Nigelio - Blog Posts

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oh god okay nigelio masterpost here goes:

pov you’re nigel mansell scrappy f2 driver you’re 26 years old you’re a dork and you have begged and lied and scraped your way to a test at paul ricard with the Actual Lotus Team for a potential race seat in 1980. but. you are still injured from a crash you had in a race 6 weeks ago and you are pretending to be fine even though you’re in agony with literal cracked vertebrae.

when you finally get to the test the car is too fast and you can’t cope with it and you’re in too much pain and you’re miles off the quickest time which was set by some italian millionaire musical prodigy twink who looks like marlon brando with better hair and he will definitely get the seat instead of you and you’re devastated.

and then this beautiful rich kid says to one of his friends “I want to help him, this boy” despite the fact he is 5 years younger than you and he gives you tips on where you’re going wrong and what to do differently and then you find seconds in the car and you manage to do a time good enough to be offered the lotus test driver seat.

and the next year you are promoted to race driver alongside the rich kid and you get on really well even though you’re total opposites; he’s a roman aristocrat, he’s cultured and sporty and charming and you’re just some awkward working class kid from the midlands with a chip on your shoulder but you get along, you’re friends. he even gives you a nickname mansueto which means tame, docile, gentle, but to you he’s always just elio.

(one time you’re hanging out on the beach in brazil when one of the lotus team members gets caught by a riptide and you both run in the water to save him and you get to the guy first and get him back to shore and then you realise elio hasn’t come back with you and you have to be physically restrained from going back in the sea to look for him even though you’re completely exhausted. elio was ok but you didn’t know that.)

(one time you’re on a flight together in south africa in a tiny jet in a thunderstorm and elio is so terrified you go up to the cabin and speak to the pilot just to make sure everything is ok and reassure him.)

anyway your car isn’t that great but things are still going ok, you get your first podiums and elio gets his first win, you hang out at the drivers’ strike and elio plays piano for everyone and you will spend the next several decades recalling how ~talented~ he was on that occasion.

but. then your inspirational, legendary lotus team boss, your idol, your mentor, dies unexpectedly and a new guy comes in to run the team and he hates you. he starts favouring elio and giving him better equipment and tries to turn you against each other by giving you different information but eventually you figure out what he’s doing and stick closer together.

by now there is this hotshot new brazilian rookie on the grid and you know you’re going to get replaced by him for the next season so you decide to leave lotus and go to williams. and then lotus starts treating elio the way they treated you, favouring the new guy and letting him test more, giving him better equipment and generally leaving elio out in the cold.

so you’re testing the williams car at donington park when elio turns up out of the blue and says you both need to talk. and he flies you in his private jet to his father’s luxury mansion in the south of france and you stay over and you talk into the early hours about how he’s being treated at lotus and how it was the same for you and the realisation brings you closer together and the next day you drive with him to where lotus are testing at paul ricard and you escort him to the garage and you glare at the entire lotus team on his behalf because you’re so disgusted with how they are treating him.

(one time in canada he gets pole position over his amazing teammate and he comes and finds you in the pitlane afterwards just so you can laugh together about the old men outqualifying the ‘arrogant young kid’)

at the end of the season you finally win your first race with williams but elio decides he has to leave lotus and goes to the brabham team for the next year. your new car is amazing and you know you’re going to be fighting for the title but elio’s brabham is awful and he’s really struggling in it. so after monaco his teammate riccardo patrese is meant to be doing a test but elio asks if he can do it instead so he can understand where he’s going wrong with the car. it’s at paul ricard again and you will be testing the williams there too.

there’s an accident. the car fails and crashes and elio is trapped. a fire starts. you are there, you are fighting to get him out of the car with some other drivers but you can’t do it. the marshals don’t know what they’re doing, there’s no doctors and no medical helicopter, because nobody thought something like this would happen in a test.

elio dies in hospital the next day.

the belgian grand prix is a week later. you take your first win of the season.

in your interview after the race, you dedicate the win to him.

tldr i would literally die for nigelio and you should too xx