Australian motorsport public relations officer Lachlan Mansell has shot to fame after winning reality television show Beauty and the Geek.

Mansell has had messages of support from the motorsport fraternity throughout, including from Supercars drivers Will Davison, Anton De Pasquale, James Courtney and Cameron Waters.

Mansell and Kiera Johnstone were last night crowned the winning pair and awarded the $100,000 prize, the former’s victory speech including a reference to Garth Tander’s advice to 2011 Bathurst 1000 winning co-driver Nick Percat.

“One hundred percent it’s a life-changing experience for me,” Mansell told Speedcafe.com.

“Reality TV shows often get a bad rap, you hear horror stories of contestants who have come out of other reality TV shows who have really suffered in terms of their mental health but for me, the experience couldn’t have been any more opposite to that.

“My mental health, my headspace coming out of the experience is the best and most positive that it has ever been by far.”

Mansell said he’d be blown away by support from the motorsport industry and revealed how COVID-19 lockdowns last year had in part inspired the journey.

“Applications opened, it would have been, late last year and I had a few of my best friends send the application link to me,” he recalled.

“They said, ‘Lachie, you need to apply for this and give it a go’. I thought about it a bit.

“Last year for me was a really tough year; I think that in the past because I had been so busy with attending motorsport events and working in motorsport events, it maybe sort of masked what I was lacking in my social life.

“But last year during COVID when there were no motorsport events, I discovered that my social life was pretty much non-existent.

“It sort of made me aware that I needed to make some changes in my life, so when applications opened and I heard about it, I thought, ‘why not? Let’s give this a go. It’s probably something that I need to do to drive those positive changes in my life that I need to make’.”

Mansell’s PR business, Chequered Flag Media, is registered on Speedcafe.com’s sister platform Networkcafe.com.au.