Did Fangio Get One Of His WDC As A Gift?

[Artwinter]

Why did Juan Fangio get credit for 5 WDC when one was a gift?

Gwen

[Ray Bell]

Which one was a gift?

Perhaps you mean 1956, when Collins handed over his Ferrari at Monza? Fangio still put in the drives that go the points through the year, it was normal at the time for junior team members to hand over their car if the team leader struck trouble, one of the other drivers had refused to give his car to Fangio.

No, no gifts in 1956...

Perhaps you mean 1951? When he had to race hard against Farina in the Alfa team as the Ferraris came good to score at Silverstone and the Nurburgring... no gift in 1951...

1954? Wins on Maserati and Mercedes Benz, maybe this is the year? He had superior equipment and no really competitive team mates. Yes, this year was a gift!

Or was it? I think he still had to battle for some of his wins, and he lost at Silverstone... no, 1954 was not a gift...

Surely 1957, when he was handed that easy win at the Nurburgring to make it look like he, as an old man of 47, could still mix it with the youngsters. But wait - he was handed that win by Collins and Hawthorn who were on the Ferrari team while he drove for Maserati... and he broke the lap record lap after lap... If the rest of the season was anything like this race, 1957 was not a gift...

So it boils down to 1955, then. A real gift, driving the best car in the field. But wait, a competitive team mate dogging his wheel tracks, and later writing that he learned a lot from the position one car length behind Fangio, and that no matter how fast he lapped the Argentinian could go faster. And disaster in Spain and at Monaco, mechanical problems! Sorry, looks like there were no gifts in 1955...

Have I missed anything?

[Total-F1]

Ooh - snazzy!

[Maxmil]

Done well
Ray Bell

[zealot]

Tell us how you really feel.

Gwen was probably referring to 1956, but you're right on with your assessment. Fangio had "help" in three races that year, but the same thing holds true today. Do you think RB would say no if he was ordered to get out of Shumi's way? I don't think so. And I'm not picking on Shumi here, the same holds true in almost every other F1 team (except, of course, McLaren).

Heck, Lotus had a chance to sign Derek Warwick as a co-driver for Senna in the 1980s, and Senna vetoed it because he didn't think Lotus could supply two top level drivers.

[Artwinter]

Ray Bell.

I like the way you used the word turned over which means (give, gift).So any way you put it without Collins gift of his car Fangio would of only won 4 WDC. How are things down under?

Gwen

[Bononi]

Oh,

I give my little bit to my friend Ray Bell.

He explained very well about that race, so whatelse could be wrong with that ?

Gwen are you trying to level TGF with Fangio, just to make things easier as he soon will be 4 WDC ?

No... not that really.

[Artwinter]

Bononi.

I saw Collins give the car to Fangio on SpeedVision last month and I began to wonder how often this had happpened in Fangios career. Things like this coundn't happen today due to the speed of the pit stops and safety equipment. This has nuthing to do with TGF I saw Fangio drive at Sebring an he was a great driver but this makes me understand that there is no comparison between then and now due to technology.

Gwen

[Ray Bell]

Gwen - if the purpose is to devalue Fangio, then look at the Argentine GP of 1955.

There were more car swaps than there were cars in that event, many more, some taking three drivers to get through the afternoon. And through it all Fangio drove alone!

Even Moss collapsed, Trintignant and Farina both drove the second and third-placed cars with another driver in each, and I think one other driver went all the way... was it Roberto Mieres?

Anyway, the point is that it was normal to hand a car over to a driver more capable of getting it to the finish further ahead.

Any attempt to degrade Fangio's win in the 1956 WDC to the same level as Prost's win in the rain at Monaco will meet with severe opposition!

[Artwinter]

After seeing how the 1956 WDC was won I have lost a lot of respect for Fangio. I now have to rate him good instead of great with a set off rules like this how could he miss. TGF will be rated above him in the history books.

Gwen

[Wrex]

Oh Gwen, I'm normally with you when it comes to Michael but you can't knock the great man Fangio. He will always be the greatest in my eyes.

[Peter Mallett]

Gwen,

Now that you've lit the blue touch paper, I wondered if you and the others would agree to moving this thread to the Historic forum. I think you may find a few more people to debate this topic there.

Let me know.

[Valve Bounce]

Originally posted by gwen
After seeing how the 1956 WDC was won I have lost a lot of respect for Fangio. I now have to rate him good instead of great with a set off rules like this how could he miss. TGF will be rated above him in the history books.

