From the archives with... Doug Nye

When I was first hooked on motor racing, what turned out to be a life-changing image was a magazine photo shown to me by my big brother, Rod. It depicted Reg Parnell in the works Alfa Romeo 158 at Silverstone. ‘Uncle Reg’ was crouched behind the steering wheel, muscular arms pumping the powerful car through the corner. And its barred radiator grille was bent and ugly, punched-in by a luckless Silverstone hare that had bounded into Parnell’s path.

I was entranced – for me that Alfetta was a fabulous-looking spacecraft of an open-wheeler racing car, a burly bloke hustling it around, drama, evident damage, palpable danger. Here was an activity that was exciting, attractive – an activity about which I just wanted, at six years old, to know so much more.

Very quickly I learned that a colourful Italian gent named ‘Nino’ Farina had just become what was described as the sport’s first world champion driver. He had won his title in another Alfetta. Of course, had English driver Parnell really wanted to drive for Alfa Romeo full time he would have shown Johnny Foreigner a thing or two. But in our Empire-educated, British is best, Corinthian world-view of major sports, of course Mr Parnell would probably have been too busy with higher matters (like his pig farm and haulage business) to have consented to grace Alfa with his permanent presence.

In 1951, when another foreigner – Juan Manuel Fangio – beat both the great Italians, Farina and Ascari of Ferrari, to become the sport’s second world champion in this post-war series, the young Doug thought this was the most important thing that had ever happened in all of history. There were only two world champion drivers in my experience, and so – wow – the title radiated real stature.
Over the following 10 years – into the 1960s – how many more great motor sportsmen would become world champion? Ascari won the title twice, Fangio five times, then Mike Hawthorn (hurrah, a Brit), then Jack Brabham twice. So by 1962 – with the two Hills, American Phil and Londoner Graham – having clinched the two most recent titles, how many world champions would a racing fan have known?

That’s right, only seven. The position of being Formula 1 world champion was both rarefied and exalted. These men were celebrities, few and far between. Come the end of the 1962 Grand Prix season, only five of those seven champions were still alive, and only three still racing. So they were rarer still.

Most racing enthusiasts valued, respected and admired the world title as a most distinctive achievement. Inevitably, as time rolls by, more and more world championships are run and won. The roster of title winners has grown. Championship-qualifying world championship rounds have been multiplied, from six meaningful road-circuit races in 1950 to nine in 1960, 13 in 1970, 14 in 1980, 16 in 1990, 17 in 2000 and 19 by 2010. Over the years we have seen 32 Formula 1 world champions. This year’s entry features five of them.

So forgive me if I confess to a pretty blasé respect level for current world champions, when there are more than twice as many of them currently active than there were around when I first caught the bug.
The point of all this? Many of my peers find it as difficult as I do to feel much sympathy for the apparently premenstrual teenage bleats, from the likes of Hamilton and Rosberg, over differences affecting their likely chances of securing this year’s title. As whinge has followed whine the phrases “so what”, “grow up” and “get a grip” spring to mind.

When Mercedes-Benz established its hold upon Formula 1 in 1954-55, a proper pecking order within the team became quickly apparent. Fangio was The Boss, no question. In 1954 Karl Kling was the team’s already declining home-grown hope, and fresh-faced young Hans Herrmann the cadet.

Into 1955 Stirling Moss – for years the elephant in the room where potential world champion status was concerned – leap-frogged both Herrmann and Kling to become the only team member who could run with (and threaten) Fangio.

And – most significantly – The Old Man had the self-confidence, the maturity and the wisdom not only to combat the threat, but also to foster many of the newcomer’s skills. In later years we would see a similarly mature approach from Graham Hill when first joined by Jackie Stewart at BRM.
But in Formula 1’s modern media hothouse, maturity proves a tender plant that rapidly wilts and dies. I doubt I’m alone in this, but while my admiration for what our best F1 drivers can do today survives undimmed, my respect for the personalities involved – and admittedly so much on display – has virtually evaporated.

It’s not easy to admire such displays of hearts on sleeves when the young men are so fêted, so well rewarded and demonstrably – compared to their predecessors – at so little personal risk while chasing that still elusive (yet devalued) title.

And maybe that’s the aspect in which respect is most diminished. That’s a pity.

