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[sagi58]

Andrew Benson and Murray Walker compiled a list of F1's Greatest drivers. Below you'll find a quick summary of
their list (clicking on their name provides a link to the original feature).

However, for this thread, I posted the biographies only of those that drove for Ferrari.

Please remember I don't know about all of Ferrari's Greatest, so I can't argue with Benson or Walker. If you know
of someone they've missed, let me know who I've missed and I'll get the "411" on him!!

 wrote:">BBC Sport remembers F1's greatest drivers of all time

Number 1 - Ayrton Senna

The greatness of the man and the brilliance of his driving is remembered easily, the occasional darkness of his psyche perhaps less so.

Number 2 - Juan Manuel Fangio

Juan Manuel Fangio set records so immense that, in percentage terms, they will surely never be beaten.

Number 3 - Jim Clark

Jim Clark towered over his era, a period when he made many grands prix mind-numbingly boring. Yes, the Lotus was often the best car, but Clark's supremacy was not in doubt.

Number 4 - Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher's monumental achievements came about through a perfect storm of an exceptionally talented and hard-working driver, ground-breaking technical achievement, a bottomless pit of money and a ruthless management that exploited every last avenue to its benefit...

Number 5 - Alain Prost

Alain Prost drove like poetry and was an integral part of one of the greatest rivalries sport has ever known...

Number 6 - Stirling Moss

Sir Stirling Moss is the ultimate proof that statistics count only for so much when assessing the worth of a grand prix driver...

Number 7 - Jackie Stewart

Sir Jackie Stewart's enduring legacy stretches much further than 27 grand prix wins in 99 races, three world championships and being one of the greatest drivers ever to set foot in a Formula 1 car. It is that he had a bigger effect on his sport than arguably any man in history...

Number 8 - Sebastian Vettel

The Red Bull driver has undoubtedly had a stellar career so far - 22 grand prix victories, at a rate of more than one in four races, 33 pole positions and the youngest double world champion in history. All by the age of 25 and in just five seasons in F1...

Number 9 - Niki Lauda

Just 42 days after suffering horrendous burns in a crash at the Nurburgring, Lauda, swathed in bandages, was grinding out a determined fourth-place finish in Monza. It was a moment that defined the Austrian's revered career...

Number 10 - Fernando Alonso

Alonso's standing has been affirmed by his majestic form in 2012 as he moved on to 30 grand prix victories and started his pursuit of a third world title. An F1 career that began in 2001 could yet become even more sensational...

Number 11 – Alberto Ascari

In 1952, the first of the two consecutive world titles he secured with Ferrari, Ascari won every championship F1 race bar the first. Heading into the final race of the 1953 season, he had won 11 of the previous 13 grands prix...

Number 12 - Gilles Villeneuve

Gilles Villeneuve won only six grands prix in a career that spanned a little over four years, yet 30 years after his death his name still shines out like a beacon as a symbol of the heroic qualities that to many make up the very essence of a grand prix driver...

Number 13 - Nigel Mansell

Nigel Mansell was the personification of drama in a Formula 1 car.

Whether it be daring overtaking manoeuvres, his muscular handling of some of the sport's defining cars, or the histrionics and apparent persecution complex that accompanied much of his career, there was never a dull moment when the moustachioed Midlander was around...

Number 14 - Mika Hakkinen

Michael Schumacher says his toughest rival in his first career was Mika Hakkinen, which is quite a compliment from a man who also raced against Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost and lost his final world championship battle to Fernando Alonso...

Number 15 - Lewis Hamilton

When Lewis Hamilton burst onto the Formula 1 scene in 2007, taking on and often beating the reigning world champion Fernando Alonso in equal cars, in Italy they gave him the nickname 'Il Phenomeno' - the Phenomenon...

Number 16 - Nelson Piquet

Few drivers have had perceptions of them shift as dramatically throughout their careers as Nelson Piquet.

For a while in the mid-1980s, Piquet was regarded as the best driver in the world but, as his career went on, his stock fell and at the end he slipped out of F1 almost unnoticed - and largely unlamented...

