Juan_Manuel_Fangio
Juan Manuel Fangio (Balcarce, June 24, 1911 - Buenos Aires, July 17, 1995), nicknamed "El Chueco" ("knock-kneed") or "El Maestro" ("The Master"), was a race car driver from Argentina, who dominated the first decade of Formula One racing. He won five Formula One World Driver's Championships — a record which stood for 46 years — with four different teams (Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Maserati), a feat that has not been repeated since. Many still consider him to be the greatest driver of all time.
He is the only Argentine driver to have won the Argentine Grand Prix, having won it four times in his career.
Early life and racing
Fangio was born on San Juan's day in 1911 in Balcarce, Argentina to Italian parents from the small central Italian village of Castiglione Messer Marino, near Chieti. He began his racing career in Argentina in 1934, driving a 1929 Ford Model A which he had rebuilt. During his time racing in Argentina, he drove Chevrolet cars and was Argentine National Champion in 1940 and 1941. He first came to Europe to race in 1949, funded by the Argentinian Automobile Club and the Argentinian government.
Formula One racing
Juan Manuel Fangio, unlike most later Formula One drivers, started his racing career at a mature age and was the oldest driver in many of his races. During his career, drivers raced almost without protective equipment. The notable rivals he had to face included Alberto Ascari, Giuseppe Farina and Stirling Moss.Fangio's first entry into Formula One came in the 1948 French Grand Prix at Reims, where he started his Equipe Gordini Talbot from 11th on the grid but retired. He did not drive in F1 again until the following year at San Remo, but having upgraded to a Maserati 4CLT/48 sponsored by the Automobile Club of Argentina he dominated the event, winning both heats to take the aggregate win by almost a minute over Prince Bira. Fangio entered a further six F1 races in 1949, winning four of them against top-level opposition.
For the first Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1950 Fangio was taken on by the Alfa Romeo team alongside Giuseppe Farina and Luigi Fagioli. With competitive racing machinery following the Second World War still in short supply the pre-war Alfettas proved dominant. Fangio won each of the three races he finished, but Farina's three wins and a fourth place allowed him to take the title. In 1950's non-championship races Fangio took a further four wins and two seconds from eight starts. Fangio won three more championship races in 1951 in Switzerland, France and Spain, and with the improved Ferraris taking points off his team mates Fangio took the title in the final race, six points ahead of Alberto Ascari.
With the 1952 World Championship being run to Formula Two specifications Alfa Romeo were unable to use their supercharged Alfettas and withdrew. As a result remarkably the defending champion found himself without a car for the first race of the championship and remained absent from F1 until June, when he drove the mighty BRM V16 in non-championship races at Albi and Dundrod. Fangio had agreed to drive for Maserati in a race at Monza the day after the Dundrod race, but having missed a connecting flight he decided to drive through the night from Paris, arriving half an hour before the start. Badly fatigued, Fangio started the race from the back of the grid but lost control on the second lap and crashed into a grass bank, and he was thrown out of the car as it flipped end over end. He was taken to hospital with multiple injuries, the most serious a broken neck, and after a tense wait to see if he would survive Fangio spent the rest of 1952 recovering in Argentina.
Back to full racing fitness, Fangio began 1953 by winning the Carrera Panamericana in a Lancia D24. Back in Europe he rejoined Maserati for the championship season, and against the dominant Ferraris led by Ascari he took a lucky win at Monza. Having complained of a vibration on his machine during the practice session for the 1953 Italian Grand Prix and without notifying anyone, the Maserati mechanics would switch the cars of Fangio and his team-mate Felice Bonetto. It'd work for the team from qualifying onwards with Fangio qualifying second with Bonetto seventh, with Fangio setting fastest lap on his way to a 1.4-second victory over Nino Farina and Bonetto retired out of fuel. Along with that win, Fangio secured three second places to finish second in the Championship, and also came third first time out in the Targa Florio.
In 1954 he raced with Maserati until Mercedes-Benz entered competition in mid-season. Winning eight out of twelve races (six out of eight in the championship) in that year, he continued to race again with Mercedes—driving the superb W196 Monoposto—in 1955 (in a dream team that included Stirling Moss). At the end of the second successful season (which was overshadowed by the 1955 Le Mans disaster in which more than 80 spectators were killed) Mercedes withdrew from racing.
