1951 The first title

Silver cars at the Costanera

In February 1951 Mercedes-⁠Benz came back to motor racing in Buenos Aires, with three silver Grand Prix cars from before the war: 1939 Mercedes-⁠Benz W154s (often called W163s), three-litre V12s with two-stage superchargers. They had been shipped out for Hermann Lang, Karl Kling and Nino Farina. While they were at sea the organisers of the Argentine season insisted that Fangio should drive one, and told Mercedes-⁠Benz that without him nobody would come and the races would be called off. Mercedes-⁠Benz gave way, and Farina protested to the FIA. It was the first time Alfred Neubauer, the team’s manager, ran him in one of his cars.

On the twisting Costanera circuit the handling of José Froilán González’s two-litre Ferrari was worth more than the Mercedes-⁠Benz’s power, and González won both races. Fangio was third in the first, the Gran Premio Presidente Perón on 18 February, 51.5 seconds behind him, with Lang second; a faulty front shock absorber had cost him a wheel change. In the second, the Gran Premio Eva Perón the next weekend, the three silver cars led for 6 laps before González passed them, and Fangio retired after 17 of the 45 laps.

The 159 and the 375

In Europe he was still an Alfa Romeo driver, with Farina, as in 1950, and it was the car’s last season. For 1951 the engineers, led by Orazio Satta, developed the 158 into the Alfa Romeo 159: more supercharger boost, for 420 to 425 bhp; more fuel tanks, for an engine that now did about 1.6 miles to the gallon; and, on the newest cars, a de Dion axle at the rear instead of swing axles. Four new cars were built. Gioachino Colombo, who had designed the original, came back to Alfa Romeo from Ferrari in February, too late to shape them much.

Against them Ferrari had Aurelio Lampredi’s unsupercharged 4.5-⁠litre V12 375, a little less powerful, but needing fewer stops for fuel; its leader was Alberto Ascari.

Fangio prepared himself as well. According to a portrait printed in the Rivista Pirelli that year, he had weighed 92 kilograms and decided to lose weight for endurance. He and González, who shared the Varzi family’s villa at Galliate, bought bicycles, and Fangio rode up to 100 kilometres a morning; he lost more than seven kilograms in a few months, and gave up smoking. In the evenings he studied a circuit’s hardest corners.

Rain at Bremgarten, a wheel at Spa

The championship opened at Bremgarten on 27 May, in the rain. Alfa Romeo was so worried about fuel that after the warm-up lap its mechanics topped up the tanks from large jugs on the grid while the Ferraris waited, and both teams fitted shields behind the front wheels against the spray. Farina, with two extra tanks in the cockpit, ran without a stop. Fangio, with one, had to stop, and still won from pole, with the fastest lap, 55 seconds ahead of Piero Taruffi’s Ferrari. Eighth, in an HWM, was Stirling Moss.

At Spa-Francorchamps on 17 June he took pole again and set a new lap record, 4:22.1, in a car with fuel tanks on either side of his legs. He led after Farina’s stop. At his own, at the end of lap 15, the near-side rear wheel jammed on its hub: the head of a broken spoke had lodged behind the splines. For about 14½ minutes the mechanics fought it, and Motor Sport watched the driver:

He drove off to cheers, knowing that he could not stop again for tyres, and finished ninth, 4 laps down, with a single point for the fastest lap. Farina took the lead of the championship, 12 points to 10.

Minutes at his stop, lap 15

14½

Place at the flag

9

Around the championship there were other races. In May, at the new car’s first race, he won his heat of the International Trophy at Silverstone with a lap record, before a thunderstorm stopped the final after 6 laps; he retired from the Paris Grand Prix after leading it in a Simca-⁠Gordini, for Amédée Gordini, who had given him his first European drive in 1948; and at Le Mans in June he retired again, with Louis Rosier, in a Talbot-⁠Lago.