Number 17 - Emerson Fittipaldi

Emerson Fittipaldi was a trailblazer in more ways than one.

He was the man who paved the way for future generations of Brazilian drivers to make their country synonymous with Formula 1...

Number 18 - Jack Brabham

Sir Jack Brabham is one of a select band of just eight drivers who have won the world title three times or more, but his achievements go far beyond that. He is also the only man to have won a title in a car bearing his own name...

Number 19 - Graham Hill

Damon Hill makes a thought-provoking observation about his father Graham.

Despite winning two Formula 1 titles, as well as being the only man to win the 'triple crown' of F1 world championship, Le Mans and Indy 500, Graham Hill always had the image of a 'trier' - a man who made it to the top through hard graft, rather than the easy talent of his contemporary Jim Clark...

Number 20 - Jochen Rindt

Throughout Formula 1 history, there have been drivers who, through ability and charisma, have left an impression that transcends their limited results. Jochen Rindt, number 20 on BBC F1's list of the greatest drivers of all time, is one such man...

[sagi58]

Nigel Mansell
Number 13 (according to Benson and Walker)




Born: 8 August 1953 (age 58)
Upton-upon-Severn, United Kingdom

F1 World Championship career: 1980–1992, 1994–1995
Teams: Lotus, Williams, Ferrari, McLaren
Championships: 1 (1992)

 wrote:">
Nigel Mansell was the personification of drama in a Formula 1 car.

Whether it be daring overtaking manoeuvres, his muscular handling of some of the sport's defining cars, or the histrionics and apparent persecution complex that accompanied much of his career, there was never a dull moment when the moustachioed Midlander was around.

Mansell's career coincided - and is inextricably linked - with those of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. He went toe-to-toe with these two titans and in so doing earned his own place in the pantheon.

His exciting, fighting style won him enormous adulation from fans, many of whom were not from the usual F1 audience demographic. But an awkward, complex, demanding personality often made him difficult to work with.

Mansell achieved the vast majority of his success in two periods with the Williams team. But even their boss, Frank Williams, said when Mansell left for the second time: "Nigel is conceited, he's arrogant and he's brilliant," adding: "We'll miss him as a driver but not as a bloke."

Whereas both Senna and Prost seemed preordained for F1 glory, Mansell had to convince many doubters along the way.

He battled lack of finance through the junior formulae, where his determination was obvious from an early stage - he broke his neck in a crash in Formula Ford but, despite being told by doctors that he was lucky not to be paralysed, discharged himself from hospital and returned to racing.

In F1, too, his refusal to give up became apparent from the very beginning.

During his grand prix debut with Lotus in Austria in 1980, a fuel leak into the cockpit gave him first and second degree burns, but he battled through the pain and stopped only when a mechanical problem forced him into retirement.

Mansell had a close relationship with Lotus founder Colin Chapman, but found life at the team more of a struggle following the boss's untimely death in December 1982.

Peter Warr, who stepped up from being Chapman's right-hand man to run the team, despised Mansell.

"Throughout his time with the team," Warr wrote in his autobiography, "Mansell made it clear that he felt the whole world was against him.

"It did not help his case that in many instances his demeanour and behaviour did nothing to convince the team that anything they did would help change his attitude to one where he was not continually suspicious of their real intent."

Warr was especially critical when Mansell made mistakes - the most high-profile of which during the Lotus years was in Monaco in 1984.

After taking the lead from the McLaren of eventual winner Prost in the pouring rain, Mansell crashed on the way up the hill - blaming the white lines painted on the road for his error.

Mansell was beaten more often than not during his years at Lotus by team-mate Elio de Angelis, a talented driver and charming man from a wealthy Roman background, and a very different personality from Mansell.

Lotus recruited Senna in his place for 1985 but Mansell was provided a lifeline by Williams. It was to be the making of him.

Williams took on Mansell expecting him to be a decent number two to Keke Rosberg and, for much of the year, the Finn outshone him. But Mansell came good at the end of the season - aided by engine supplier Honda shifting their main efforts from the Finn to the Englishman - and took two dominant wins.

