The quiet courage behind Juan Manuel Fangio’s greatness

The 1951 Spanish Grand Prix took place on October 28, 1951, which means that the column you are now beginning to read, published as-near-as-dammit 75 years later to the day, marks the platinum anniversary of one of the most consequential races in the history of Formula 1. Why so? Well, Juan Manuel Fangio’s 1951 Spanish Grand Prix victory earned him his first F1 world championship, and it therefore closed the opening chapter of an F1 career whose eventual brilliance would be matched only by the remarkable resilience with which he overcame its most frightening interruption. I will explain.

That Spanish Grand Prix would be the final round of the 1951 F1 world championship, and the contest for the title was delicately poised. Fangio, driving for Alfa Romeo, was leading, on 27 points; Alberto Ascari, his principal rival, driving for Ferrari, had 25; and Froilán González, Ascari’s team-mate, had 21. Any of those three drivers could therefore still become 1951 F1 world champion – and, although Fangio held the advantage, his two-point lead was a slender cushion, the prize was racing immortality, and his opponents were talented and ambitious. The stage was therefore well set, in Barcelona, where the broad avenues and sweeping turns of the Pedralbes circuit would provide a suitably grand arena for a contest whose consequences would reach far beyond the sunlit streets of Catalonia.

Fangio was already 40, yet he was only now entering his prime, for his genius was as much a matter of applied intelligence as of raw speed. Experienced, thoughtful, wise, and canny, and apprenticed in his youth in Argentina as a fitter, he possessed an extraordinary capacity to understand a race car. His driving was precise, economical, and mechanically sympathetic, and as a result he was deceptively fast, because his natural composure made his performances look effortless. But make no mistake: beneath that placid exterior lay a fierce competitive instinct and a will to win that would brook no unnecessary compromise. In 1951, prior to Pedralbes, he had already won at Bremgarten and Reims.

Ascari, 33, was also a quiet man, and more introspective than Fangio, but like his great rival his apparent reserve concealed an intensely competitive nature. He drove with exceptional smoothness, making speed appear to be a consequence of precision rather than a product of exertion, and his deep technical understanding made him a consummate and formidable opponent. His great consistency was no less impressive than his outright pace, and in 1951 he had already demonstrated at both Nürburgring and Monza that he could beat the Alfa Romeos when circumstances favoured Ferrari. If Fangio represented experience sharpened into wisdom, Ascari represented talent refined into method.

González, 29, was a more exuberant instrument. Big – OK, let’s admit it, he was fat – he was also strong, dogged, and courageous, and capable of conjuring serious speed, but his driving style was messier than Fangio’s and Ascari’s, more muscular, more spectacular, and less reliable therefore. But it would be a mistake to confuse the ferocity of his wheelmanship with lack of ability, for he was a redoubtable competitor whose victory at Silverstone earlier in the 1951 season – Ferrari’s first world championship-status F1 grand prix win, no less – had announced the Scuderia as a genuine threat to theretofore dominant Alfa Romeo, for which team Giuseppe Farina had won the 1950 F1 world championship. Warm, friendly, and generous of spirit, González was also Fangio’s fellow Argentine and good friend, and their relationship therefore added a fascinating human complication to the world championship showdown at Pedralbes, for Ascari and González were team-mates, united by the Ferrari cause, but González’s affection for Fangio could not realistically be switched off when they climbed into their race cars. Moreover, since his own world championship chances were arithmetically more remote than those of his two rivals, I have always wondered whether his loyalties were perhaps divided. In the end it would not matter.

Qualifying produced a grid that could have been choreographed for the occasion. Ascari took the pole as a result of a stunningly impressive lap of 2min10.59sec, Fangio qualified second, and González third, while Farina, the reigning F1 world champion, bagged fourth. The grid was laid out in a four-three-four formation, which meant that the front row contained all four of them side by side: the man who had conquered the inaugural F1 world championship the previous year and the three men who were vying to succeed him.

Pedralbes was a circuit of 3.93 miles (or 6.32km), it wound its way around the western suburbs of Barcelona along wide avenues and through fast corners, and it therefore had none of the claustrophobic character often associated with racing on city streets. Its generous proportions allowed high speeds, while its open turns demanded confidence, commitment, and accuracy. The circuit had already hosted non-championship Penya Rhin Grands Prix in 1946, when Giorgio Pelassa won in a Maserati; in 1948, when Luigi Villoresi prevailed in another Maserati; and in 1950, when Ascari beat all comers in a Ferrari. Yet the 1951 Spanish Grand Prix was the first world championship-status F1 grand prix to be held there, and its place as the final round of the 1951 F1 world championship lent it added allure. By race day the circuit was thronged on all sides: contemporary estimates put the crowd at 300,000.

