This is a personal account of sporting endeavour by Britain's leading racing driver who in both 1986 and 1987 was a luckless runner-up in the Formula One World Championship. Mansell made his Formula One debut in 1980, but had to wait until 1985 for his first Grand Prix victory and then won 13 in two phenomenal years. In 1986 his Championship challenge was sabotaged by a spectacular tyre blow-out at Adelaide and in 1987 by a crash in Japan. Mansell recalls the accidents, the day he was given the last rites and how he has come to terms with the deaths of colleagues on the track. His wife also describes what it is like to be the wife of a man who risks his life every time he goes to work.