1957 German Grand Prix

Fangio’s Master Class

Michael Turner's painting shows us the moment when Fangio, half
on the verge, scrabbled past Collins and set off in pursuit of Hawthorne. 

 Formula One in the fifties belonged to one man; Juan Manuel Fangio. Five World Championships and victory in nearly 50% of the Grands Prix he entered – 24 out of 51 – ensured that he remained the man to beat; he was the yardstick by which every other driver on the grid was - and, to some extent, still is - measured. Without exception he is on every ‘Greatest Drivers of All Time’ list, invariably at number one.

He was a sportsman of impeccable integrity and honour. Was it by chance that both Kling and Moss won their home Grand Prix whilst team mates to the great man, in seasons where he had the measure of them both and more? And if he did gift the races to his team-mates, he was humble enough never to admit it, merely saying that the best man won on the day.

But mostly, he was an artist. His driving was an object lesson in car control and speed; always precise; always clean but giving no quarter in a fight.  For 1955, Stirling Moss, having proved his worth in a private Maserati 250F in ’54, was invited to partner Fangio in the Mercedes team and was happy to follow in the master’s wheel tracks; so closely did Moss follow the Maestro in Grands Prix that they were dubbed ‘the train.’

This, understandably, worried the Mercedes team management; if Fangio were to make a mistake and crash, there was no possible way Moss could avoid him and both cars could be lost, let alone both drivers. Moss placated his employers with the devastating logic; ‘Juan Manuel simply does not make mistakes.’

It was Fangio’s willingness to have a team-mate who was capable of beating him that underlined his greatness. For Moss was no second string driver and had the edge over Fangio in Sports Cars as much as Fangio was the undisputed master in open wheelers.

But any edge you had over Fangio was always a tenuous thread. Whilst  Moss’ victory in the 1955 Mille Miglia has passed into motor-racing folklore - he drove the Mercedes 300SLR to victory in record time with Denis Jenkinson by his side reading pace-notes to ease the strain on Moss of remembering 1000 miles of public roads - it is often forgotten that Fangio came second in that race driving solo! At the flag, and after suffering from fuel injection problems, he was only 32 minutes behind after ten hours!

Throughout Fangio’s F1 career, he drove for the Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lancia, Mercedes and Maserati teams, winning championships in ’51, ’54, ’55, ’56 and ’57. If we are to be precise, however, the Lancia he drove to the 1957 Championship was badged Lancia-Ferrari, as Lancia, finding the cost of competing in Formula 1 simply too expensive, had made a gift of their entire racing team to Ferrari who ran the modified cars as his own.

For 1957, his last full season of racing, Fangio was driving for Maserati, who were fielding the glorious 250F. Whilst the Mercedes had been Teutonic and effective, but never beautiful in the traditional sense and the Lancia-Ferrari twitchy and difficult, the Maserati, on the other hand, was pure Italian artistry, in both appearance and manners on the race track and no less effective for all that. Fangio loved the car; ‘Aye…the 250F. Not very powerful, I recall, but beautifully balanced. A lovely car to drive. I felt I could do anything with it.’

The mighty, daunting, Nurburgring was the setting for the 1957 German Grand Prix. Fangio went into the race needing a win to clinch his fifth World Driver’s Championship. Against him were the Ferrari’s of Hawthorn, Collins, Musso and von Trips, the Vanwalls of Moss, Brooks and Lewis Evans and his own team mates Behra and Schell. The fact of the matter was that the Maserati was no match for his rival’s cars, but they didn’t have Fangio at the wheel.

He doesn't really look as if he's trying, but by the end of the
race he will have knocked 26 seconds of his lap record of the
previous year!

Ever the tactician, Fangio decided to start on half-tanks, to allow himself to build enough of a lead so he could stop at half distance to refuel and maintain the lead.

In those days, as it remains today, the Nurburgring was 14 miles long and comprised 170-odd corners. Bear in mind, however, that there existed none of the Armco protection or run-off areas that blight circuits – even the Nurburgring itself - of the modern era. If you were lucky, there was a hedge lining the track to stop you if the car broke or you made a mistake. If you weren’t lucky, there was a 50 metre drop behind the hedge!

In Fangio’s time, a lap took around 9 minutes 40 seconds, and there were 22 of them for the race. If that seems slow by today’s standard where ‘ordinary’ road cars are lapping sub 7 minutes 30 seconds then consider the technology extant in those times; drum brakes, flexible chassis, super-skinny, rock hard tyres, rudimentary suspension, no seat-belts and a tortoise shell for a helmet. Ask any current GP ‘Superstar’ to emulate the feats of their predecessors and they will look at you as if you were mad.

But I digress. On the third lap, Fangio took the lead from Hawthorn and started to pull away. By lap ten, he had a lead of 30 seconds. On lap twelve he stopped for fuel and tyres, the plan working perfectly.  

Then; disaster! The pit stop was desperately slow and Fangio lost not only his 30 second lead but a further 20 seconds to Hawthorn and Collins. Ten laps remained.

Collins, with no clutch left, was powerless to resist
Fangio's pressure

He set off in pursuit and for three laps nothing happened - the gap to the leaders remained the same. Then the timekeepers started to double-check their stopwatches; Fangio was lapping a full 15 seconds under the old lap record, set the previous year, by himself, of course! This was impossible! But that was the magic of Fangio; he made the impossible happen occasionally.

By lap 19, the gap was 13 seconds, by the end of lap 20 he was right with the Ferraris. Collins, with his clutch gone, could do nothing to hold the ‘old man’ at bay and, in a shower of stones kicked up from the verge by his rear tyres, Fangio got past in a long, perfectly controlled slide. Hawthorn gave it his all, but could not prevent the inevitable; it was the quiet Argentine at his most ruthless.

At the flag, Fangio was 4 seconds ahead. He had driven as no man had driven before and you could see it in his face as he pulled into the pits to receive the plaudits. He later admitted that he never wanted to drive that hard ever again; he admitted to taking every corner a gear higher than he had done in practice and qualifying.

There was simply nothing Hawthorne could do to keep
Fangio at bay; he was passed with 3 laps to go. 

Only he could know what risks he took out on the track in his pursuit of the Ferraris and the thought of it scared him silly!

Many years later in an interview, he said, ‘Even now….I feel fear when I think of that race. Only I knew what I had done, the chances I had taken.’

His fastest lap for the race was 9 minutes 17 seconds. In modern Formula 1 we are used to a lap time decrease year on year of maybe a second, if we are lucky. Fangio’s improvement of his previous year’s fastest lap was a staggering 26 seconds, in a car which had barely changed during the same period.  

It was to be his last Grand Prix victory; he would retire, reputation intact, after the French Grand Prix at Rheims the following year.

He was gone but would never be forgotten.