While the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso will go down in history, the late '80s and early 1990s are often viewed as a high point in Formula 1 racing.
And right in the thick of it at the sharp end was Nigel Mansell who went wheel-to-wheel with greats like Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet among so many others, going on to win the 1992 world championship in dominant style - with a broken foot!
In a new book Staying on Track: The Autobiography Mansell has opened up about the challenges he has faced on and off the track and tonight he chatted to Off The Ball's Joe Molloy about a remarkable career.
Even before his F1 career had started, it could have been over after a serious accident in 1977 left him close to quadriplegia.
"It was a really ugly time because when I broke my neck initially, I couldn't move my arms or my legs. So I was lying in hospital for quite some time and I was in there for a week and it was really quite significantly bad and then when I foolishly discharged myself and went to a private specialist, the first words he said to me were simply, 'do you want to live and if you live, do you want to be paralysed for the rest of your life because if you don't do as you're told there's a significant chance either one could happen.'"
The 62-year-old also talked about the mental strain of driving an F1 car as well as the dangers, which were particularly apparent in his era when safety policy was still evolving.
Nigel Mansell exhausted after race at Long Beach in 1993 Steve Etherington / EMPICS Sport
Speaking of dealing with the shock of losing good friend and Ferrari racing icon Gilles Villeneuve in a horrific 1982 crash, he said: "I think the shock's with us, even today. It's something that you just have to get by. The drivers of the past were true gladiators and it was part of the job and as horrible as it was, the realisation - and I think that's why a lot of drivers never got close to anybody - because you had to deal with the reality [that] if you lost them, the aftermath of it was so, so difficult and that's why everyone was isolated because you tried to insulate yourself from the horrible side of the job."
Discussing the period in which he began to evolve into a serial winner from the mid-80s onwards, Mansell added that the extent of the dangers still had an affect as he dealt with the death of former team-mate Elio de Angelis.
He also distinguished the F1 of his day and the more technologically advanced cars of today.
"The driver counted for far more back years ago than in the present era where you have 30 or 50 different computers helping to drive the car today," he said, also detailing the political "shenanigans" of the sport in his time in a field of legendary names.
Looking back on the greats, he described Senna as the best "outright out-and-out racer", also tipping the hat to Michael Schumacher for his incredible achievements in winning seven world titles.
And he also talked about a less well-known aspect of his life - his involvement in magic.
"I'm part of the magic circle in London and doing a lot of magic for charity and for children and it's a great ice breaker. We have some amazing tricks now where even seasoned professionals are quite surprised I'm able to even do."
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