Juan Manuel Fangio

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.

This photograph shows one of the cars with which he won two of his World Drivers’ Championship victories and another from his earlier exploits in Argentina before he came to Europe. 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 in 1955 driving the W196 model, one of which is shown here nearest the camera. The blue and yellow car behind the Mercedes Benz is a 1949 Ferrari 166 F2 car, Enzo Ferrari's first single seat racing car. It is thought to be one of the cars that Fangio drove early in his career before he came to Europe and joined the Alfa Romeo F1 team, and had been fully restored by Tony Merrick in the 4 years before this appearance. The display also featured a 1950 Alfa Romeo 158, representing the later Alfa Romeo 159 with which Fangio won his first World Championship in 1951 and there was a Maserati 250F in the display which Fangio drove in winning the 1957 Championship. He won the 1956 Championship driving a Lancia-Ferrari but 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.