Fangio centenary

Motorsports Car News
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Formula One champion Juan Manuel Fangio (1911-1995).
Photo of Neil Dowling
Neil Dowling

Contributing Journalist

2 min read

The Argentine-born son of Italian migrants was born on June 24, 1911 and raced to five world championships - the last at age 46 when he made up a huge time penalty and broke the (then) Nurburgring track record to win his last title.

His five-win record stood for 46 years until beaten by Michael Schumacher. Fangio, who raced with four teams - Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-benz and Maserati - has the highest winning percentage in Formula One (47.06 per cent) by winning 24 world championship Grands Prix from 51 starts. This compares with Schumacher's 33.09 per cent.

He is the only Argentine driver to have won the Argentine Grand Prix, winning it four times in his career. He retired from racing in 1958.

His life was not without incident away from the track. Cuban rebels kidnapped him on February 23, 1958, but he was later released, and remained a good friend of his captors afterwards.

The incident was dramatised in the 1999 Argentine film "Operacion Fangio".

After retirement he ran his successful Mercedes-Benz dealership in Buenos Aires. He died aged 84 in 1995.

Fangio will be honoured at the Goodwood Revival (September 16-18) in the UK this year, which is also the 60th anniversary of him winning the first of his world championships.

Goodwood will stage a daily track parade including a variety of his most famous cars, including his winning 1957 Maserati 250F.

Photo of Neil Dowling
Neil Dowling

Contributing Journalist

GoAutoMedia Cars have been the corner stone to Neil’s passion, beginning at pre-school age, through school but then pushed sideways while he studied accounting. It was rekindled when he started contributing to magazines including Bushdriver and then when he started a motoring section in Perth’s The Western Mail. He was then appointed as a finance writer for the evening Daily News, supplemented by writing its motoring column. He moved to The Sunday Times as finance editor and after a nine-year term, finally drove back into motoring when in 1998 he was asked to rebrand and restyle the newspaper’s motoring section, expanding it over 12 years from a two-page section to a 36-page lift-out. In 2010 he was selected to join News Ltd’s national motoring group Carsguide and covered national and international events, launches, news conferences and Car of the Year awards until November 2014 when he moved into freelancing, working for GoAuto, The West Australian, Western 4WDriver magazine, Bauer Media and as an online content writer for one of Australia’s biggest car groups. He has involved himself in all aspects including motorsport where he has competed in everything from motocross to motorkhanas and rallies including Targa West and the ARC Forest Rally. He loves all facets of the car industry, from design, manufacture, testing, marketing and even business structures and believes cars are one of the few high-volume consumables to combine a very high degree of engineering enlivened with an even higher degree of emotion from its consumers.
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