Saturday 6 July 2019 is a day that will forever be etched in Aussie racer Christian Mansell’s mind.
It’s the day that almost ended his nascent racing career. It also proved the profound depth of his determination to succeed in the face of adversity.
“Diabetes day,” he tells Fox Sports.
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Mansell, an energetic young racer from Maitland, New South Wales, had only just started racing cars in Australia when he ended up in hospital with a blood glucose concentration more than four times the healthy amount.
The diagnosis for the then 14-year-old was clear: type 1 diabetes, an incurable lifetime disease.
“Obviously that was a very big shock,” he says. “No-one really saw that coming — but if you’re honest, you never do.
“That was a very, very tough period of time in my life.
“I was obviously scared. I was worried. I didn’t know what to do. Could I continue racing? It was a very, very worried time.
“And I was so, so annoyed at the doctors because there was a Nationals round two weeks after and they were like, ‘You are not allowed to race that. You’re so fresh to this, what if something was to happen? You’re 14, you’re a kid, you’re not going to be mature enough.’
“But I was like, ‘What if I can prove it to you?’.”
Mansell spent the Nationals round instead at a go kart track pondering his next steps. His fingers “filled with so many holes” from the regular blood tests, the route back to the cockpit was unclear.
For many it would’ve been bleak. But for Mansell it was just a challenge to overcome. Another race to win.
“It took about a week and a bit, because obviously when you’re still hungry to do it, you’re like, ‘Oh, I’d still do it’,” he says. “I could get rid of an arm and a leg and I’d still be able to do it.
I reference Billy Monger (who lost both his legs in a British F4 crash). He went through such tragedy and he’s still able to come out on the other end. So I can do it too.”
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Time wasn’t on Mansell’s side. He’d been counting on racing in Australian Formula 4 in 2020, once he’d found his feet in his new post-diagnosis world, but the series announced soon after that it would wind up at the end of 2019.
He either had to move to Europe or face the prospect of his career stalling before it had had a chance to get going.
“So we were kind of put in a situation where we were if we were going to do it, we had to go.”
It’s when Mansell discovered Dexcom and its continuous glucose monitor. Rather than periodically checking his blood manually, the implantable device constantly monitors his glucose levels and reports back to his phone via Bluetooth.
It was the solution he needed to recapture his confidence to go racing.
“The continuous glucose monitor, the Dexcom that I use, is imperative in all of that,” he says.
“You need to be above a certain level and you feel good. If you drop, it’s not a good idea to go out, and then if you then bump yourself back up, you’re fine.
“It gets rid of any confusion — ‘Is he there or could he be here?’. You whack one in and it tells you 24/7 where you’re at.
“That’s where we’ve made the step and it’s why I’m able to do what I do, if I’m honest.”
And suddenly his career was back on track, and the 14-year-old Australian was bound for England.
“It was three weeks to decide if we were going to hop over to the other side of the world, pack up everything and just essentially crack on,” he said. “England was a very obvious choice. The health care is good, so we know what’s going to happen, and there’s no language barrier, which was important.”
Not only was his fledgling career back in the fast lane, but he was enjoying the best results of his life to date, and his trajectory was steepening dramatically.
He won the rookie title in British Formula 4 in 2020, and in 2021 he finished third in British Formula 3. He was promoted again, this time to the Euroformula Open series. Fifteen podiums from 24 finishes, including three victories, propelled him to another third in the standings in 2022.
FIA Formula 3, the first rung on the touring F1 ladder, was calling his name.
He’d already sampled the category last year in a two-round cameo for the last-placed Charouz team. It got him in the door for a post-season test with Campos in September. In November he was announced as one of the team’s three full-time drivers alongside fellow rookie Australian Hugh Barter and sophomore Pepe Marti.
But Mansell’s rapid rise up the ladder is meaningful for more than just his personal racing ambitions; he’s blazing a trail for diabetic athletes by proving the disease need not be a barrier.
“I go through days where I just don’t want to do anything because it can be inconvenient sometimes,” he says. “You just get sick of it, as with any sickness.
“It’s a drip in a big, big pond, but if I can get someone sitting at home who doesn’t want to really do much because they’ve got diabetes and they feel hard done by and make them feel just a little bit better about what they’re going through and a little bit more relatable and bring that light and bring that education to them, I think that’s something that you can’t replicate.
“That responsibility, being able to bear that responsibility, is a very, very cool thing. It’s a cause that I believe in, to educate people on diabetes. And I live through it, so I know what they’re feeling.”
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It’s something he’s engaged the FIA on too. At the first race of the year in Bahrain he needed dispensation from the stewards to carry his phone with him in the cockpit — but naturally well out of reach — so his glucose monitor could continue tracking his blood and relay the information back to the garage.
Finding a permanent solution to ease the burden on the next generation of racers with diabetes is the goal.
“I can’t really say what we’re doing … but we’re working on it very heavily,” he says. “We’re bringing education to the FIA and hoping that it will be a process to rewrite the rules in order for other diabetics to compete.”
But with a workable, if impermanent, system in place and operating at 280 kilometres per hour, Mansell was free to lean into the first round of his first full-time F3 season in Bahrain, where he acquitted himself well in a bumper 30-car field.
“We’ve adjusted quite well and we were obviously very, very close to getting into the points,” he said, having qualified and finished both races 13th. “But I decided that it would be a good time to make a mistake on my last flying lap and was only half a tenth off reverse-grid pole, so I was a bit butthurt by that, but what can you do? That’s racing.”
But his sights are set markedly higher this weekend, where he intends to help Spanish team Campos become the de facto Australian squad alongside Aussie teammate Barter, with whom the banter is already flowing.
Barter told Fox Sports that Mansell from Maitland is a “bit more like a true Aussie” compared to his Melburnian upbringing, to which Christian is only too willing to agree.
“[Barter’s] a city boy, he’s tripping the light fantastic!” Mansell says jokingly. “He’s a good kid, we get on pretty well, but he’s grown up in the city and I’ve grown up in Maitland.
“It’s obviously it’s not like bush bush — I’m not a proper bogan! — but it’s a running joke that I’m obviously more Australian than the Australian.
“But he’s definitely got his fair share of Aussie in him behind closed doors!
“To have two Aussies and then to have the first Australian Grand Prix for F3, it’s a great thing for Campos and for team morale.
“We’re going to have a lot of people probably around the tent just because you know we’ve got two Aussies in the team and Tommy Smith [at Van Amersfoort] as well.
“I love interacting with anyone and everyone who comes and says hi to us. Obviously Hugh’s are very well spoken kid, so he’s got no problem chatting to anyone, and I can obviously can chat the bark off a tree, so it’s all right.”
And having changed from a British to Australian racing licence ahead of his home grand prix — “just a typo” he says about racing under the Union Jack in Bahrain — there’s no doubt Mansell has what it takes to fly the flag high for his home country at his first home grand prix.