A puzzle of many parts

Individual race car histories are hard to record – for a reason

Our great predecessor here at Motor Sport, Denis Jenkinson, produced 11 compact volumes of his annual Motor Sport Racing Car Review. He finally abandoned the series after 1958, when Tony Vandervell – head of Formula 1’s first champion constructor Vanwall – objected to Jenks revealing publicly how many Vanwall cars had actually been produced that season. There was a business reason around which Jenks could never have wrapped his inquisitive mind. Vandervell did not really want Her Majesty’s tax man to learn too much about Vanwall’s racing programme. So DSJ decided that if he could not present the real story, the only option was not to publish at all. In fact it was not until 1975 that he and our mutual friend Cyril Posthumus finally published the whole Vanwall story in the wonderful Patrick Stephens-published book of the same name.

In somewhat similar style to Jenks’s Vanwall odyssey, rummaging around recently in the reality of Porsche 908/03 matters has proved revealing. The Zuffenhausen marque’s 908/03 was the minimum motor car for the maximum tight-circuit performance. While the 4.5 and ultimately 5-litre air-cooled flat-12 917s proved an implacable sledgehammer to crack Ferrari’s 512 nut, the minimal 3-litre flat-8 908/03 was tailored to win the Targa Florio and Nürburgring 1000Kms world championship rounds.

The cars were campaigned as new by the Gulf-JWA and Porsche Salzburg teams. While 13 of the cars were eventually built, Porsche produced only eight of the tailor-made 908/03 transaxle gearboxes, with the gearbox section immediately ahead of the final-drive to avoid its mass being overhung behind the back axle line. This concentrated all mechanical mass within the car’s wheelbase, to enhance its nimble swervability. It also forced the engine forward, and hence the driving position alarmingly far forward, with the drivers’ feet ahead of the front axle centerline – arriving first at the accident as all the works drivers observed, grimly.

In practice it seems that only five 908/03 Gulf-JWA and Porsche Salzburg (Martini, in 1971) works cars were all assembled at any one time. In the 1970 Targa Florio, Jo Siffert/Brian Redman and Pedro Rodriguez/Leo Kinnunen were triumphant in a Gulf-JWA team 1-2, Richard Attwood and Bjorn Waldegård (now much missed) fifth in the other Gulf-JWA car. At that year’s Nürburgring 1000Kms it was Porsche Salzburg’s turn to shine, with Vic Elford/Kurt Ahrens Jr and Hans Herrmann/Richard Attwood first and second in their 908/3s after Gulf-JWA’s reliability collapsed.

In 1971 the updated Porsche skateboards reappeared in the Targa and 1000Kms, but in Sicily they had a nightmare – both Gulf-JWA cars crashed on the first lap, followed later by Salzburg Martini’s sister 908/03, leaving the race to Autodelta’s Alfa Romeo T33s.

Normal service was then more than resumed at the Nürburgring, in which Porsche 908/03s ripped home 1-2-3, Martini’s entries for Elford/Larrousse and Gijs van Lennep/Helmut Marko sandwiching Rodriguez/Siffert’s Gulf-JWA entry in second place.

In later years the 908/03s were stripped down, parts returned to store, retrieved, reassembled and rebuilt for a whole battalion of subsequent private owners. Many frames were re-equipped with turbocharged engines and the little Porsches were generally raced into the ground through the mid-1970s and on into historic competition.

Today I believe that only one surviving 908/03 retains its original bodywork, and that is chassis 009 in the Porsche Museum. Dale Miller, the American Porsche specialist, subsequently masterminded a 908/03 reconstruction programme that has brought many of the identities back to health – and in some cases to life. He originated as many 908/03 transaxles as the factory ever produced, made in England by Ray East of Gearace.

But when it comes to Porsche sports-prototype production in general, the company produced even more ‘car sets’ than even multi-millionaire industrialist Tony Vandervell would ever have considered feasible. All racing cars when current have a fleetingly ephemeral existence as a fully assembled, running and raceworthy entity. They spend much more time as a disparate collection of disassembled parts, stored on stock shelves, or stacked somewhere as just bare chassis. And this is a racing car reality that tidy-minded yet naïve collectors today too often fail to grasp. Road cars, once assembled and sold new, almost always survive for an entire working life as the single same unified entity. When it comes to racers – well, as a Cornish friend of mine puts it, “Just t’ain’t so!”

