Podium Legends Collection # 1

'Fangio, World Drivers Champion, 1955' NFT

“The Argentine Maestro”, Juan Manuel Fangio. remains the most respected of any of the World Drivers Champions – by those champions who followed him. To have won, as he did, 5 World Drivers Championships in just 9 race seasons from 1950-1959, and to win 24 races out of just 51 race starts, is a magnificent achievement – all the more so having started his F1 career aged 39 and winning the world title for the fifth and last time aged 46, Fangio remains unique. It was another 45 years before his record was equalled! The quietly spoken hero from Balcarce won titles for Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Ferrari and here, for Mercedes in 1955.

Most top drivers in every decade since cite Fangio as the greatest of all time. This fine portrait shows a tough, determined man, focused and skilled more fortunately than all his contemporaries – a true hero. As Sir Jackie Stewart, himself 3 times a World Champion, once wrote: “ You could walk into a room full of racing personalities, world champions and so on, and then Fangio comes in…. All eyes turn towards him; all else is forgotten” – and you can sense that awe from this NFT portrait.

Juan Manuel Fangio’s racing career is all the more remarkable and worthy of the respect of the motor sporting world in that he overcame so much to achieve all he did – that is why this NFT shows the great man as he really was - strong, yet humble, determined and in so many ways unequalled. From the most ordinary of beginnings in a small provincial town in Argentina, 4 hours south of Buenos Aires, Fangio started the only racing he could afford, long distance open road rallies – epics of endurance for man and machine, thousands of kilometres across rough, often dirt, roads through the Andes and across the pampas in various forms of modified locally built Chevrolets and Fords. This looks today like super-hero racing, unbelievably tough, yet from 1940 onwards, Fangio was a winner. His national champion years in Argentina, interrupted by war, were 1941, 1942 and 1947.

Fangio – by then ‘El Chueco’ (Mr Bandy Legs in English) to his army of fans - set out for fame and fortune in European racing in the 1948 season, 2 years before the FIA World Formula One Championship even commenced. Funded in part by the Peronista government and by companies from back home, Fangio soon made an impression, racing Maseratis and Gordinis in Europe. That first learning year led on to his first overseas win, at San Remo in April 1949, winning again at Perpignan, Albi, and Marseilles. Fangio had done enough to earn a top drive in the first ever year of the new World Championship – 1950, starting at Silverstone as one of the “3Fs”, Farina, Faglioli and Fangio – he didn’t enjoy the rain, and the car had problems; but he then won in Monaco, Belgium and at Reims for the French GP, finishing 2nd in the WDC, before winning his first world title for Alfa Romeo in 1951 with3 wins - in Switzerland, France and Spain.

The sense of wonder at Fangio’s achievements and his strike rate only increases when you realise that after an early season serious accident at Monza in the spring of 1952, Fangio did not race again until the following year – in which he immediately came second to Ascari in the Championship.

In 1954, the mighty Mercedes Benz returned to top-level racing and swept all before them, led by Juan Manuel Fangio, after winning at home in a Maserati in January, Fangio won in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, dominating the field to earn his 2nd world title. 1955, his 3rd title would have been even more emphatic a win, if he had not coached a young Stirling Moss so well that the young Briton beat him in the UK race at Aintree.

1956 in a ‘political’ year the great man did not enjoy, driving for the tempestuous Ferrari team, El Chueco won again with 3 wins and many podiums, including a remarkable 2nd place at Monza when championship rival Peter Collins handed his car over to Fangio so the Argentine would win the world title, an unthinkable action today.

Fangio’s run of 5 WDC titles was completed driving the elegant Maserati 250F through the 1957 season with 4 victories, including Monaco France and Britain. He always said his greatest ever win was at the Nurburgring that year, beating the Ferraris. The humble champion, a wonderful gentle man out of the cockpit and a smooth unruffled fighter at the wheel – he summed himself up thus:

“I simply expressed what I had in me: respect for others, a love of machinery, and a passion for speed” – Juan Manuel Fangio

Original image source copyright ©2022 The National Motor Museum Trust, Beaulieu, England