Nigel Mansell going for the Triple Crown at Le Mans with a little help from his sons
The Triple Crown of Motorsport is an elusive distinction earned by only a handful of drivers in the history of motor racing. It’s elusive partly because it evades definition, but given its immense difficulty, we’ll take the broadest possible: To score the Triple Crown, a driver has to win either the Indianapolis 500 or the Indy/CART title, plus either the Monaco Grand Prix or the F1 drivers’ title and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Fortunately not in the same year, but over the span of a career.
So far, Graham Hill remains the only one ever to have completed the feat, winning the Indy 500 in 1966, the Monaco GP five times in the ’60s, the F1 title twice in ’62 and ’68, and Le Mans in 1972. (Substitute the Daytona 500 for Le Mans, as some American fans suggest, and AJ Foyt and Mario Andretti would be crowned as well, with Juan Pablo Montoya poised to join them.) Jacques Villeneuve has come within spitting distance, having won the Indy 500 (and the CART title) in 1995, the F1 title two years later, and after leading at Le Mans for several hours in 2008 in the Peugeot 908, finally coming in second behind Audi. But the next winner, if by feat of pure ambition alone, could be Nigel Mansell.