Podium Legends Collection # 1.

Podium Legends Collection 1 - Fangio, Alfa Romeo 158, Silverstone, 1950 NFT

“The Argentine Maestro”, Juan Manuel Fangio, remains the most respected of all 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 1950-1958, and to win 24 races out of a total of 51 race starts, is a magnificent achievement. Fangio only started his F1 career aged 39, winning the world title for the fifth and last time aged 46. The quietly spoken hero from Balcarce won titles driving for Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Ferrari and for Mercedes in 1954 and ‘55.

Here seen in the glorious Alfa Romeo 158 at the very wet 1950 non-championship International Trophy at Silverstone 26th August 1950. In an event which had two Heats of 15 laps and a 35 lap final, Fangio won his Heat, but in the Final, finished second to his teammate Nino Farina, a repeat of Farina’s Grand Prix win on the same circuit just 3 months earlier, when Fangio had retired with a broken con rod. The next year, in the next generation Alfa, the 159, Fangio won his first world title and went on to become, in the opinion of many, the greatest of all time. This fine action study shows Fangio with a visor on his helmet, not his usual goggles – a comment on the British weather!

Most top drivers in every decade since cite Fangio as the greatest of all time. 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 began in a small provincial town in Argentina, from where he started the only racing he could afford, long distance open road rallies – epics of endurance for man and machine, thousands of kilometres on rough roads through the Andes and across the pampas, unbelievably tough, yet from 1940 onwards, Fangio was a winner. His national champion years in Argentina were 1941, 1942 and 1947.

Fangio – by then ‘El Chueco’ (Mr Bandy Legs in English) or just ‘El Maestro’ 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. Fangio soon made an impression, racing Maseratis and Gordinis in Europe. That led on to his first overseas win, at San Remo in April 1949. Fangio had done enough to earn a top drive in the first ever year of the new World Championship – 1950, starting at Silverstone, where he didn’t enjoy the rain, and the car had problems; but he then won in Monaco, Spa and at Reims finishing 2nd in the WDC, before winning his first world title for Alfa Romeo in the Type 159 in 1951 with3 wins - in Switzerland, France and Spain.

After an early-season serious accident at Monza in 1952, Fangio did not race again until the 1953 season – 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 France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy to earn his 2nd world title. 1955, his 3rd title would have been even more emphatic, but for his young protégé, Stirling Moss, who 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. Fangio’s run of 5 WDC titles was completed driving the 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. This 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