Reims: a win in Fagioli’s car

The French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux on 1 July was the European Grand Prix as well: 77 laps of the 7.8 km circuit, about 602 kilometres, still the longest World Championship race by distance apart from the Indianapolis 500s. Alfa Romeo brought back Luigi Fagioli, now 53, as a fourth driver; Ferrari used González in place of Taruffi, and Reg Parnell drove Tony Vandervell’s Thinwall Ferrari. Fangio took pole with 2:25.7, a lap Motor Sport timed at 193 km/⁠h (just under 120 mph), faster than Hermann Lang had gone in the three-litre Mercedes-⁠Benz in 1939.

Ascari led the first 9 laps, until gearbox and brake trouble put his Ferrari out. Fangio’s own Alfa was in trouble early too, with its ignition, and by one account lost about 11 minutes. When Fagioli, running well, came in for fuel and tyres, the team gave his car to Fangio, and fitted a new magneto to Fangio’s for Fagioli to drive on. Farina led until he threw a tyre tread and overshot his pit, and then his car caught the magneto trouble that heat and 9,000 rpm had brought on. Ferrari put Ascari into González’s car at its stop, and the Argentines in the crowd booed.

Ascari led in González’s car until he stopped to have its brakes adjusted. Fangio’s one fuel stop took 35 seconds, a drink included, and he won by 58.2 seconds. The Alfa signaller stood in the middle of the road, holding out a board lettered ASCA, FANG, FAR, VILL and PAR to cars passing at about 260 km/⁠h (160 mph). At the finish the Argentines called for their hero; the French cheered Consalvo Sanesi, pushing his dead Alfa up the straight to the line, more than they cheered the winner.

The 8 points for the win were shared, 4 each, and the fastest lap, 2:27.8, added 1 more for Fangio: 5 points.¹ Fagioli brought Fangio’s first car home 11th, 22 laps down. It was Fagioli’s only World Championship win, and his last World Championship race. Motor Sport’s reporter thought it fitting that a race of that kind should be won by a car rather than by one driver.

Silverstone: González

At Silverstone on 14 July González, in an older, 12-plug Ferrari 375, took pole with the first lap of the circuit at more than 161 km/⁠h (100 mph), 1:43.4; Fangio was second on the grid, a second slower. Felice Bonetto’s Alfa led the first lap, then González; Fangio passed him on lap 10, and for some 35 laps they fought, often less than a second apart. At 45 laps González led by four-tenths. Motor Sport’s reporter watched Fangio in his yellow shirt and blue helmet, and González, heavily built, his bare arms at full stretch, fighting the Ferrari through the corners.

Then came the stops. Fangio’s Alfa needed fuel and new rear wheels, and was stationary for 49 seconds; González’s Ferrari needed only fuel, 23 seconds, with Ascari, already out, standing by his car. González led by a minute and a half at 60 laps and won by 51 seconds: Ferrari’s first World Championship win, and, in the count of the historians at 8W, the first defeat of the works Alfettas in a full-length race since 1946. Motor Sport did not blame the stops. “Fangio drove like the master he is”, it wrote, but the Ferrari was the faster car, and it asked whether he had met his match in his compatriot.

The Nürburgring, Bari and Pescara

The World Championship came to the Nürburgring for the first time on 29 July. In practice, in the 159, he spun, and in 1969 he remembered it: “I made the first and only spin of my life at the Nürburgring.” It taught him, he wrote, his own limit and the car’s.

He started third, led the first lap, and led again after Ascari’s stop. But the Alfa had two fuel stops planned to the Ferrari’s one, and the second put Ascari ahead; Ascari stopped once more, late, for tyres, and still won by 30.5 seconds. Fangio finished second with gearbox trouble at the end, and his fastest lap, 9:55.8, equalled Ascari’s pole time. He now led the championship by 10 points, and Motor Sport passed on a rumour that he might drive for Mercedes-⁠Benz the next year. He did, but not until 1954.