Gwen

Well. I think the only gift I know of is that Fangio was a gifted driver. His talent was a gift, so yes!! You could say all his WDC's were a gift from God.
As for history books, perhaps you could help the Japanese re-wrie their history books as a more worthy cause; the Japanese children are being taught that the Rape of Nanjing was really Japan going over to help liberate the Chinese and save them from starvation. :confused:

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by gwen
After seeing how the 1956 WDC was won I have lost a lot of respect for Fangio. I now have to rate him good instead of great...

Gwen, I already explained about Argentina in 1955, or did you miss that post? What about the many other races where he was up against two drivers while he was the only one in his car... I'm sure Peter or Tim could find at least half a dozen of those, including races like the British GP of 1957 which Moss only won after taking over Brooks' car.

What you cannot take away, Gwen, is his achievements. Real achievements that no others of his era came near to emulating.

Like finishing the Mille Miglia with one front wheel tracking straight ahead... or more or less so, as much as the wire would hold it there.

Like winning those trans-Andes races in piles of junk before he was discovered by the likes of Wimille.

Like taking on and beating Europe's best when he was given a good car.

Like providing the best Maserati challenge to the Ferrari dominance of 1952/3, despite losing all that time with a broken neck.

Like trouncing everyone at the Nurburgring, pulling back all the time lost in that sloppy pit stop and going past the Ferrari lads as if they were in another race. And that but 10 months before his retirement, too, aged 47!

Like arriving at the top of the hill at Sandown Park on the absolute limit of braking and looking like it was a Sunday drive... aged 72! The tyres chirping gently as he slowed the car so close to lockup that it was incredible, yet he did this lap after lap and virtually nobody knew.

Like hauling the ill-handling and difficult to drive streamliner into a place at Silverstone before they woke up and built open-wheelers.

Like lapping the Nurburgring faster than anyone else in the team when Mercedes put on a test day with all their drivers and a range of different cars.

Like being able, according to Moss, to always be able to beat your time in an equal car.

Gwen, I'm very much afraid you haven't really thought this through. Remember, when he took over those cars in Italy, they were both behind him at the time!

Please, as many others as can think of them, add more of Fangio's magic moments...

[Marshal]

So Gwen, taking over a team mates car when offered diminishes a World Title, but driving a stricken car into you main rival to take him out of the fight doesn't?

And Ray, my Dad tells me of one the most impressive things he's ever seen at a race circuit was Fangio at the Gunnar Nielsen Memorial Meeting at Donnington. He'd never been to Donnington before, and was given a W125 Mercedes to demonstrate - a car he'd never driven before - and he'd just turned 70. The car belonged to Neil Corner, one of the leading drivers of historic cars in the UK at that time. Fangio's first flying lap was 10 seconds a lap faster than Corner had ever managed. My dad was at the Chicane, and the car was being flicked through on opposite lock and exited at 45 degrees to the direction of travel, with both back wheels spinning, under perfect control. So he was quite good really

[Peter Mallett]

Originally posted by Marshal
.............................. with both back wheels spinning, under perfect control. So he was quite good really

Remind me to send you the e mail I got about "irony".

[f1manoz]

Fangio is one of the greatest of all time, no doubt about that. Would be in many peoples top 5, in everyone's top 10. 24 wins, 28 poles plus however many fastest laps (the number hasn't come to me yet) plus five world titles justify the mans claim to be one of the greatest ever.

Like everyone else who has answered, obviously you are asking whether the 1956 World Title was gifted (perhaps 1955, but I doubt that). Frankly, looking at the results, Fangio deserved to win anyway. He took 3 wins to Collins and Moss' two. He took 6 poles from a possible 7, drove in a team that was always in political strife (Lancia-Ferrari, which is why he left) and left everyone for dead unless the car broke or they raced at a track where it had more to do with car speed than driver skill.

The handover by Collins to Fangio in Italy was pure sportsmanship, and Fangio had always been grateful to him. I'm sure Collins knew he might have been champion, but if you look at the results, Moss would ahve ended up champion had Fangio not finished in Collins car.

1956 appears to be the year of drivers sharing cars. IN Argentina, 3 of the top 6 shared, in Monaco 3 of 6, Belgium Moss did, France Moss again, British Collins and Alfonso de Portago and Italy Collins and Fangio.

[Peter Mallett]

Well that's it. I'm going to see if we can move this one to the Historics because I don't believe we're getting enough coverage here.

[Faster]

The important thing is that the 56 WDC would still be Fangio's even if Collins hadn't handled his car to the 'maestro' at the final race. Collins needed to win, and though he could have only managed it if Moss had a problem, and that never happened.

