“Taxi For Senna” – Nigel Mansell & Ayrton Senna, Williams Renault FW14 – British Grand Prix 1991

Without wishing to sound soppy, finishing these models has been strangely emotional.

I could start by writing that this project started back in March 2026 when I began building the kits and things got properly underway. Or I could start with the day 5 years ago when I first had the idea to build these signed dioramas (something that I’ve been doing ever since). The truth is that all these points were key, but I think this all really starts 35 years ago when my parents took me to Silverstone to watch the British Grand Prix for the very first time.

Before that day I was aware of motor racing (my Dad had always been a fan), but it wasn’t something that had truly entered my world. But that day was where my enduring love for F1 really started; Nigel Mansell immediately became by boyhood hero, and I was completely and utterly hooked.

I was already into model-making in those days, but I remember the frustration of not being able to build a kit of Mansell’s Williams at the time. Hasegawa did eventually release a 1/24 scale kit of the FW14B, but the 8-year-old me lacked the necessary skills to do it justice. Tamiya did also produce a wonderful 1/12 scale kit, but that stretched beyond the means of my early-90s pocket money by some way.

As time wore on I moved into 1/43 scale kits, and in around 2005 I hit upon the idea of building a model of Senna sat astride Mansell’s car as he did on that famous day. That resulted in a converted Denizen figure doing the job, but that project too was abandoned (or at least paused) until 2016 when I got back into my hobby (and also when I started the earliest version of this website – the blog post is still here).

It was five years later in 2021 (during the Covid pandemic) that I first had the idea that I could make a small number of dioramas with a view to then selling them. My thinking being that in terms of financial cost and man-hours the best way to justify the price that I would need to charge would be to have the models signed by the subject… the main question being “how?”

I began by writing to the wonderful motorsport artist David Johnson (if you’re not aware of his wonderful palette knife paintings you definitely should be), who was very generous with his encouragement, time and advice as to how I might go about making my idea a reality.

After a couple of false starts (in which time I was able to collaborate with Sir Jackie Stewart and Race Against Dementia on “The Flying Scott”), I was finally able to arrange for Nigel Mansell to sign these dioramas in support of UK Youth. Arriving at this point was a genuine thrill, but it was just the beginning of an intense period of work – Nigel was due to attend a UK Youth fund raising event at the Williams F1 Conference Centre in May 2024, and I only had a week to get everything ready.

I realised that this may be my only chance to collaborate with Nigel in this way, so I quickly decided to prepare not just 5x diorama bases, but 15x… this would means 3x dioramas rather than just one – at that moment, The Mansell Trilogy was born.

This Silverstone ‘91 diorama was intended to be the first and only model, but has ultimately become the last. In that knowledge, I have made sure to push on all fronts to make sure that these are the best of the bunch. This has included a complete redesign of the figures (to improve the details and realism), custom decals, newly-designed Armco and tyres.

I hope that collectors out there enjoy these models, and that I’ve managed to do justice to the iconic subject. done

The eight-year-old me would’ve literally wet his pants if he knew this collaboration with his hero was waiting for him in the future…

Thanks Nigel.