About
Hi, I’m Scott Mansell, founder of DRIVER61. That’s me in the background, aged four. This is the exact moment my life-long passion for anything with wheels (and racing them) started.
And that’s my Dad on the back, the original DRIVER61. In the 30 years I’ve been involved in motorsport, I’ve been fortunate enough to drive some of the world’s most fantastic cars — from Ferraris to over 30 F1 cars — on the world’s most exciting circuits, surrounded by many amazing team members.
Today, our mission has evolved to educate and entertain motorsport fans around the world, helping more people not only enjoy the sport but also find their way into motorsport careers.
IT ALL BEGAN WITH DRIVER61
My love for motorsport started with my father, the original DRIVER61.
I grew up hanging around the circuits of the UK, watching him (Kevin, not Nigel) throw his Lotus Cortina around with such finesse and style, always bringing the spectators and commentators joy. He did this while running his team, Mansell Motorsport, where he engineered and developed customers’ cars.
I was four when I got my first kart, and I began racing at the age of eight. I loved every second, without realising that my father was teaching me not only how to drive, race and be mentally prepared but also how to engineer the machinery to reach its potential.
This is where the DRIVER61 name and logo originates. My father passed his motorsport knowledge to me, and now it’s my turn to do the same (with the help of the Internet) for a much wider audience. His racing number was 61, which in turn was from my Mum’s year of birth.
30 YEARS OF MOTORSPORT
After my karting days, I competed in lower-level single-seaters for a couple of seasons before taking the unusual route of competing in a seven-year-old F1 car in the European BOSS GP Series, at the ripe old age of 18 years and 4 days.
At that time, Formula Renault and BMW were the accepted paths for young drivers, and putting anyone under the age of 20 in an F1 car was not common.
I ended up winning the European championship that season, and I broke five outright lap records along the way. This raised a few eyebrows, and I was nominated for the McLaren Autosport Young Driver Award. I also tested with Christian Horner and his Arden International / Red Bull GP2 team and met with a couple of interested F1 teams.
As is all too common in motorsport, I struggled with budgetary constraints, and after a couple of years in and out of Indy Lights and European F3000, I decided to focus on developing race cars and coaching drivers.
During my racing career, I’ve been fortunate enough to test or race over 30 different F1 cars for private owners—bookended by 1982 and 2012 Lotuses—as well as hundreds of other racers ranging from Caterhams to McLarens.
More recently, I had the opportunity to test a Formula E car, where I’m pleased to say I was pretty competitive!
I’ve coached in over twenty countries around the world, helping hundreds of racing and track-day drivers become faster, safer and more consistent on the circuit. While I still race occasionally, it’s now more for the sheer joy of it than professional competition.
DRIVER61: OUR REACH AND IMPACT
In Dec 2024, our channels generated 15M views and 1.1M hours watched – that’s 125 years of our content viewed. That’s the first time I’ve calculated the figure in years, and honestly, it’s hard to get my head around!
Needless to say, our reach is growing quickly and we’re having fun doing it.
Racing cars will always be my love, but producing video content that connects with audiences and works for our advertisers so well comes in a very close second.
BEHIND THE SCENES ACCESS
What’s been particularly exciting in recent years is gaining unprecedented access to Formula 1 teams and suppliers.
This has allowed us to create truly high-quality content that explains the engineering behind these incredible machines.
A particular highlight was going behind the scenes with Ferrari at Le Mans, spending the entire 24-hour race in their garage, creating content that showcases the pinnacle of motorsport engineering and human performance.
Away from social media, our content is now featured on 11 of the world’s major airlines, including British Airways – something I never imagined when filming those first videos.
EXPANDING OUR MISSION
From its very beginning, DRIVER61 has been about education.
Initially, it was about taking my racing experience and teaching amateur and young racing drivers how to be faster on track. Today, we’ve widened that mission to helping more great people enter the world of work in motorsport through our sister website, Fluid Jobs (our motorsport jobs site) and our exciting new educational programmes.
We’ve partnered with F1 veterans who have decades of experience in the sport to create educational content and courses.
Whether we’re entertaining fans by showing them behind the scenes of Formula 1 teams or preparing them for careers in motorsport through our educational programs, the heart of what we do remains the same – sharing our passion for this incredible sport.
I feel incredibly lucky to still be involved in my passion and having such a good time doing it. Creating content about a sport I love is the perfect balance – it never feels like work when you’re talking about what excites you most.
Best regards,
Scott Mansell