Juan
Manuel Fangio’s first victory in the newly organised Formula 1 World Championship
series came in the 1950 Grand Prix de Monaco. Clinging to the precipitous
cliffs of the Alpes Maritime, overlooking the blue Mediterranean, the tiny, picturepostcard-perfect
principality's splendid architecture was crammed into crowded confines that afforded
even its privileged citizens precious little room to manouevre. Yet as a
glamourous and exotic backdrop for a motor race it was a spectacular theatre
second to none, and had been since 1929.
But
before that 1929 race through the storied streets many safety-conscious observers questioned the
wisdom of setting loose high-powered racing cars on tight and twisting
thoroughfares where even horses, let alone horseless carriages driven at a
sedate pace, needed to be exercised with extreme caution. The day before the
inaugural Monaco Grand Prix the Nice-Matin newspaper issued a warning:
'The race circuit, laid out entirely within the Principality, works out to be
just over 3 kilometers. It goes without saying that the track is made up
entirely of bends, steep uphill climbs
and fast downhill runs. Any respectable traffic system would have covered the
track with DANGER signposts, left, right and centre.'
Very
little had changed since then, except that the cars were now much faster, and
on the evening before his first appearance there Juan conducted some private
research into previous races. The 15 drivers entered in the 1950 Grand Prix
were invited to a reception at the Monaco Automobile Club's headquarters, where
Juan entertained himself by examining
photograph alblums documenting highlights of past events, many of which
featured accidents. For the 1936 race Juan found a photo showing a tangle of
wrecked cars, among them two Mercedes-Benzs, a Maserati, and an Alfa Romeo
driven by his now team mate, Farina. Studying the shot in detail Juan came to
the conclusion that the crash had likely occurred because one of the cars had
spun across the track and stalled in the middle of a sharp corner. Because the
closely following drivers were unable to see over the stone walls that lined
the track they had ploughed into the stationary vehicle. Perhaps, Juan thought,
they had been too preoccupied to take note of the flags that must have been
waved in warning by track marshals. Anyway, he concluded, it would be important
to be prepared for such emergencies, and he filed the information away in a
memory bank in which he had already deposited many cautionary notes concerning
Monaco's myriad hazards.
Though
it was one of the shortest of all circuits, 1.976 miles in its 1950
configuration, it was filled with complications out of all proportion to its
length. With no straight worthy of the name the entire lap was a continuous
struggle against centrifugal force around a profusion of corners, many of them
acute and several of them accompanied by an abrupt loss or gain of elevation as
the circuit rose and fell around the heights above the palm-tree lined,
yacht-filled harbour. Bounded by stone curbs and ballustrades, its undulating
surface treacherously disfigured by painted traffic markings and manhole
covers, the desperately narrow course was in some places barely wide enough to
accomodate a single car, whose occupant must maintain concentration of the
highest order to drive with the inch-perfect precision necessary to avoid
making even the slightest mistake. While there was absolutely no margin for an
error in judgement, there was also an extreme demand placed on manual
dexterity, since the steering wheel, brakes, clutch, accelerator and gear lever
were in constant use. With at least 20 gearchanges per lap there would be over
2,000 of them in the 100 laps of the race that would last for over three hours
- for those who survived that long.
One
of those who did not make the race was Juan's compatriot Alfredo Pian, who was
driving one of the Achille Varzi team's Maseratis, a Formula 2 car that was
among several of this type that were invited to compete because there wasn't
yet enough Formula 1 machinery to fill the grid. In the final practice session
Pian lost control and crashed heavily on the entry to the notoriously difficult
Casino Square. Pian was pulled from his wrecked car suffering a painfully
broken leg.
But
Argentina was still featured front and centre in the race, since pole position
was claimed by Juan Manuel Fangio. Beside him on the starting grid was his Alfa
Romeo team mate Guiseppe Farina, while on the outside of the front row was the
second Achille Varzi entry, the Maserati driven by Jose Froilan Gonzalez, whose
unexpected pace was the talk of the town. Behind these three the impressive
entry list boasted the new Formula 1 team fielded by Enzo Ferrari, whose choice
of Monaco for his cars' World Championship debut added considerable lustre to
the event and whose drivers Luigi Villoresi, Alberto Ascari and Raymond Sommer
would, the organiser's hoped, provide more competition for the much-favoured
Three F's – Farina, Fagioli, Fangio - in the Alfa Romeos. Also taking the start
was the closest Monaco had to a home team, the Gordinis driven by Maurice
Trintignant and Robert Manzon, while France was also represented by the Talbots
of Rosier, Etancelin and Claes, and though he was driving an Italian car the
great Louis Chiron sported the French flag on his Maserati.
The Start of the first world championship Monaco GP (Automobile Club de Monaco photo)
At
the start, wary of his team mate Farina's reputation for a recklessness which
meant he was not to be trusted in close quarters, especially in the early laps,
Juan fought strenously to preserve the advantage afforded by his pole position.
