Gerald Donaldson - Fangio: The life behind the legend

Acknowledgements

Thanks is due first of all to Roberto Carozzo, who worked with Juan Manuel Fangio to write Fangio, My Racing Life, his official autobiography, and who generously gave permission to use quotations from that book and assisted with research for this one. For providing other research material, advice and assistance, my thanks also go to the motorsport editor and journalist Quentin Spurring, to the journalists and authors Nigel Roebuck and Richard Williams, to the text's editor Daniel Balado and to my editors at Virgin Books, Jonathan Taylor and Vanessa Daubney.

A special thank you as well to Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart, who went out of their way to make sure the driver they consider to be the greatest of all time was accurately depicted, and to everyone else who gave interviews and whose names are listed herein.

While speaking to Roberto Carozzo, Juan Manuel Fangio said, A book should be about a boy, from a humble family, born in a small town. I want it to deal more with people than with cars and races. Bring out the human side.

That is what this book attempts to do.

Gerald Donaldson has been covering Formula 1 racing for many years. Highly respected as a journalist and a radio and TV commentator, he has also written and edited several internationally acclaimed books about the sport, including the recently published Formula 1: The Autobiography and biographies of Gilles Villeneuve and James Hunt which are both available.

Bibliography

The following books, magazines and films were used for reference and/or quoted from in the preparation of this book.

Autosport (magazine, various issues to 1958, Haymarket Publishing)

Ball, Adrian (ed.), My Greatest Race (Granada Publishing Ltd, 1974)

Beaumont, Charles and Nolan, William F. (eds), Omnibus of Speed (Stanley Paul, 1961)

Bentley, John, The Devil Behind Them (Angus and Robertson, 1959)

Blunsden, John (ed.), Jenks (Motor Racing Publications, 1997)

Champion Fangio (video, Duke Marketing, 1992)

Cimarosti, Adriano, Grand Prix Motor Racing (Aurum Press Ltd, 1997)

Daley, Robert, Cars at Speed (G.T. Foulis & Co., 1961)

Daley, Robert, The Cruel Sport (Prentice-Hall, 1963)

Donaldson, Gerald (ed.), Formula 1: The Autobiography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002)

Fangio (film), directed by Hugh Hudson, produced by Giovanni Volpi (1973)

Fangio, Juan Manuel, with Marcello Giambertone, My Twenty Years of Racing (Temple Press Ltd, 1961)

Fangio, Juan Manuel, with Roberto Carozzo, Fangio, My Racing Life (Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1990)

Fangio Special (video, Warwick Video, 1995)

Fenu, Michel, Ferrari's Drivers (William Kimber, 1980)

Ferrari, Enzo, My Terrible Joys (Hamish Hamilton, 1965)

Frere, Paul, Competition Driving (B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1963)

Hansen, Ronald and Kirbus, Frederico B., The Life Story of Juan Manuel Fangio (Edita S.A. Lausanne, 1956)

Hawthorn, Mike, with Gordon Wilkins, Challenge Me the Race (Aston Publications, 1958)

Hayhoe, David, and Holland, David, Grand Prix Data Book (Duke Marketing, 1996)

Henry, Alan, Autocourse: 50 Years of World Championship Grand Prix Motor Racing (Hazleton Publishing, 2000)

Henry, Alan, Formula One, Driver by Driver (The Crowood Press, 1992)

Jenkinson, Denis (ed.), Fangio, based on the film Fangio (Michael Joseph, 1973)

Jenkinson, Denis (ed.), The Racing Driver (Robert Bentley Inc., 1969)

Lang, Mike, Grand Prix! (Haynes Publishing Group, 1981)

Lewis, Peter, Dicing With Death (a Daily Mirror book, 1961)

Ludvigsen, Karl, Juan Manuel Fangio, Motor Racing's Grand Master (Haynes Publishing, 1999)

McCluggage, Denise, By Brooks Too Broad for Leaping (Fulcorte Press, 1994)

Menard, Pierre, The Great Encyclopedia of Formula 1 (Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2000)

Merlin, Olivier, Fangio, Racing Driver (B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1961)

Miller, Peter, The Fast Ones (Stanley Paul, 1962)

Molter, Gunther, Juan Manuel Fangio, World Champion (G.T. Foulis & Co. Ltd, 1956)

Moss, Stirling, with Christopher Hilton, Stirling Moss's Motor Racing Masterpieces (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1994)

Moss, Stirling, with Doug Nye, Fangio, A Pirelli Album (Pavilion Books Ltd, 1991)

Motor (magazine, various issues to 1958)

Motor Sport (magazine, various issues to 1958, Haymarket Publishing)

Nixon, Chris, Mon Ami Mate (Transport Bookman Publications, 2001)

Pritchard, Anthony, The World Champions (Leslie Frewin Publishers, 1972)

Purdy, Ken W., The New Matadors (Bond Publishing, 1965)

Rendall, Ivan, The Chequered Flag (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993)

Roebuck, Nigel, Chasing the Title (Haynes Publishing, 1999)

Roebuck, Nigel, Grand Prix Greats (Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1986)

Schnall Heglar, Mary, The Grand Prix Champions (Bond Parkhurst Books, 1973)

Small, Steve (ed.), The Grand Prix Drivers (Hazleton Publishing, 1987)

Small, Steve (ed.), Grand Prix Who's Who (Travel Publishing Ltd, 1996)

Walker, Murray, with Simon Taylor, Murray Walker's Formula One Heroes (Virgin Publishing Ltd, 2000)

Williams, Richard, Enzo Ferrari (Yellow Jersey Press, 2001)

Williams, Richard, Racers (Viking, 1997)

Chapter One

Boyhood in Balcarce

We were a humble family, but we never lacked anything, we never missed anything.

Among his earliest, and happiest, memories were those evenings when as a small boy he sat around with his five brothers and sisters in their home in Balcarce, Argentina, listening with wide-eyed fascination as Papa Fangio told enchanting tales about his own boyhood, long ago and far away. Loreto Fangio told his children that he had been born in the small Italian village of Castiglione Messer Marino, in Chieti province, among the rugged mountains of the Abruzzi region east of Rome and south of Pescara. There, he explained, the Fangios Loreto, his sister Francisca, his brother Alfonso and their parents had a home that was little more than a hut. Their father was a tenant farmer who laboured from dawn to dusk trying to eke out a modest living from soil that was exhausted after centuries of cultivation. Life was very hard, but grandfather Giuseppe Fangio was adventurous, courageous and ambitious, and in 1887 he took the bold decision to search for a better life in the new world in South America.

Leaving his family behind, Giuseppe sailed on a ship across the ocean to Buenos Aires, then took a train heading south-east towards the coastal town of Mar del Plata. The train tracks ran through the pampas, the flat, fertile plains where immigrants from Italy, Spain and other parts of the world were beginning to settle. The pampas seemed monotonous compared to the mountains of Abruzzi, but Giuseppe's mind was alive with possibilities. He got off the train at a lonely station called Coronel Vidal, from where he travelled by road deep into a remote area of scrub forest. There he began to cut and burn tree branches, transforming them into charcoal fuel for which there was a ready market among the settlers who were establishing farms in the region. In just three years, Giuseppe Fangio had saved enough to buy a farm of his own, a 25-acre section of land six miles from the nearest major town, Balcarce. There was just enough money left to pay the boat fares to bring his wife and family over from Italy.