Even so, Mansell was expected to play second fiddle to his new team-mate, the double world champion Nelson Piquet, in 1986.

Instead, Mansell was generally slightly quicker from the start and tensions soon mounted between the two men as they battled for the title in the fastest car in the field.

Their relationship quickly degenerated into one of mutual distrust and loathing, and Williams's refusal to impose team orders eventually led to both of them missing out on the title to Prost. Mansell's hopes were famously dashed when a rear tyre exploded in the final race of the season.

The Williams was so dominant in 1987 that the title was there for the taking.

Piquet won only three races to Mansell's seven - one of which was a thrilling fightback and pass of Piquet at Silverstone - but it was the Brazilian who ended the year as champion, Mansell suffering from worse reliability and some costly mistakes.

After a frustrating year in a normally aspirated Williams against the turbo-charged McLarens in 1988, Mansell moved to Ferrari in 1989 and immediately scored one of his most memorable victories.

The car had F1's first semi-automatic gearbox and it was dreadfully unreliable throughout pre-season testing and in practice before the opening race of the season in Brazil.

So convinced was Mansell that he would not finish that he booked himself on an early flight - which he then missed when the car not only lasted, but completed a most unlikely win.

It earned Mansell immediate adoration from Ferrari's famous fans, the tifosi, who christened him 'Il Leone' (The Lion) for his fighting spirit.

There was another sensational win that year in Hungary, when he fought from 12th on the grid and made an opportunistic pass on Senna's McLaren to take the lead.

But Mansell's relationship with Ferrari soured in 1990 when Prost joined the team to get away from the Brazilian at McLaren.

It was the Frenchman who battled Senna for the title. Prost outscored his new team-mate by five wins to one and the Englishman's frustrations and suspicions built quickly. After his car broke down in the British Grand Prix, he threw his gloves to the crowd and later that day announced that he was retiring.

Few believed he was serious, and indeed he entered negotiations to return to Williams. As before, it was the perfect move.

The FW14 was the fastest car in 1991, but Mansell was unable to recover the ground lost to Senna at the start of the year as Williams battled reliability problems with its new semi-automatic gearbox.

The following year, though, was a different story. Now fitted with active suspension, the FW14B was one of the most dominant cars in F1 history and Mansell cake-walked the season, taking nine wins and 14 pole positions to secure the title many felt he should have won years earlier.

Mansell being Mansell, though, there had to be a drama and sure enough his negotiations with the team over a new contract for 1993 foundered.

The apparent sticking point, unbelievably, was the number of hotel rooms the contract dictated the team would provide for him. But some wondered whether the fact that, had he stayed, he would again be team-mate to Prost might have had something to do with it, too.

Whatever the truth, Mansell turned his back on F1 to race in IndyCars - and stunningly won the title in his first season.

He will be remembered as a magnificent and exhilarating driver - good enough to be one of the best in one of F1's toughest eras.

[sagi58]

Gilles Villeneuve
Number 12 (according to Benson and Walker)



Born: 18 January 1950
Died: 8 May 1982 (aged 32)

F1 World Championship career: 1977–1982
Teams: McLaren, Ferrari
Championships: 0 (2nd in 1979)

 wrote:">
Gilles Villeneuve won only six grands prix in a career that spanned a little over four years, yet 30 years after his death his name still shines out like a beacon as a symbol of the heroic qualities that to many make up the very essence of a grand prix driver.

Villeneuve's is a name to rank alongside - and in some eyes even above - the very best, the likes of Ayrton Senna, Jim Clark and Juan Manuel Fangio.

The cliche is that he was blindingly talented - arguably the fastest racing driver the world has ever seen - but also madly irresponsible.

That view is based on races such as the 1979 Dutch Grand Prix when, following a puncture, the diminutive Canadian wrestled a three-wheeled car back to the pits at an unimaginable speed, ending any hopes of rejoining a race he had been leading.

It is an assessment summed up by BBC F1 analyst Eddie Jordan, who says: "He was a hooligan who would never have won a championship. He drove like an idiot."

