Nigel Mansell’s “hugely personal” F1 memorabilia is up for auction

1992 F1 world champion Nigel Mansell has put tonnes of his own motorsport memorabilia up for auction, four years after the museum that housed it all shut to make space for his expanding car dealership business in Jersey, where he now lives.

A grand total of 330 lots are listed by RM Sotheby’s, with bidding set to take place over the course of a week from 4pm on 4 October onwards. Bidding for the first tranche of items will close on 10 October, with the rest following suit the next day.

The listings are awash with helmets - including that worn during his final F1 victory with Williams in 1994 - race suits, caps gloves, and trophies, and even a couple of bona fide steering wheels.

None of the lots will carry a reserve, although Mansell’s personalised 5 NM number plate is expected to attract the highest bids with a winning figure somewhere between £30,000 and £60,000.

There’s also a three-year-old BMW R18 II Leone Edition, naturally adorned with Mansell’s racing number 5 (in red). Yours for £20-40k. Ish.

The haul includes plenty of stuff from his IndyCar career too (he won the title there in the Lola T93/00, don’t forget) and oddities like a Ferrari briefcase (pictured) and a crochet doll (also pictured).

"The collection is hugely personal to me,” said Mansell. “It represents the entirety of my career and is the vast majority of the items of clothing I have worn during my racing career; the helmets, suits and all the trophies I have won during more than 30 years of topflight motorsport.

"It is, in short, the material manifestation of the most significant moments of my career and it represents everything that I worked for from my teenage years through to the end of my racing career."

Anyone got a difficult-to-buy-for Mansell fan in the family? Their Christmas and birthdays could be sorted for the next decade and a half.

Now check out all the lots for yourself...