Alfa Romeo did not enter the Pescara Grand Prix on 15 August, and González won it at Pescara, where Fangio had won the year before. After two Ferrari wins in a row, Alfa Romeo entered Fangio and Farina at the last minute for Bari, on 2 September. Fangio took pole and won, with only top gear left for the last third of the race. The car, chassis 159/111, the team’s test car, survives.

Monza, 16 September

Ferrari had tested at Monza and could lap in 1:55. Alfa Romeo brought three new 159s with de Dion axles, reshaped tails, twin exhausts and bigger front brakes. Consalvo Sanesi was badly burned in a fire while the team rehearsed its refuelling, and could not race. In practice Fangio went round the 6.3 km circuit in 1:53.2, the first lap of Monza at more than 200 km/⁠h (124 mph), for pole.

He and Ascari set the pace, and Fangio led early. When he came in, a front tyre burst as he slowed; he rejoined fifth, and caught Bonetto and Luigi Villoresi before his engine began to cut out, and failed, after 39 laps. Ascari won, González was second, and Farina third in Bonetto’s car despite a split fuel tank. For Denis Jenkinson, in Motor Sport, “The XXII Italian G.P. was Ferrari’s finest victory and Alfa-Romeo’s greatest defeat”. In his pit, after the car had stopped, Fangio said, as El Gráfico recalled the next June:

Alfa Romeo’s racing manager, Giovanni Battista Guidotti, later gave Doug Nye the reason for this failure: “Our cylinder heads were old and over-stressed”, some of them porous. New heads were cast for the last race.

The decider

The arithmetic was tight, because each driver counted only his best four results. Fangio had 27 points and Ascari 25, but a win with the fastest lap would bring Fangio only 4 more, since it would replace his 5 from Reims, and Ascari 6, replacing a 3. Whichever of them won would be champion.

Ascari’s pole was 2:10.59, to Fangio’s 2:12.27; González and Farina completed a front row of four on the start–finish straight, the Avenida del Generalísimo Franco, La Diagonal, and the crowd was estimated at 250,000. Ferrari had fitted 16-inch rear wheels in place of 17-inch ones: for acceleration, by most accounts, or, in Taruffi’s own autobiography, Works Driver, to spare weak half-shafts on the bumpy straight.

Ascari led from the start. Fangio passed Farina on lap 3 and Ascari on lap 4, and the Ferraris’ treads began to break up: Taruffi’s on lap 6, Villoresi’s on lap 7, Ascari’s on lap 9, González’s on lap 14. Ferrari went back to the larger wheels. González recovered to second, while Ascari, stopping again and again, fell 2 laps behind. Fangio stopped twice, for fuel only, the second time after lap 52, never changed a tyre, and led to the end.

He won by 54.28 seconds from González, with Farina third and Ascari fourth, and his fastest lap, 2:16.93, was a new lap record. He was champion with 31 counted points, to Ascari’s 25 and González’s 24, at the age of 40 years and 126 days: the first Argentine World Champion, and Alfa Romeo’s second in two years.

At the finish González embraced him, and El Gráfico’s Borocotó saw in it the gratitude of Argentine drivers to the man who had opened the way for them. He wrote of the title as a personal adventure, and a gift to the country: “Let us thank him for the gift he gave us, which we can in no way repay.” Fangio dedicated the title to Juan Perón and Eva Perón, and the Peronist sports weekly Mundo Deportivo gave them the credit: the drivers, it wrote, dedicated their triumphs to the President and to Eva Perón.

The last of the Alfetta

Pedralbes was the Alfetta’s last race. At the end of the season Alfa Romeo withdrew from Grand Prix racing. The reasons given differ: the board wanted its engineers back on production cars, by one account, and by another there was no worthwhile new formula to build for. With Alfa Romeo gone and BRM unreliable, the World Championship would be a Formula 2 championship in 1952 and 1953, and Fangio was free to sign for Maserati, for BRM and for Alfa Romeo’s sports cars, for a season that would end at Monza in June.

Twenty-eight years later, in London, he looked back:

Alfa Romeo’s 10 World Championship wins run from Silverstone in 1950 to Pedralbes in 1951. It has not won another.