Nigel Mansell and The Magic Circle
August 2022

Formula 1 legend Nigel Mansell left an interviewer open-mouthed by pulling off an amazing magic trick.

The 1992 world champion couldn’t resist showing off his sleight of hand skills with a pack of cards at the end of a special interview that was filmed to mark 30 years since he won the F1 world title.

His show of wizardry came after the British hero had discussed how becoming a magician turned his life around following a terrifying 240mph crash at Le Mans. That 2010 smash left Mansell with a bleed on the brain and unable to talk until he used magic to teach himself to speak again.

“It’s an amazing thing. Magic makes your brain go backwards to go forwards so you retrain the brain,” said the 69-year-old.

“It probably took a whole number of months before I could actually talk properly again. Even to this day, all these years later, if I get tired I lose the power of pronunciation. But with magic it brought me back to society because I turned into a hermit. I wouldn’t go out, I wouldn’t see anyone, I wouldn’t even try to speak because of this dreadful noise - you’d turn round (and say) ‘who’s making that noise?’ and realise it’s you, you can’t speak.

“It’s the most scary thing I’ve ever been through and I’m here now today.”

Mansell is now a member of The Magic Circle - the world’s premier society of magicians - but admits he joined the collective by accident after struggling to master a trick.

“The Magic Circle was fantastic for me,” he added.

“They gave permission for me to have somebody teach me magic. Obviously, they’re very protective and part of the deal was I’d go to the Magic Circle three times a year to show them how I was progressing. After a couple of years I went down this one time to show them this one trick and they said: ‘Well who has taught you this? Who has been teaching you magic?’ and I said ‘nobody’.

“They said: ‘We haven’t taught you this, we know what we teach you, how have you done this?’ And I said: ‘To be totally honest, it’s your trick gone wrong.’ Doing tricks you can lose yourself halfway through and I was trying to learn this one trick that was a bit complicated and I’d get it wrong all the time. But the end result of the trick was actually quite good.

“Then they said: ‘Ah, so you’re inventing your own tricks now?’ I said: ‘I don’t know about that but I guess in some ways, maybe, because the last part of it is mine.’ They said ‘that’s brilliant we’d like you to be part of the Magic Circle’ which was fabulous.’

Watch Mansell’s stunning trick during a filmed interview with Adrian Flux, headline sponsor of The Classic at Silverstone, Click Here.

The Classic will be held at Silverstone across the weekend of August 26-28 and will feature a host of attractions, including Mansell's F1 world title-winning car from 30 years ago being part of an interactive display.