Juan Manuel Fangio makes Formula One debut

Juan Manuel Fangio–the Argentine race car driver dubbed “the Maestro”–makes his European racing debut at the Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club de France in Reims, France on this day in 1948.

Born in San Jose de Balcarce, Argentina, in 1911, Fangio left school at the age of 11 and began working as an automobile mechanic. With financial support from the town of Balcarce, he won his first major racing victory driving a Chevrolet in the Gran Premio Internacional del Norte of 1940, a grueling road race between Buenos Aires and Lima, Peru. After a hiatus during World War II, Fangio made it to Europe, where he was invited to race a Simca-Gordini in the French Grand Prix in Reims on July 18, 1948. (Grands Prix are the events that make up a single season on the Formula One circuit, the highest class of European auto racing according to the Federation International de l’Automobile.) Though he retired from both of the races he entered that day, Fangio announced his potential as a worthy rival for his European counterparts.

In October 1948, Fangio’s Chevrolet rolled over a Peruvian cliff during a road race; though Fangio escaped almost uninjured, his co-driver and friend Daniel Urrutia was killed in the crash. After briefly considering retirement, Fangio returned to Europe the following summer for his first full European racing season. He won his first four races, and by the end of the season had racked up seven major wins. In 1950, the Formula One World Championship was created. Fangio, who had signed on with the Alfa Romeo team, was just shy of his 39th birthday at the start of that first championship season. He lost the title that year to his Italian teammate, Giuseppe Farina, but stayed with Alfa Romeo and held on to win his first Formula One championship title in 1951.

Over the course of his career, Fangio would drive some of the best cars Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo ever produced. In addition to five Formula One titles between 1951 and 1957, he triumphed in an incredible 24 of his 51 Grand Prix races. Perhaps his greatest achievement came in his last full season, at the German Grand Prix in Nurburgring in 1957. Fangio came from 56 seconds behind to overtake the rival Ferrari team, bettering the track record by an incredible 12 seconds on three consecutive laps. The victory gave Fangio his fifth Formula One title. He retired the following year.

Known for his spectacular technical ability and for his demure manner, Fangio has been called the greatest driver of all time. He died in July 1995, and was buried in his native Balcarce.

Juan Manuel Fangio bids goodbye to Grand Prix racing in France

The great Argentine race car driver Juan Manuel Fangio, winner of five Formula One driver’s world championships, competes in his last Grand Prix race–the French Grand Prix held outside Reims, France–on this day in 1958.

Fangio left school at the age of 11 and worked as an automobile mechanic in his hometown of San Jose de Balcarce, Argentina before beginning his driving career. He won his first major victory in the Gran Premio Internacional del Norte of 1940, racing a Chevrolet along the often-unpaved roads from Buenos Aires to Lima, Peru. In 1948, Fangio was invited to race a Simca-Gordini in the French Grand Prix, also at Reims, which marked his European racing debut. After a crash during a road race in Peru that fall killed his co-driver and friend Daniel Urrutia, Fangio considered retiring from racing, but in the end returned to Europe for his first full Formula One season the following year.

In Formula One, the top level of racing as sanctioned by the Fédération International de l’Automobile (FIA), drivers compete in single-seat, open-wheel vehicles typically built by large automakers (or “constructors,” in racing world parlance) and capable of achieving speeds of more than 230 mph. Individual Formula One events are known as Grands Prix. Fangio signed on in 1948 with Alfa Romeo, and won his first Formula One championship title with that team in 1951. Over the course of his racing career, he would drive some of the best cars Alfa-Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari and Maserati ever produced. Capturing four more Formula One titles by 1957, Fangio won an impressive 24 of 51 total Grand Prix races.

Reims, famous for its 13th-century cathedral, hosted the oldest Grand Prix race, the French Grand Prix, at its Reims-Gueux course a total of 14 times (the last time in 1966). In the race on July 6, 1958, the British driver Mike Hawthorn–who would win the driver’s world championship that season, but die tragically in a (non-racing) car accident the following January, at the age of 29–took the lead from the start in his 2.4-liter Ferrari Dino 246 and held on for the win. Fangio, driving a Maserati, finished fourth, in what would be the last race before announcing his retirement at the age of 47. The 1958 French Grand Prix also marked the Formula One debut of Phil Hill, who in 1960 would become the first American driver to win the world championship.

Juan Manuel Fangio Argentine automobile racing driver

Juan Manuel Fangio, (born June 24, 1911, Balcarce, Arg.—died July 17, 1995, Buenos Aires) driver who dominated automobile-racing competition in the 1950s.


