↗ Fangio celebrates winning the 1956 title at Monza with his then team boss , Enzo Ferrari , with whom he had a tempestuous relationship
Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher may have each won two more titles , but this five-time champion is arguably the greatest of them all .
The ‘ who is best ’ debate will go on for a long time and will never , and can never be , accurately answered . But for his sheer heroics during a bygone age where safety was barely a recognised component of racing , it ’ s hard to argue against Juan Manuel Fangio .
A canny operator , with a focused determination , Fangio made it into F1 ® in bizarre circumstances , securing the required funding by selling truck tyres during a tyre shortage in his native Argentina then selling back the trucks to those he bought them from when they needed them back . His debut came in first ever season of the World Championship , in 1950 , when he joined Alfa Romeo . He was already in his late 30s – in contrast , both Hamilton and Schumacher were 22 in their debut Grand Prix™ years – and in those days there was virtually no circuit safety , cars were physically demanding , races were much longer , pit stops took minutes not seconds , and drivers could swap cars with their team-mates if they suffered reliability issues .
The key to Fangio ’ s success was his determination to seek out the best drive on the grid . As a result , unlike his modern successors who enjoyed seasons of domination with a single team , Fangio won the title with four different manufacturers : Alfa Romeo , Mercedes , Ferrari and Maserati .
In his first season , he won his second ever race and took victory in every race he finished only to lose out to team-mate Giuseppe Farina because of the Italian ’ s extra points from one fourth-placed finish .
The following year he won his first title but was left without a drive the next season when his Alfa Romeo team withdrew . During that time , he entered a non-Championship race with Maserati in Monza but crashed and suffered a broken neck after his car somersaulted over a grass bank .
He recovered to join Maserati in 1953 and a season later began a run of four titles in four seasons . In 1954 , he won driving for two teams after switching to Mercedes mid-season ; the next year he won again with Mercedes but when they quit he switched to Ferrari . He won with them in 1956 then finally moved to Maserati again , with whom he won his fifth title in 1957 .
His five-star achievement stood for an incredible 47 years until Schumacher overtook it – but Fangio still holds the record for highest winning percentage in F1 at 46.154 percent , taking victory in 24 of the 52 races he entered .
Despite his multi-team career , he became synonymous with Mercedes and later became honorary president of Mercedes- Benz Argentina . He died at his Argentine home in 1995 from kidney failure and pneumonia , aged 84 . •
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