Juan Manuel Fangio did just 51 Championship Grands Prix, the first when he was almost 39, the last when he was 47. In seven seasons he was World Champion five times. The greatest racer of his era, unarguably one of the greatest of all time, he was relentlessly fast, yet always serene, unflappable and highly intelligent. Stirling Moss, his teammate at Mercedes in 1955, said: “Give him a wheelbarrow and heʼll make it fly like a jet fighter.” And he didnʼt have accidents.
But he did have one vicious crash which nearly killed him, and put him out of racing for a long time. It was due, as he was the first to admit, to a serious failure of his usually clear-sighted judgement before the race even started.
In those days, Grand Prix drivers didnʼt just follow the Championship trail. They would compete every weekend, in lesser singleseaters, sports cars, Touring Cars, even in rallying. In 1952, already World Champion, Fangio was to drive the recalcitrant V16 BRM in the Ulster Grand Prix at Dundrod. That was on Saturday; but on Sunday he was entered in a works Maserati A6GCM in the Gran Premio dellʼAutodromo at Monza. Prince Bira, an enthusiastic pilot with his own Miles Gemini, was racing at Dundrod, and he agreed to fly Fangio to Milan on Saturday evening.
Fangio had a dreadful Ulster GP. The BRM got sicker and sicker, but he plugged on for more than two hours. Finally, after six pitstops, the V16 would go no further. He then looked around for Bira: but the Thai racer had crashed his Osca through a hedge on the first lap and, disgruntled, had flown away.
So, carrying little more than his overalls and helmet, Fangio rushed to Belfast and found a flight to London, and then a connection to the Paris airport at Le Bourget. There he hoped to get a late-night flight to Milan. But by then the weather had closed in, and every flight was grounded. It was after midnight and all the overnight sleeper trains had gone.
Frenchman Louis Rosier, whoʼd raced his privateer Ferrari at Dundrod, had flown to Paris with Fangio. His car, a humble Renault Frégate, was at the airport. He offered to drive Fangio 300 miles south to the airport at Lyon, where he might get an Italy-bound plane first thing in the morning. They drove through the night, in pouring rain, and dawn was breaking when they arrived at Lyon. But the bad weather meant no flights from there