Fangio began his Grand Prix career in 1948. He went on to win the world driving championship in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, and 1957. He had won 24 world-championship Grand Prix races when he retired from racing in 1958. Fangio won world titles driving for Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, and Maserati. He also won the 12-hour Sebring, Fla., sports car race in 1956 and 1957. After his retirement from racing, he worked for Mercedes-Benz in Argentina.

Juan Manuel Fangio: Argentine named Formula One's greatest ever driver by study

Juan Manuel Fangio is the greatest Formula One driver of all time -- at least according to new research carried out by the University of Sheffield.

It's a debate that has long divided motorsport fans but one that the UK-based university believes it has found the answer to.

 

After racking up five world championship wins between 1951 and 1957, Fangio is ranked top of the podium by the study, which was based on a driver's talent rather than their car.

 

The Argentine, who graced F1 circuits in the sport's early days, beat off competition from second-placed Alain Prost and Fernando Alonso in third, while legendary Brazilian drive Ayrton Senna, who was killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, ranked fifth.

 

Fangio won the world championship with four different teams -- a record still not matched today -- while he also remains the oldest world champion, having taken the 1957 title aged 46 years and 41 days.

 

"The question 'who is the greatest Formula One driver of all time' is a difficult one to answer, because we don't know the extent to which drivers do well because of their talent or because they are driving a good car," Dr Andrew Bell said. 

 

"Our statistical model allows us to find a ranking and assess the relative importance of team and driver effects."

 

Bell concedes it was difficult to take into account changes in racing technology over time, but said the research showed that, as the years have gone by, the team rather than the driver is a great indicator of success.

 

The study found that teams matter around six times more than drivers when it comes to taking the checkered flag in F1.

 

"It's obviously a difficult thing to compare, different drivers from different years -- if you put Fangio in a modern-day car he probably wouldn't do very well, and similarly the other way round," Bell told CNN. 

 

"So we looked at how much these things change over time. The team matter significantly more, the model says, and that has increased over time.

 

"As time has gone by, the performance of the car has mattered more and the importance of the driver has mattered less."

Where's Schumacher?

While Michael Schumacher is the most successful driver with seven world championships and an unparalleled 91 race wins, people may be surprised by his ranking in the study, which has been published in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.

 

The German only sits in ninth spot once his team's impact is removed, with his post-retirement performances with Mercedes from 2010 to 2012 dragging him down.

 

Schumacher, who also raced for Ferrari, Benetton and Jordan, would actually rank third in the study if only his pre-retirement career was taken into account.

 

Three-time world champion Niki Lauda, meanwhile, fails to even make the university's top 100 chart, with relatively unknown Christian Fittipaldi, without a world title to his name, making the top 20.

 

"Our statistical model [provides us] with some surprising results," Bell said. "Had these drivers raced for different teams, their legacies might have been rather different."

 

Did you know Lewis Hamilton was an art lover? 02:34

 

"When Lauda was performing at his best he was at Ferrari, which is a very higly-ranked team. When he moved teams, his actual performance dropped, which came out in the model," Bell added.

 

"Fittipaldi came out as one of the best drivers, which at first you think must be a mistake, but actually the model can bring out performances of drivers who might not win championships and are in low quality cars.

 

"The key thing was he was able to keep his car on the road, when his teammate wasn't, which helped very much in his favor in this model.

 

"When you take out the team effect you're seeing how well you compare to your teammate. 

 

"So if you win lots of championships but your teammate comes second, that won't count in your favor. Where as if you beat a teammate much more significantly that suggests it's down to your driving rather than the car."

 

While Schumacher's ranking and Fittipaldi's inclusion ahead of Lauda will be sure to raise eyebrows, Bell believes that in Fangio the study has found a worthy winner.

 

"He dominated the early 50s and he would firmly have a right to be up there, so I don't see any reason why he can't be number one," Bell said.

 

"The question 'who is the greatest Formula One driver of all time' has fascinated fans for years and I'm sure will continue to do so."

 

University of Sheffield study's top five F1 drivers of all time:

 

1. Juan Manuel Fangio (ARG)

2. Alain Prost (FRA)

3. Fernando Alonso (SPA)

4. Jim Clark (SCO)

5. Ayrton Senna (BRA)