The Coys International Historic Festival meeting of July 1994 at Silverstone featured a tribute to Juan Manuel Fangio and had a display of some of the cars with which he was associated. The photograph below shows three of the cars which are associated with his World Championship victories.
His first World Championship was won in 1951 in an Alfa Romeo and the car on the left is an Alfa Romeo 158 of 1950. Although he started 1954 driving a Maserati 250F, Mercedes Benz introduced their new car at the French Grand Prix and he won the Championship in that year and 1955 driving the W196 model, an example of which is on the right-hand side of the photograph. The car in the middle is a Maserati 250F which Fangio used in winning the 1957 Championship. He also won in 1956 driving a Lancia-Ferrari and at the time of this tribute there were none left in existence, although since then several of the earlier Lancia D50s and the Lancia-Ferrari have been recreated (or 'faked' as Denis Jenkinson would have said).
Also on display was this 1948 1.5 litre Ferrari 166, serial number 011F, thought to have been raced by Fangio in Argentina.
I was fortunate enough to have seen Fangio drive in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree and the 1957 British Grand Prix, also at Aintree.
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