And if read all the comments from Collins about this episode, you'll see all the respect he had for the argentinian. Everybody knew that Fangio could do better, so no one ever minded to handle their car to him.

Also, mind you that the races at that time had nearly 500km, against this boring one-and-a-half-hour shots that we have today. From a gentleman heading to his 50's, people should clapp their hands when he finishes a race without sharing the driving, instead of bashing it when he did so...

Nevertheless, the drivers in the 50's used to race in more than 30 events every year, between F1, F2, F-Libre and Sportscars. In 52, Fangio raced saturday in England with a BRM 16V, flew from London to Paris, drove overnight to Milano and started another race in Monza, with a car he didn't knew, starting from the last place because he had no practice time. No wonder that he crashed at the 3rd lap by a lack of concentration, and needed the whole year to recover. All this marathon to earn at that time the same amount of money that Kimi Raikkonen is probably earning this year. Nothing even close to the 50-million-dollars Schumacher.

To have a 10-year-long career in the '50s was something special. To have a record of about 50% wins in a career with over 300 races, in the 50's, is more than special. To have 5 WDCs in the 50s is just out of this planet. I'm really against the word 'if' when you talk about motorsports, but can you imagine Senna or Schumacher with their aggressive driving in the 50s. They wouldn's last one single year at international level before killing themselves...

[fines]

What a load of bull! Fangio would've won the 1956 WC no matter if Collins handed the car over to him or not. Most people don't understand that back then winning the Italian GP was of considerably more importance to the teams and constructors involved in F1 than who became WDC!

The situation was as follows: Before the last race of the season Fangio was as good as champion, he was driving for Ferrari as was his only rival, Peter Collins. Collins' only chance to deprive Fangio of the title was to win the Italian GP AND record fastest race lap. While he might have possibly lucked into a win, there was no way he was going to record fastest race lap. Not that day, at least.

I don't think anyone at the time was really interested to learn who became WDC, the big question of the day was: Will Ferrari win the Italian GP or Maserati? As it was, Moss/Maserati made the running, with the Ferraris in hot pursuit, and when their star driver Fangio retired it was only natural to call in one of the three or four junior drivers to hand over a healthy car and let Fangio go and try to do something about Moss. I don't think Collins would've thought for a moment to stay in the car to fight for the championship, that was just not on.

BTW, who or what is TGF??? :confused:

[Ray Bell]

Jack Brabham was there at Sandown, it was a staged deal where Jack and Juan Manuel were to show off their title-winning cars...

"It gives you a lot of heart to see him drive like that at his age," Jack told me... at the same age Jack jumped into a BT36 or something at a day held for him at a pommie circuit and proceeded to lap faster than the owner... and refused to stop when the flag was shown!

Which reminds me of a time when the pair were together in the sixties, JMF taking delivery of a few Brabhams for some young driver deal in the Argentine... it was at a circuit, and without notice he piled into one of the cars and drove it - sans helmet! - very quickly...

Fangio had previous experience with pre-war M-Bs, by the way, a W154 he raced in the Argentine... but not of the W125 to my knowledge. This is the kind of story I was hoping to flush out in an effort to show Gwen that she has been sidetracked for no good reason.

[Peter Mallett]

TGF. Sorry to confuse you all. TGF is the short form for Michael Schumacher. It stands for "That German Fellow" and is used widely in the F1 Forum. I lifted this topic from there because I felt it deserved better coverage from (let's say) the conoiseurs (is that spelled right?) of motor racing.

I believe the thread was really raised to promote MS as the best ever. I'm certain that Gwen will be pleased to see the reaction here.

[fines]

Ahh, I thought it was "The Great F***er"...

BTW, it's connoisseurs

[Peter Mallett]

Tee hee and Ta.

[Vitesse]

Michael: I always think of it as "That German F***er" ...

As I've read through this thread everything I wanted to say about Fangio has already been said - to try to compare a great all-rounder like Fangio, Moss, Nuvolari or Clark with today's one-dimensional F1 drivers is ludicrous. The difference is obvious when you consider that just one Mille Miglia equals the same distance as FIVE modern GPs!! So, a Mille Miglia, run at breakneck speeds over public roads is equivalent to about one third of the current World Championship - makes you think doesn't it??

When did an active F1 driver last contest Le Mans, or any serious sports car race come to that? I suspect the last person to do it might have been Martin Brundle, but I don't have any details to hand to check ...

It was truly a different era of greats.