Magnificent Fangio
60 years ago Juan Manuel Fangio and Mercedes-Benz teamed up
to write an extraordinary chapter in the history of motor sport
Article by Graham Robson
Images by Daimler Archives
Ask any motor-racing enthusiast to choose the best Grand Prix driver of all time, and the answer invariably is Juan Manuel Fangio. Not Michael Schumacher, not Ayrton Senna, not Mario Andretti, and not Sebastian Vettel – Fangio. The Argentinean who suddenly arrived in Europe to go Grands Prix racing in 1950, who won five F1 World Championships during the 1950s, and then suddenly and irrevocably retired in 1958; the Fangio who won races for many clients but will always be remembered for his short sojourn with Mercedes-Benz in 1954 and 1955.
When Mercedes-Benz was finally ready to return to F1 racing in 1954, there was never any doubt that Fangio would be hired as team leader. Even though he was 43 years old at the time, his age was shrugged off. Although his European racing career began relatively late – Fangio was already 37 years old when he started the non-Championship French GP in 1948 – he was competitive almost at once and quite dominant once in a competitive racecar.
The very barest of stats tell the story. In a span of nine years, he started only 52 Grand Prix races but won 24 of them. Driving Alfa Romeo 158s, he won the second GP race he had ever started (Monaco in 1950), won three races that year, and went on to win the World Drivers Championship in 1951. Having missed most of the 1952 season – first because he lacked a competitive car, later because of a serious accident – he returned in 1953 driving Maseratis, and was as competitive as ever. Then from 1954 to 1957, he won four consecutive World Drivers Championships.
There was nothing inevitable about this: Juan Manuel Fangio was the fourth of six children, born in Balcarce, Argentina, to a humble and hard-working family. With no more than a basic education, he once wanted to be a professional football player, but became a mechanic, joined the Argentinean army in 1933, and then entered his first local race in 1934. Although he became National Champion of Argentina in 1940 and 1941, World War II delayed his sojourn to Europe, which was achieved in 1948 with backing from the Argentine government and Automobile Club.
After this, it took little time for the world of international motorsport to accept Fangio as a demi-god. Although he was mature and little known, and though his main star quality was exhibited behind the wheel of a racecar rather than in the salons of the world, he was universally admired. Feared, perhaps? Not in the way that Senna was later feared as a ruthless operator who would crash into opponents if they got in his way. Worshipped? Not in the same way that heroes such as Andretti came to be. But admired? Certainly, and respected – in ways that ensured his every wish seemed to be granted by team bosses and in the way that his followers saw him, approached him, and treated him when Fangio was among them.
By conventional standards, he did not conform to the Hollywood ideal of a racing driver – not outstandingly handsome; not tall, nor slim nor elegant; and definitely neither youthful or irresistible to the opposite sex. In fact, Fangio was of no more than medium height, had rather bandy legs (not for nothing was his native nickname “El Chueco” – the bow-legged one), had a quietly spoken though high-pitched voice, and was not one to dominate any situation. But as is so often said about great men, although he spoke softly, everyone else paused to listen carefully.
What happened in the mid 1950s, then, is the stuff of legends. No matter what it might cost, Mercedes-Benz set out to attract Fangio as its team leader. To quote The Star’s longterm contributor Karl Ludvigsen: “For Daimler-Benz, the achievement of a World Championship for Juan Fangio was the main objective of its 1954 racing programme. It was important that a Mercedes-Benz car win but even more important that Fangio be its driver often enough to gain the points he needed. …”
By any measure, therefore, Fangio was to be team leader and all other single-seater activities had to be subservient to his needs. Since the new W196 could not possibly be ready until mid-season 1954, Mercedes-Benz was happy to see its future figurehead gainfully employed by Maserati at the start of the year. Maserati and the incredibly talented Fangio accepted this as their right, with Fangio starting two races for the Italians and winning them both.
At Mercedes-Benz, the “Fangio era” started in July 1954 and was all over after September 1955 – a mere 14 months – yet it made an indelible impression on motor racing fans everywhere. He was – I can find no other phrase for it – totally dominant. The W196 entered its first race at the French GP in July 1954 and Mercedes-Benz later admitted that there was much of the car still to be refined. Yet Fangio put the car on pole, led from the flag, and won outright.
Two weeks later, he grappled with the full-width style of this new car on the airfield-circuit characteristics of the British Silverstone layout – suffered from both handling and visibility problems, damaging the car’s bodywork – but still took fourth place. Because he was not a man to complain, he merely waited for the open-wheel version of the W196 to be made ready for the German GP that followed two weeks later. Fangio won convincingly.
For the next one-and-a-half racing seasons in one or other of the W196 fleet, Fangio was let down only three times. There were no driver errors and on only one occasion did the magnificent machinery let him down. The rest of the 1954 season was almost a preordained victory parade except in the end-season Spanish GP, where unexpected cooling problems led to an overheated engine and a loss of power. At the Berlin GP on the steeply banked Avus track, Fangio ceded victory to Karl Kling’s sister car, but as Kling was German and this race was in Germany’s historic capital, nearly everyone seemed to find this inevitable.
In 1955, Mercedes-Benz victories and Fangio’s smooth, capable and amazingly consistent performances seemed unstoppable. Between January and September, he raced W196s seven times and notched five more victories. There were only two glitches: At Monaco, a minor engine break led to retirement, the only occasion in which Fangio failed to finish a Grand Prix in one of these cars, and in the British GP, where Fangio finished second behind teammate Stirling Moss by less than a car’s length. But was that a put-up job, just as Kling’s victory in Berlin was seen to be in 1954? No one was saying, but both Fangio and Moss seemed to be delighted with the race’s results: There were smiles all around at day’s end.