But it belies the truth of a man with a talent of beguiling richness and who would surely have gone on to win multiple titles had he lived longer.

Undoubtedly there were times when Villeneuve pushed too hard.

But this stemmed from a career in which only rarely did he have a car even remotely comparable with the best; from what legendary Ferrari designer Mauro Forghieri called "a rage to win"; and from an ability that allowed him to get those cars into places they had no right to be.

Perhaps no other driver has transcended the capabilities of his car on quite such a regular basis as Villeneuve. So it is worth running through a few highlights of his extraordinary feats, starting with his grand prix debut, the only race in which he did not drive for Ferrari.

At Silverstone in 1977, in an outdated McLaren, he out-qualified team-mate Jochen Mass, who had a newer and faster car. After an early pit stop left him two laps behind, Villeneuve then ran the entire race in the company of the leaders - including the eventual winner James Hunt, also in the newer McLaren.

At Monza in 1978, he disputed the on-track lead throughout the race with the much faster Lotus 79 of world champion Mario Andretti.

In South Africa in 1979, he made up 30 seconds on team-mate Jody Scheckter in 33 laps to win.

In a practice session at the 1979 US Grand Prix East, run in torrential rain, Scheckter felt sure he must be fastest, so hard had he pushed his car. He came back to the Ferrari garage to discover Villeneuve had been faster - by nearly 10 seconds a lap.

The 1980 Monaco Grand Prix was hit by a late shower of rain. Villeneuve, driving his uncompetitive Ferrari on slick, dry-weather tyres, was five seconds a lap faster than anyone else.

The list goes on and on, but perhaps his extravagant gift is summed up best by his final victories, in Monaco and Spain in 1981.

These two races undermine the belief that Villeneuve was a heavy-handed and irresponsible driver. His driving actually had great sensitivity and a delicate touch.

In 1981, Ferrari had a turbo engine that was probably the most powerful in the field, but it was mated to a chassis so rudimentary it was almost agricultural.

Villeneuve called it his "big, red Cadillac" and a less suitable car for the tight streets of Monaco is hard to imagine. Yet Villeneuve somehow qualified it second to Nelson Piquet's Brabham, which is widely accepted in F1 to have been running underweight.

Villeneuve's new team-mate that year was Didier Pironi, who was probably the second-fastest driver in the world at the time. The Frenchman qualified 16th - 2.5 seconds behind Villeneuve.

In the race, Villeneuve could not keep up with the more nimble Brabham, or Alan Jones's Williams, but he pushed hard throughout while looking after his brakes and when the Brazilian crashed and the Australian ran into problems, Villeneuve was close enough to pounce.

Two weeks later in Spain, on the twisty Jarama track, he produced a very different, but equally remarkable, victory - making no errors and using his peerless race-craft and the power of the Ferrari engine while fending off four faster cars for 50 laps.

Brabham designer Gordon Murray, watching from trackside, said it was the best drive he had ever seen.

But it was not just his ability that won Villeneuve admirers - he was also a man of great integrity, who always drove hard but scrupulously fairly. "A giant of a driver," as 1982 world champion Keke Rosberg put it.

That integrity, though, was to play a part in his death. Cheated out of a victory at the 1982 San Marino Grand by Pironi when Villeneuve thought they were cruising to a one-two under team orders, he vowed never to talk to the Frenchman again.

Villeneuve was still bitter two weeks later when he went out for his final qualifying run at the Belgian Grand Prix.

He came across Mass's March car going slowly and a misunderstanding led to a collision. Villeneuve's Ferrari took off and he was thrown out as it cartwheeled down the road. He died later that night from a broken neck.

The tributes came thick and fast. Scheckter called him "the fastest driver the world has ever seen".

Alain Prost said Villeneuve was "the last great driver - the rest of us are a bunch of good professionals".

Jacques Laffite - second to Villeneuve in Jarama 1981 - said: "No human being can do miracles, you know, but Gilles made you wonder."

Those remarks are a measure of the impression left on all those who witnessed his career by a man who drove a grand prix car to limits beyond the capabilities of all his rivals.

