Mansell's 'remarkable' F1 career memorabilia sells for over £2m

Following an online auction which ended on October 11, nine of the top 10 sales were crash helmets; the most expensive being the lid used for his very first F1 win at the 1985 European GP – it went for £68,400.

That watershed debut win was the first championship victory at Brands for a British driver since Jim Clark in 1964, giving birth to ‘Mansell Mania’.

“You can’t con the fans,” Mansell told Motor Sport in 2009. “When I got into a racing car I wrung its neck, and they loved that.”

The top-selling trophy from ‘Red 5’s’ hugely successful career is the gold-plated San Marino GP first place award from his championship-winning 1992 season, which went for £28,800.

Selling for the same price was a commemorative sculpture given to him to signify his two years at Ferrari from 1989-90, a tenure which earned him the moniker ‘Il Leone’ from the fervent tifosi, a fan base with which he instantly connected by winning on debut in the Ferrari 640 at the 1989 Brazilian GP.

However, topping any trophy and most other lots was his personalised ‘5 NM’ car registration plate, which was snapped up by its new owner for £50,400.

While some of the memorabilia was on display in the museum, there was much more in storage, stacked in boxes and suitcases, which were opened and catalogued by auctioneers.

“In old suitcases would be overalls; some were hanging on rails, some lying agains the wall,” said Haynes. “I pulled out a Ferrari briefcase from an attic room in Jersey and said, ‘What the hell is this!?’ When we opened it we found an old Vertu mobile phone that probably had not been switched on for years.”

Earlier this year Mansell also sold a number of his famous competition cars. His 1991 Williams FW14 chassis No5 – which became iconic when Mansell gave a lift to Ayrton Senna after the Brazilian broke down at the end of that year’s British GP – went for €4.055m (£3.45m).

He also auctioned the Ferrari 640 that he won on debut with for the Scuderia at the 1989 Brazilian GP. It was bought for €3.605m (£3.07m).

At that very same race – in stereotypically melodramatic Mansell moment – the future world champ slashed his hand on a sharply-styled trophy, leading him to stagger away from the podium before finally taking the plaudits.

Haynes said that the sales were not motivated by the need to raise money but more so that Mansell could “put his affairs in order” now that he lives across the Atlantic.

“He is sentimental about the collection but he lives in Florida, all his stuff was in Jersey, and he never goes there any more. I think he has got to a point where shifting all of this over to the States was not really an option and that it could go to a better home.”