All in all, his time at Mercedes-Benz was an astonishing phase in Fangio’s amazingly successful racing career, for he delivered everything and more than the company ever expected. And he did it with grace, tact and sensitivity. All of this, please note, during a period in which he celebrated his 44th birthday.
There was, of course, a great deal of experience and sheer cunning in what he did, and this is ideally described in a story that he once provided about himself. At one particular race on one particular circuit, he was somehow one of the very few drivers who avoided the carnage of a multicar pileup that was blocking the track immediately after a blind corner. Unlike several other drivers, Fangio slowed down immediately before it and didn’t join the piling heap of wrecks. When asked how he knew about the accident, he said, “Well, the spectators were usually looking at me when I approached, but on this occasion, all I could see was backs of heads, with them looking the other way. …”
Fangio was by no means as dominant in sports-car racing as he was in the single seaters in 1955. It was not that he was not good enough to win in the 300SLRs, but in some ways he was unlucky – and he also had to face up to the imperturbable Moss at events where there were no team orders or follow-my-lead tactics to be obeyed. The fact is, however, that although he won twice in minor events, he finished second to Moss in three major sports-car races – the Mille Miglia, the British Tourist Trophy and the Targa Florio. The clue may be that on two of those occasions he had to share the driving with drivers who were demonstrably not as fast as him, and on the other (the Mille Miglia) he did not have an on-board co-driver who, Moss found, was invaluable for that particular occasion.
When Mercedes-Benz abruptly withdrew from racing at the end of 1955, Fangio found himself out of a job – but not for long. Within days he had an alliance with Ferrari and duly won the 1956 Championship. A year later he moved to Maserati, repeating the trick in 1957. In 1958 and out of love with Ferrari and Maserati – and with no team-leader seats available on the Vanwall racing team – he retired mid-season and that was that. Fangio never raced again.
In the years that followed – and there were more than 30 years still to come in an eventful life – Fangio became a favorite son of Mercedes-Benz in many ways. Taking up high-ranking and very profitable concessions with the brand – including the Argentinean franchise – Fangio remained at the head of the importers until 1987.
Not only that, but he continued to appear at many famous Mercedes-Benz events, often persuaded to drive a few demonstration laps of race circuits in the W196 machines that gave him so much pleasure and success in the mid-1950s. Many observers, myself included, can attest that for many years, he lost none of his smooth skills and demonstrably continued to enjoy them.
Fangio lived to the grand old age of 84, dying in July 1995. But is it really 20 years since he left us or 60 years since he set up so many magnificent victories for the Silver Arrows?
Feats for Fangio: In a nine-year Formula One career, Juan Manuel Fangio started 52 races and won 24 times. He was F1 World Champion five times: 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1957. In 1955 alone, Fangio had 14 starts in the W196, with nine victories.
A Personal Memory by Graham Robson
There was no question about his status: In his native Argentina, people revered Juan Manuel Fangio as godlike, to which I can personally attest. In 1978, the Automobile Club of which he was president invited me to follow a grand international rally in South America.
After the event, there was a mixup regarding Aerolineas Argentinas ticketing arrangements, which ensured I would not get back to Europe from Buenos Aires in any big hurry. “No problem,” the organizers told me. “Go to the airport, show your ticket, and – if you have to – tell them that Signor Fangio will guarantee your passage.”
At the airport the counter staff refused point blank to honor my ticket. Playing my trump card, I mentioned the magic word “Fangio.” With panic in their eyes and much scurrying in back offices, the staff generated hustle and bustle. Five minutes later, the airline manager, no less, approached me with a beaming smile pasted into place and said, “We have talked to Mr. Fangio, and it is okay, you will travel tonight. Unhappily, though, you will have to travel first class! …”
I only met Fangio a few times, but I was always aware of his greatness – so were all my colleagues. It went with the well-known saying: “You didn't have to see him, but when he entered a room, you knew he was there.”
Simple to explain, really. Whenever he attended a function later in life, he was invariably one of the last to arrive. But the moment he entered the room, heads swiveled, and within seconds it seemed every pair of eyes was looking at the great man. He didn’t speak English, so conversation was never going to be easy, but he was so serene, so gracious, that this never seemed to matter. G. R.
Fangio in mid-corner in the W196R at Monaco in 1955.
In 1954, Mercedes-Benz made a sensational return to the top rung of motor sports when Juan Manuel Fangio (No. 18) finished first and Karl Kling (No. 20) came second at the Silver Arrows’ first race, the French Grand Prix at Reims on July 4 of that year; both drove the streamlined W196R. 
Fangio and Stirling Moss, both in the streamlined W196R, and Kling, driving the W196R open-wheeler, speed through Monza’s famous banking at the Italian Grand Prix on September 11, 1955; Fangio won. 
Fangio with the single-seater W196 at Spa – which was and is, a great race track – in the Ardennes at the Belgian Grand Prix on June 5, 1955; the Argentinian won decisively, while teammate Moss finished second. 
At the Grand Prix of Argentina in Buenos Aires, January 16, 1955, winner Fangio waves to the crowd as he enters the pits after the race. 
Three silver Mercedes-Benz 300SLRs lead the field, sweeping through the bends at the Eifel Sports Car Race at the Nürburgring, May 29,1955; No. 2, Kling, who was to finish an eventual fourth, leads ultimate winner Fangio in No. 1, and Moss, who came second in No. 3. 
Old friends together again at Hockenheim, 1991; Fangio with the W196R open-wheeler that served him so spectacularly well and Moss with his famous Mille Miglia winner, 300SLR (W196S) No. 722.