (since I thought it was a cheap shadow of the NASCAR system), but now that the numbers are larger and more visible (and TV and broadcast quality is much better, for that matter), I do appreciate knowing where to look to see which red or silver or blue car is in the wall.

man you really do tell the best stories

Mansell is the driver I became a fan of during my childhood. There were times he was unlucky; losing races through no fault of his own. The famous shot of him overtaking Senna when his tyre blew springs to mind. The race where Mansell was in the lead a couple of laps from the end of the race, only for the car to go one way, and one of wheels the other. I remember seasons where he would lead the championship only for unreliability to dash his fortunes. I watched the Cart season in 1993 on ITV religiously. Definitely a driver that deserved to be a multiple world champion. I feel fortunate enough to witness a fantastic era in F1 history. Accompanied by the commentary of Murray Walker and James Hunt was the icing on the cake. Nowadays it's not one driver I follow. I'd love to see Perez, Russell win a world championship. It would be great to see Alonso win another title with Aston Martin. I wonder whether Mansell is the unluckiest driver in F1? Over to you Aidan.

I'm not a mansell fan but it's amazing how many interesting stories surround him.

Thank you, I've been meaning to ask what the story was behind Red 5. Another Red 5 fact: Schumacher had it on his car for the 94 Spanish GP. I can't remember the reasoning, but as he got stuck in 5th gear for most of the race, I'm guessing it was considered unlucky and didn't use it again.

3:50 look at all those retirements!

Skip, skip. I wouldn't skip a lecture on stuff, I may or may not know. Keep it coming.

F1's number system back then was unique where the teams chose what numbers to run like Ferrari using the 27 and 28, and Tyrrell using the numbers 3 and 4 for example, it was similar to Indycar and NASCAR's number system.

Mansell ran 2 at Ferrari in 1990, due to Prost bringing the number 1 to the team that year.

Takes me back to my late teens, a classic era, and for me Nigel is my all time favourite driver.

I was literally just reading about nigel on Wikipedia and the part about red 5. Seconds before I seen this.

Nigel Mansell is my favourite F1 driver of all time. Partly because he's English, like me, but he was such a great driver, and doesn't get the credit that he should. In my opinion. Plus he knew that his car in 1988 couldn't compete with the Turbocharged cars of the other top teams, he gave an interview where he said that he would probably improve his golf because he had no chance that season!! He won the 1992 World Championship and then the 1993 Indycar championship which showed how great he was.

I liked the video because ooh, I didn't know that

Here's an idea for a 'what if' story/scenarios (out of all the many what ifs we could talk about). What if Mansell had stayed on at Williams for 1995 at the expense of Coulthard? In Maurice Hamilton's Williams book from 2009 Adrian Newey said that wanted Mansell to stay for 1995, but Frank and Patrick wanted Coulthard. Williams' race strategies were poor in 1995, so even a fully re-re-motivated Mansell won't have been a guarantee for the Championship.

My mind got to the Star Wars reference about 2 seconds before you said it!

Fine work.

awesome video

The FW11B won the constructors championship in 1987, not the FW12. The FW12 was the Judd engined 1988 car.

I stood next to Mansell's 86-87 car at Beaulieu. It was an amazing feeling.

good one!

If Mansell has been the same size and weight as, say, Alain Prost, I wonder how many more races and championships he might have won.

Alan Jones for the rest of his racing career even when using a variety of other numbers, and to this day, still maintains that 27 is his favourite number. Ironically had he accepted Ferrari's late 1982 offer to replace Didier Pironi, he would have been driving the No.28.

You forgot to mention that Red 5 also appeared at Donington at the end of the 1993 BTCC season.

Ouuuu that's interesting, i didn't know that

The thing is, if you mention "red 5" in F1 circles most of the guys around would know its Nigel Mansell... Seb would come from the younger fans, but even most of them knows who the original red 5 was...

Thanks, now do a bit on Le Mans, 'cause you can 😁 Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.

I'm very worried that at least one person is thinking 'fish finger pizza? Well, maybe......'.

Interesting video, thanks. It somehow reminded me, thath red and green colour blindness is the most common form of colour blindness... and theese are the colours of traffic lights 😅

If Ferrari hadn’t fired their trackside team from Alonso’s years, Vettel would’ve won multiple titles for Ferrari and the red 5 would’ve been more iconic

I wonder if we will have a driver in the future that goes full meme and picks 69 (nice)

What about the numers pre-1974? Would love to hear the story on taht - if you haven't done it already.

