TOCA shoot out – 1993

Duke Marketing. 55 mins, £10.99.

Now here’s a triumph for commercialism. Nigel Mansell’s twisted Ford Mondeo had barely finished steaming when this hit the shops.

The dust jacket bills the TOCA Shoot Out as “The British motorsport event of the year”, which sets the sensationalist tone.

As with any touring car footage, it can be edited to entertain. That’s one of the beauties of the current two-litre formula. What you have to question, however, is whether one 30-lap touring car race merits such extensive coverage (as you can read elsewhere, James Hunt’s entire career is only granted an hour and a quarter), the presence of Mansell and Derek Warwick notwithstanding (though you wouldn’t really know Warwick was there from the promotional blurb)?

Well, we did say that it smacked of commercialism . . . and if 60,000 people were drawn to Donington by the Mansell magnet, there’s a fair chance that there’ll be a stream of willing customers traipsing through WH Smith to buy it

This doesn’t include some of the best bits of coverage to which the BBC had access, but it’s worth watching the accident several times, if only to question Mansell’s subsequent inference that the huge impact wasn’t self-inflicted.

Look carefully, Nigel. See the attitude of Tiff Needell’s Vauxhall Cavalier, and those large, glowing red things amid the rear light cluster?

He’s applied his brakes, because he’s trying to avoid that wayward Mondeo . . .

Sure, Mansell may have been deflected towards the bridge after clipping Needell, but you can’t say that the latter didn’t do everything within his power to avoid contact.

When it boils down to it, this is a 55-minute video about a spectacular accident that has already been documented to death, and the sad thing is that you just know that it will sell like mince pies at this time of year. S A