In 1956 Fangio moved to Ferrari, replacing Alberto Ascari, who had been killed in an accident, to win his fourth title. He finished first in three races and second in all the other championship races.
Saving the best until last
In 1957 he returned to Maserati, who were still using the same iconic 250F which Fangio had driven at the start of 1954. Fangio started the season with a hat-trick of wins in Argentina, Monaco and France, before retiring with engine problems in Britain. At the next race, the German Grand Prix at the fearsome old Nürburgring circuit, Fangio needed to extend his lead by six points to claim the title with two races to spare. From pole position Fangio dropped to third behind the Ferraris of Hawthorn and Collins but managed to get past both by the end of the third lap. Fangio had started with half-full tanks since he expected that he would need new tyres half-way through the race. In the event Fangio pitted on lap 13 with a 30-second lead, but a disastrous stop left him back in third place and 50 seconds behind Collins and Hawthorn. Fangio came into his own, setting one fastest lap after another, culminating in a record-breaking time on lap 20 a full eleven seconds faster than the best the Ferraris could do. On the penultimate lap Fangio got back past both Collins and Hawthorn, and held on to take the win by just over three seconds. With Musso finishing down in fourth place, Fangio claimed his fifth title. This performance is often regarded as the greatest drive in Formula One history, but it was to be Fangio's last win.After his series of back-to-back championships he retired in 1958, following the French Grand Prix. Such was the respect for Fangio, that during that final race, race leader Hawthorn had lapped Fangio and as Hawthorn was about to cross the line, he braked and allowed Fangio through so he could complete the 50-lap distance in his final race. He would cross the line over two minutes down on Hawthorn. He won 24 World Championship Grands Prix from 51 starts - a winning percentage of 47.06%, the best winning percentage in the sport's history.
Later life and death
During the rest of his life after retiring from racing Fangio sold Mercedes-Benz cars, often driving his former race cars in demonstration laps. Even before he joined the Mercedes Formula One team, in the early 1950s, Fangio had acquired the Argentinian Mercedes concession. He was appointed President of Mercedes-Benz Argentina in 1974, and its Honorary President for Life in 1987.
Cuban rebels kidnapped him on February 23, 1958, but he was later released, and remained a good friend of his captors afterwards.
In 1990, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
Juan Manuel Fangio died in Buenos Aires in 1995, at the age of 84. He was buried in his home town of Balcarce in Argentina.
Legacy
According to the official Formula One website, "Many consider him to be the greatest driver of all time." Several highly successful later drivers, such as Jim Clark, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, have been compared with Fangio. It is generally acknowledged that such comparisons are not realistic, as the qualities required for success, the levels of competition, and the rules have changed over time.
His record of five World Championship titles stood for 45 years until German driver Michael Schumacher took his sixth title in 2003. Schumacher said, "Fangio is on a level much higher than I see myself. What he did stands alone and what we have achieved is also unique. I have such respect for what he achieved. You can't take a personality like Fangio and compare him with what has happened today. There is not even the slightest comparison."
In his home country, Argentina, Fangio is revered as one of the greatest sportsmen the nation has ever produced. Argentinians often referred to him as The Maestro,
His nephew, Juan Manuel Fangio II, was also a successful racing driver.
Six statues of Fangio, sculpted by Catalan artist Joaquim Ros Sabaté, are erected around the world: at Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires; Monte Carlo, Monaco; Montmeló, Spain; Nürburgring, Germany; Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, Germany; and Monza, Italy.
As a homage to him, Argentina's former national oil and gas company, Repsol YPF, launched the "Fangio XXI" gas brand. In 2005, the Zonda 2005 C12 F was named after him due to the endorsement from Fangio for Pagani (a belated honoring, as the Zonda was originally intended to be named "Fangio F1," but was changed out of respect after his death). In 2007 Maserati created a special website to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his fifth and final world championship triumph.
Formula One World Championship results
(F1 driver results legend 2) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)References
External links
- Grand Prix History - Hall of Fame, Juan-Manuel Fangio
- Juan Manuel Fangio's statistics
- Juan Manuel Fangio Website
- Juan Manuel Fangio Museum
- Maserati Celebrates Fangio
- Fangio the greatest racecar driver
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Saturday September 27, 2008 at 14:36:10 PDT (GMT -0700)
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