Farina battled back, but was also occupied with defending his position against
Villoresi, who had sensationally powered his Ferrari forward from the third row
of the grid. By the time the wildly jostling pack rounded the Ste Devote
corner, Juan's closest pursuer as they charged up the hill was Villoresi, who
had managed to elbow aside Farina's Alfetta and was also in front of Liugi Fagioli
in the third of the F-driven cars.
In
a crescendo of noise reverberating off the walls of the buildings, the fiercely
fighting field tore up the hill and roared through Casino Square, rocketed down
the hill to Mirabeau, careened around the station hairpin, blasted through the
darkness of the long tunnel and shot out into the bright sunlight along the
harbourfront. As Fangio and Villoresi pounded past the Bureau de Tabac, chaos
erupted behind them.
At
the Tabac corner Farina's Alfetta came unstuck on the slick of water thrown up
from the waves crashing against the harbour wall. Farina's frantic corrections
fell far short of what was necessary to salvage the situation, and his wildly
oscillating car struck the curb and rebounded sideways - directly in front of
oncoming traffic. Confronted with this sudden emergency, his team mate Fagioli
threw his car into an avoidance manouevre that failed. Just as the two Alfettas
smashed together the closely following Maserati of Gonzalez speared into the
wreckage with enough force to part the entwined Alfas and emerge on the other
side. Also managaging to squeeze through the aperture created by the Gonzalez
battering ram were Chiron, Sommer and Ascari. When Rosier arrived on the scene
he braked suddenly, whereupon his Talbot was rear-ended by Manzon's Gordini,
thus setting off a chain reaction of spins and crashes that within seconds left
the track littered with nine crippled cars, several of them with ruptured fuel
tanks that dripped their volatile contents across the debris-laden road.
"I came onto the harbour front and I could detect agitation among the spectators. They were not looking at me leading the race, but were looking the other way. I braked very hard." - Juan Manuel Fangio
While the melee was over the race wasn't and as Juan sped through the harbour chicane he caught a glimpse of yellow flags being waved in the distance. Also, in his peripheral vision, he noticed that the densely-packed crowd was paying no attention to the passage of his race-leading Alfetta. Instead, the spectators' faces were turned toward the forthcoming Tabac corner. In a flash Juan remembered the photo of the 1936 accident scene and immediately applied the brakes, while also raising his hand to warn his pursuers of likely danger ahead.
- Carambolage @ Tabac (ACM photo)
At the crash site, where miraculously no one had been been hurt, the route was still blocked by a confusion of sidelined cars that frantic track marshals and course workers were having difficulty clearing aside. Juan took matters into his own hands and quickly sorted out the puzzle of intertwined wheels. Manouevreing his Alfetta alongside one of the trapped cars, he reached out and managed to push it aside far enough to create a gap through which he eased his Alfetta. Villoresi, after some to-ing and fro-ing, followed Fangio's cue, as did Ascari and the few others that remained in the Monaco Grand Prix.
None
of them came close to catching Fangio, who finished a lap ahead of Ascari, whose
Ferrari team mate Villoresi retired with a seized axle, leaving Chiron's
Maserati to claim third, two laps behind the leader, who finished three laps
ahead of fourth-placed Sommer in the third Ferrari. Only three other cars
survived the gruelling contest of stamina and skill, which Juan won - at an
average speed of 61mph - after three hours and 13 minutes of extreme effort.
His fastest race lap of 64mph, which was only a fraction slower than his pole
position time, gave him a total of 9 championship points, tying him with
Farina.
***
"It
was a good feeling to win for the first time in the championship, but there was
also concern for my injured friends." - Juan Manuel Fangio
Yet
Juan's first world championship victory, his complete dominance of the
notoriously difficult race, and his prestigious reward - receiving the winner's
trophy from Monaco's Prince Rainier at the traditional post-race ceremony -
were made less enjoyable by his concern for his injured friend Gonzalez, whose
escape from the multiple crash at Tabac had been followed by a fiery disaster.
When
Gonzalez scraped between the two crashed Alfettas his Maserati's fuel filler
cap, located just behind the driver's head, had become dislodged. A few moments
later, as Gonzalez was braking for a corner, the sloshing fuel sprayed out into
the cockpit and was ignited by the backfiring engine. Gonzalez, momentarily
engulfed in flames, lept out of the car while it was still moving and rolled
over and over on the tarmac. Spectators rushed to his aid, pulling him off the
track and tearing off his smouldering shirt. Gonzalez, suffering from serious
burns to his arms and back, was taken to the hospital, where his compatriot Pian
was also being treated for his badly broken leg.
Juan,
though he was due to race the next weekend at Monza, spent half the week
attending to the welfare of his injured fellow Argentinians. Two days after his
Monaco win he removed the seats from his Alfa Romeo road car to make room for a
stretcher and drove Pian to a hospital in Bologna that specialized in treating
orthopaedic injuries. Juan then returned to Monaco, where he loaded Gonzalez
into his improvised ambulance and transported him back to Italy, to a burns
clinic in Novara.
***
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fangio-Life-Behind-Legend-ebook/dp/B009EQG924
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