F1 great Juan Manuel Fangio's 100th birthday

Until Michael Schumacher, Juan Manuel Fangio was the only Forumula 1-driver to have won five world championships. Arguably, he won with more style than Schumacher having competed in just 52 races in comparison to Schumacher's 276 and counting. Fangio is still the only driver to be world champion in four different manufacturers' cars.

Fangio's most famous win came in 1957 at the Nurburgring at the wheel of a Maserati 250F. Fangio used softer tires and half of fuel of the competing cars, which allowed him to open up a 30 second lead by the race's half-way point. His strategy meant that he would have to pit to refuel and change tires, which would be unnecessary in the other cars. However, there was a problem changing tires, and Fangio left the pits in third. He had 10 laps to make up the gap. With one lap to go, Fangio passed Mike Hawthorne in a Ferrari and won the race by 3.5 seconds. Fangio said that he had driven in “a state of grace” and considered it one of his greatest wins. 

The win was Fangio's last. He finished second in both of the last two races in 1957 and won his final world championship. Fangio was relatively unsuccessful in 1958. He came in seventh in the world championship and stopped racing in Formula 1 that year. 

Fans of Fangio benefit from the era in which he raced. There are a lot of videos showing Fangio racing. If he had raced before World War 2, we probably would be limited to stories and photos of him at the wheel. Below are two on-board videos with Fangio. The final video is a newsreel of Fangio at the Nurburgring in 1957.