Nigel Mansell’s 1992 Williams-Renault FW14B Formula 1 car driven to five Grand Prix victories en route to the World Championship is offered at the 2019 Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed sale.
Bonhams announced that the 1992 Williams-Renault FW14B Formula 1 car in which legendary British racing driver Nigel Mansell won five Grand Prix races on his way to becoming 1992 Formula 1 World Champion Driver is to be offered at the Goodwood Festival of Speed Sale on 5 July 2019. The Williams-Renault FW14B chassis ’08’ participated in 13 of the 16 Grand Prix races in 1992. Nigel Mansell drove this car with red racing number 5 in seven races, of which he won five and finished one second. It was driven by Riccardo Patrese in six further Grands Prix. No guide price has been released.
Note: Sold for £2,703,000 ($3,400,000) – the highest price ever achieved for a Williams race car.
Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed Sale 2019
Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed sale: 5 July 2019 at Goodwood near Chichester in the south of England, United Kingdom.
At the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed sale Bonhams earned £32,046,159 ($42,406,000) and sold the most-expensive BMW ever when £3,809,500 ($5,031,683) was paid for John Surtees’ 1957 BMW 507 Roadster.
The Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed sale is usually the most important of the three Goodwood auctions Bonhams holds most years. The Goodwood Members sale is in mid-March while the Goodwood Revival sale in September is usually a great occasion for historic cars.
The Goodwood auction record, also the British auction record, was set in 2013 when $29,650,000 (£19.6 million) was paid for a 1954 Mercedes Benz W196R Formula 1 single-seater racing car. At the time, it doubled the highest price paid for a car at auction and it is currently still the fourth most-expensive car ever sold at public auction.
Nigel Mansell’s 1992 Williams Formula 1 Car
The 1992 Williams-Renault FW14B chassis ’08’ Formula 1 car contested 13 of 16 qualifying Grand Prix races. En route to the 1992 Formula l World Championship, Nigel Mansell drove this car in seven races and runner-up Riccardo Patrese drove the car in a further six. Nigel Mansell won five of the seven Grand Prix races he contested in chassis ’08’ and finished 2nd in another before the car was entrusted to his Italian team-mate, Riccardo Patrese.
Under Mansell’s command, the car became known as ‘Red Five,’ after his race number, and while piloted by Patrese, it became ‘White Six.’ Patrese contested a further six Grand Prix races in this car that year, scoring World Championship points in three of them before ending the season as runner-up in the Drivers’ competition to World Champion Mansell.
During that season, the Mansell went on to break Ayrton Senna’s contemporary record of eight Grand Prix victories in a single season by adding four more to his Williams-Renault FW14B haul, thereby becoming the first driver in Formula 1 racing history to win nine World Championship-qualifying Grand Prix races within a single season. He sealed that memorable year’s Drivers’ Championship at the Hungarian Grand Prix in mid-August, with five qualifying rounds still to run. Mansell became the first Briton to win the World title since James Hunt in 1976 and, in parallel, Williams-Renault won the 1992 Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship.
Overall, this spectacularly historic World Champion Formula 1 car contested 13 World Championship-qualifying Grand Prix races, winning five and finishing second twice. It qualified on pole position seven times for its 13 Grand Prix races.
1992 Williams-Renault FW14B Formula 1 Car
The Williams-Renault FW14B design proved itself to be one off the most dominant Grand Prix racing cars of all time. It was also one of the most sophisticated and exquisitely complex ever built. The FW14B was designed by Adrian Newey, widely celebrated today as one of the most successful Formula 1 designers of all time.
In addition to its 3.5-litre V10-cylinder Renault RS3 racing engine, car FW14B/08 features Williams Grand Prix Engineering 6-speed semi-automatic transmission and Williams GPE ride-levelling active suspension. In combination with the car’s cutting-edge aerodynamic form, this recipe produced a car which boasted top level on-circuit performance in the 1992 field, in which it consistently out-performed the very best that Ferrari, McLaren-Honda, Benetton, and Lotus could pitch against it.
Having been painstakingly well-preserved, initially by Williams Grand Prix Engineering and subsequently by a single private owner, the Williams-Renault survives today in running order. Both its V10-cylinder engine and the sophisticated hydraulic active-suspension system have been exercised in recent weeks.
Mark Osborne, Global Director of Motorsport at Bonhams, commented: “The FW14B was the high-water mark in Grand Prix design for ‘92. It was so dominant that it trounced the competition in ten of the sixteen rounds of the Championship, with records tumbling along the way. As a young man, and along with a nation, I was in patriotic awe of the brilliance of the British Williams cars, and of Red 5 in particular. Chassis 8 was the focus of that adulation – the best of the breed – and in Mansell’s hands it took the first 5 rounds of the Championship. The FW14B was then and remains today one of the most sophisticated cars to compete in F1, and we at Bonhams are honoured to have been entrusted with such a motor racing legend.”
Formula 1 Cars at Public Auction
Bonhams has not released a presale estimate for Nigel Mansell’s Formula 1 Williams-Renault and valuing these cars are fairly complex. Although Formula 1 cars frequently come to auction, the desirability of the cars vary widely. However, active interest is expected for this Williams.
The 1993 McLaren MP4 that Ayrton Senna drove to his record sixth Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix victory sold for $5 million at the Bonhams Monaco 2018 sale. This result was seen as somewhat disappointing while Senna’s first Monaco racer – a 1984 Toleman-Hart – sold for a sensational $1.9 million in the same sale.
The 2001 Ferrari F2001 Formula 1 single-seater racing car that Michael Schumacher raced to victory in the Monaco and Hungarian Grands Prix races sold for $7,504,000 in the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art 2017 sale in New York. This was well above the $5 million upper estimate and the record highest price paid for a modern Formula 1 car.
The record price for a Formula 1 car was set at the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed Sale in 2013 when $29,650,000 (£19.6 million) was paid for a 1954 Mercedes Benz W196R Formula 1 single-seater racing car.
