Driver Focus - Juan Manuel Fangio

There are many who would say that Ayrton Senna is the greatest driver to have ever lived and they may well be right. But a good 90 per cent of those people probably never saw Juan Manuel Fangio drive. Not many did see him race, or at least not many that are still with us today.

In the 1950s, Formula One, like most of the events in the world, was not so publically available to witness without actually heading down to a track or reading a report in a newspaper and staring at the few grainy black and white photographs that made their way back from all around the world.

But in an era when the world was still recovering from the devastation of the Second World War and a new fledgling motorsport was starting to write its own pages in history there was one man that stood head and shoulders above the rest.

​We all know Senna’s story and we have all witnessed Michael Schumacher go from being a fresh faced rising star to the most successful driver in history. When Lewis Hamilton made his way onto the scene in 2007, we all had the story of how he came to be a Formula One driver drummed into our heads to the point where Lewis himself can’t tell it any more. But not many people know Fangio’s story, which is a shame because he was a phenomenon that almost defined motor racing and there are drivers today that owe a lot to him without even realising it.

In seven full seasons in Formula One he was World Champion five times with four different teams - and when he didn’t win, he could only slip to second. His record stood for 46 years before Michael Schumacher was eventually able to surpass it and by that time ‘El Maestro’ was no longer with us.

Many say Michael Schumacher was too old to make a comeback when he decided to rejoin the sport in 2010 at the age of 41. Fangio was 46 when he won his last championship and for most of his career he was competing against men young enough to be his sons, almost all of whom came from wealthy backgrounds, which he certainly did not.

Fangio started working as a mechanic at the age of eleven in his home town in Argentina. He spent most of his life working in the trade and as a hobby would race self-prepared scrap cars in incredibly demanding long-distance races throughout South America. By the time he made his way to Europe at the age of 38, there was probably no one else in the world that had the same mix of mechanical knowledge, performance driving experience and genius racecraft.

Even though the Formula One cars he was entrusted with were much more sophisticated than what he had been driving in Argentina, they were still fairly basic even by the standards of the golden age of Grand Prix in the 1960s, never mind compared with the cars of today.

The cars were heavy with primitive brakes and tyres, with incredibly heavy steering and a steering wheel twice the size of a road car’s as there were no quick steering racks. The track surface would often be rutted or covered in dust but Fangio was able to hold the car in seemingly impossible smoking powerslides for entire race distances of over three hours. His speed was impressive but his stamina and sheer strength meant that when it came to a race, no one could touch him.

He was nearly killed in a crash at Monza in 1952. He had spent all night driving through the Alps so that he could meet up with his Maserati team for a pre-season non-championship race.

The extreme fatigue from lack of sleep meant that, on only the second lap of the race, Fangio lost control of his car and crashed so heavily that it left him with a broken neck. He had to sit out the entire 1952 season and never fully recovered.

Fangio was one of the great gentleman racers. He had tremendous respect for his fellow drivers and there were few that failed to be charmed by him. In 1958 he was kidnapped in Cuba by members of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement. His captors fell for this charm and released him unharmed. For years afterwards he remained good friends with the same captors.

Stirling Moss, to this day, will tell you Fangio was the best there has ever been. Moss respected him as a driver, but more as a person. He once said: "Most of us who drove quickly were bastards, but I can't think of any facets of Juan's character which one wouldn't like to have in one's own.”

Enzo Ferrari criticised Fangio for not staying loyal to a team. The Argentinian was seldom in a team for than one season at a time. However, whatever team he was in he would make it a priority to befriend everyone, especially his mechanics. He would become a mentor figure for his teammate and would always lend his fantastic mechanical knowledge to maintenance and development of the cars.

Fangio’s genius was inevitably what made him retire. At the 1957 German Grand Prix at the Nürburging, a mistake in the pitstop meant he lost nearly a minute to the Ferraris. He drove the car so hard that he scared himself to the point where he felt he could no longer drive in the same way.

It was his last victory and despite attempting a few races in 1958, Fangio left the sport saying he had grown weary of pushing so hard for so long and seeing so many of his friends killed in races.

He retired a legend with a record that was still unsurpassed when he died at home in Argentina in 1995, at the age of 84.

Although there are many that would say he was the greatest there has ever been, you would have never heard him agree with you. In an interview he once said: “You must always strive to be the best, but you must never believe that you are."