Fangio won nearly half his Grand Prix starts, a rate nobody has matched
Juan Manuel Fangio entered 52 Formula One races and won 24 of them, a strike rate above 46 percent that still stands as the best in the sport's history. He claimed five world titles with four different teams, a feat no other driver has ever managed, and did much of it past 40.
Fangio was born in Balcarce, in Argentina's Buenos Aires Province, ten minutes after midnight on 24 June 1911, though a clerk recorded the date as 23 June. His grandfather Giuseppe had emigrated from Abruzzo in 1887 and, by selling charcoal made from branches, owned a farm within three years. Juan Manuel, fourth of six children, earned the nickname El Chueco, the bandy-legged one, for curling his left leg around a football to shoot. At 13 he left school for a mechanic's workshop and by 16 was riding along as mechanic for customers. A near-fatal bout of pneumonia kept him in bed for two months.
He first raced in 1938 in Argentina's new Turismo Carretera stock car series in a Ford V8, switched to Chevrolet in 1940, and won that championship twice in a row. After European outings from 1947 to 1949, he joined the inaugural Formula One season in 1950 and dominated the decade. Titles came with Alfa Romeo in 1951, Maserati and Mercedes-Benz in 1954, Mercedes again in 1955, Ferrari in 1956 and Maserati in 1957. His five championships stood as a record for 46 years, and he took pole in almost 56 percent of his starts.
Two drives capture him. At the 1955 Argentine Grand Prix, three hours of brutal heat forced rivals to share cars, but the 44-year-old drove alone, set the fastest lap and won. At the 1957 German Grand Prix, a bungled pit stop cost him the lead against faster Ferraris; he waited, then attacked, breaking the lap record repeatedly to reel them in for his final victory.
Endurance racing suited him too: he took Mexico's Carrera Panamericana in 1953 and won at Sebring in consecutive years, first for Ferrari in 1956, then Maserati in 1957. He remains the only Argentine to win the world title or his home Grand Prix. Later he served as honorary president of Mercedes-Benz Argentina from 1987 until his death on 17 July 1995.
Source: Juan Manuel Fangio