Everything was so cool back than. The Cars, the Action, the Rules, the Tracks... Also, all good Drivers back than switched between the Teams. Mansel drove Lotus, Ferrari, Williams, McLaren... Prost did the same. But today it seems like Drivers belong to the Team forever. The Teams suport the Drivers since their Childhood, and that is the Reason why they stay their whole Life in the Team. Back in the Days good Drivers like Leclerc or Norris could join a better Team and get Chance to drive for Win. But today they are forever in Ferrari, or McLaren.

For a brief moment I thought that you had said that an FW18 chassis could cost up to £30. Bargain I thought, but then I twigged :o(

Fish Fingers on a pizza? Dang...why isnt this a thing?

I've always taken zero whenever I could.

I forgot vettel 1st title was in red 5

I really hate the permanent number system. It's probably stupid of me to hate it, but I hate it. It's never occurred to me to blame Mansell for it, but...now I blame Mansell for it. Perhaps also interesting to note that in the early '90s CART had decidedly non-permanent numbers in use, and Newman/Haas getting the 5 for Mansell was not necessarily a sure thing. A team/driver was entitled to the number reflecting their previous year's result if they so chose (so not just 1 for the champion, but 2 for second place and so on). Some would pass and stick with a familiar number, leaving their points-based number up for grabs. Complicating things further, the Indy 500 was a one-race USAC championship at this time, and as CART had carried this numbering custom over from USAC, USAC was still doing it based on their own "championship results," so you would sometimes see full-time drivers/teams' numbers shuffled for the one race. As it happened, CART's number 2 for the bulk of the 1993 season would have been offered first to Michael Andretti, whose seat Mansell was filling. But the CART number 5 would have been offered to Scott Goodyear and Walker Racing, who would have been entitled to USAC's #2 at Indianapolis. So in effect a trade was made, allowing Mansell to use the 5 all season and Goodyear to use the 2 all season.

For many years I had "Il Leone" as my car's license plate. It was appropriate that he ran the 27 at Ferrari. BTW, I think it's lame how the FIA started designating specific number for a driver for their career a few years ago. Lame, but then so is just about anything the FIA has done for just about ever.

What's the matter with 0? I'd have that if I couldn't have 5. I thought 0 on Hill's Williams was just as iconic as Mansell's red 5.

I feel your pain. My first F1 car love was the 79 312T4. Then the Lotus 97T. Then the MP4/4. I mean, even £30 is stretching my budget, but unfortunately two of my cars are icons. Luckily I don't like any of the post 97 designs. Too fiddly.

Question about the rules regarding Williams’ 0/2 numbers in 1993: Did they get them because they were the team in which Mansell won, or because they took the Constructor’s title? That is, hypothetically if Mansell had taken the driver’s title in a Williams car and retired, but McLaren took the constructors title, would 0/2 have gone to McLaren?

Red 5 will ALWAYS be Star Wars for me...

Some folks aren't actually bad at maths, there's a condition called dyscalculia.

I feel daft now... Which driver is associated with number 8? I'm sat here racking my brains but I'm drawing a total blank 😂 8:29, I'd be prepared to send a lot of IOUs to own a Williams FW19. Five year old me loved that car back in the day and still does! Looking back I would argue 1997 was possibly the year with the prettiest grid! From memory at least I can't recall one car on the grid that was a minger that year. Bit off topic I know but I'm just throwing that out there!

Seb Vettel paid £2.7 Million for the FW14B and then I know he had a hell of a lot of work done on it.

Fish fingers on a pizza doesn't sound that bad

This never meant anything to me. It probably boils down to the fact that if their numbers are different colours, then the cars aren't symmetrical, which winds me up. It still does in F2, F3 and now IndyCar, with sponsors or backers having their colours on, and multiple drivers being in different teams, but all in Red Bull liveries, *and* their sponsors. It's not neat, dammit! You want to tell the drivers apart, we've got helmets for that! The driver numbers thing is the same, it means as little to me as shirt numbers in ball sports. They're just numbers, who cares? The tying of a number to a person is silly to me. The only number that matters is 1, that's the champion, and it should be mandatory. Looking at you here, Lewis. 'No. 44' sounds like a bus, not a racing car, how do you get excited over that? So anyway, Red 5, nah. That's not Mansell. The big eff off moustache, now that's Mansell.

White 6 > Red 5 😁

The red 5 made me get into F1. Now Max is putting me off F1.