As the 20 cars lined up on the starting grid – four Ferraris, four Alfa Romeos, three Maseratis, three Simca-Gordinis, and no fewer than six Talbot-Lagos – I imagine that very few of those 300,000 excited spectators had even the slightest notion that the race would be settled by tyre selection – but indeed it would be for, then as now, race rubber was a profound and fundamental influence on car performance. When the flag fell, Ascari led from González, and in the pits the Ferrari mechanics might well have been back-slapping one another contentedly at that point. If so, their joy would be short-lived, because by the end of lap one Ascari was still leading but González had dropped to fifth behind the Alfas of Farina, Fangio, and Felice Bonetto. On lap two Fangio passed Farina, and on lap four he overtook Ascari to take the lead.

The problem, as I say, was tyres – and specifically rear tyres. Ferrari had opted for 16-inch (41cm) rear wheels, whereas Alfa Romeo had chosen 18-inch (46cm) rear wheels, and very soon Ferrari’s choice was being graphically proved to have been the wrong one. On lap six Piero Taruffi’s Ferrari shed a tyre tread, and on lap seven Villoresi suffered the same misfortune. On lap eight Ascari also threw a tread. González managed to press on a little farther, but on lap 14 his Ferrari also suffered a tread failure. Less than a quarter of the way through the scheduled 70 laps, all four Ferraris had encountered the same tyre issue. The Scuderia’s mechanics spent the next two hours and 46 minutes repeatedly changing their cars’ wheels and tyres, and at the end of the 274.72-mile (442.12km) race Fangio had won by almost a minute. González was a plucky but distant second, Farina third, and Ascari fourth, lapped by Fangio not once but twice. The front-row quartet had finished first, second, third, and fourth, albeit substantively reordered, and the result was that Fangio was 1951 F1 world champion.

His celebrations did not last long, however, for, later that evening, he learned that Alfa Romeo’s grandi formaggi had decided to withdraw the company from F1 with immediate effect, for financial reasons. The following autumn and winter would consequently be worrying times for F1’s powers-that-be, such as they then were, for they feared that only Ferrari might be in a position to field competitive F1 cars in 1952, and in the end a radical solution was implemented: the 1952 and 1953 F1 world championships would be run to Formula 2 regulations. Believe it or not, the reigning world champion – the great Fangio – would therefore find himself without a drive.

As a result he would take no part whatsoever in the F1 world championship that year, 1952, although he won six Formula Libre events in an Automóvil Club Argentino-entered Ferrari 166FL in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and he entered two non-championship F1 races and one non-championship F2 race in Europe. At Albi and Dundrod he raced a works BRM P15 F1 car powered by a high-revving supercharged 1.5-litre 135-degree V16, and on both occasions the car failed to carry him to the finish. No-one was remotely surprised by those two DNFs – for, although BRM’s V16 was an engineering marvel, it was also absurdly complex, and reliability was never one of its more conspicuous virtues.

Tiring of the BRM’s mechanical frailty, Fangio had arranged to drive a works Maserati A6GCM F2 car – equipped with an orthodox 2.0-litre straight-six, which must have been a relief to him after his short but unsatisfactory V16 flirtation – in a non-championship F2 race at Monza on the very day after the Dundrod event. Having missed a connecting flight at Lyon, he made the daring decision to drive through the night over the Alps, along mountainous switchbacks much slower and therefore far more time-consuming than the modern autoroutes and autostradas that would accommodate the same journey today. He reached Monza at lunchtime, a mere half-hour before the race was due to begin.

He had not taken part in qualifying, so he would start the race from the back of the grid: P29. Nonetheless, although he was exhausted and sleepy, his competitive instincts had not been dulled and immediately he began to carve his way through the field. But even the maestro was human, he had asked too much of himself, and on only the third lap he lost control of his Maserati at the second Lesmo, it struck an earth bank, and he was thrown out of its cockpit as it somersaulted end-over-end and smashed through a thicket of trackside trees. He suffered concussion and multiple injuries, including a broken neck. He was hospitalised at Ospedale Maggiore di Monza, where he spent a few weeks, after which he flew home to Argentina. By now it was midsummer, and he would spend the remainder of the year in his homeland, eventually making a full recovery. Incidentally, Farina, who had won that non-championship F2 race at Monza in a works Ferrari 500, visited his old Alfa Romeo team-mate in hospital and presented him with the winner’s laurel wreath, a gesture that I think perfectly captures the remarkable fraternity that existed among men whose profession at that time routinely placed them on the brink of death.