In doing so, he thrilled millions around the world and left his fellow drivers under no illusions about the scale of his talents. But he also, in dancing with death once too often, paid the ultimate price.

[sagi58]

Alberto Ascari
Number 11 (according to Benson and Walker)



Born: 13 July 1918
Died: 26 May 1955 (aged 36)

F1 World Championship career: 1950 – 1955
Teams: Ferrari, Maserati, Lancia
Championships: 2 (1952, 1953)

 wrote:">
Alberto Ascari didn't didn't look much like the modern idea of a Formula 1 driver. His double chin and slightly chubby frame brought to mind a Milanese baker more than the lean, pinched athletes of the modern age.

Yet this was a man who, for a period, dominated grand prix racing like no other has before or since.

Statistics can be misleading - and never more so than when trying to assess a concept as nebulous as the greatest F1 drivers across many very different eras.

But some achievements are so remarkable they cannot be ignored.

Between the 1952 Belgian Grand Prix and the same race the following year, Ascari won every single world championship Formula 1 race.

In 1952, the first of the two consecutive world titles he secured with Ferrari, Ascari won every championship F1 race bar the first. Heading into the final race of the 1953 season, he had won 11 of the previous 13 grands prix.

From a career cut short by his death in 1955, and which covered only a total of about three seasons in five years, he started 32 races and won 13 of them - a win ratio of more than 40%. That is second only to the great Juan Manuel Fangio.

It was not like there was no opposition, either. Admittedly Ferrari were in a league of their own in 1952, but one of his team-mates was Giuseppe Farina, who had beaten Fangio to the first F1 world championship when they were Alfa Romeo team-mates in 1950.

Fangio missed most of 1952, without a car and injured in a crash at Monza early in the year. But he was back for 1953 in a Maserati, who also fielded Jose Froilan Gonzalez, the Argentine who won Ferrari's first ever grand prix victory at Silverstone in 1951. Ascari's Ferrari team-mates included Britain's first world champion, Mike Hawthorn.

It was Hawthorn, in fact, who underlined exactly how good Ascari was. The Englishman, who narrowly beat Stirling Moss to win the 1958 title, said: "Ascari was the fastest driver I ever saw. And when I say that, I include Fangio."

As his results suggest, Ascari was a ruthless winning machine. He was a phlegmatic character who approached his racing with an analytical style.

With his pale blue shirt and matching helmet, Ascari cut a distinctive figure in the scarlet Ferraris of the early 1950s. He sat upright, hunched slightly forward, closer to the large steering wheel than many of his rivals, his elbows forming sharper angles.

"Ascari had a precise and distinctive driving style," said Enzo Ferrari, "but he was a man who had to lead from the start. In that position he was hard to overtake, almost impossible to beat, in my estimation.

"Alberto was secure when he was playing the hare. That was when his style was at its most superb. In second place, or further back, he was less sure."

Through 1952 and 1953, Ascari rarely found himself anywhere other than first, but one such occasion was at Monza in 1953.

Seeking a win as a fitting end to a season in which he had already become champion, he battled throughout the race with team-mate Farina and the Maseratis of Fangio and Onofre Marimon.

Leading into the Parabolica, the last corner on the last lap, Ascari came across two backmarkers and, under heavy pressure from behind, spun. The win was gone.

He was not to know it at the time, but Ascari was not to score another.

Largely for financial reasons, he announced at the end of the 1953 season that he was leaving Ferrari to join the fledgling Lancia team, to drive their new and revolutionary D50 car.

The project was hit by endless delays, and 1954 was effectively a write-off, although Ascari superbly won the famous Mille Miglia road race in dreadful weather by more than half an hour. Later in the year, a Ferrari was made available to him so he did not miss the Italian Grand Prix, and he fought for the lead with Fangio's Mercedes until his engine failed.

The D50 did not appear until the final race of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix, held on the Pedralbes street circuit in Barcelona.

The car was tiny compared to its rivals, and looked very unusual with its cylindrical fuel tanks running down either side. It was also very difficult to drive and needed a great driver to tame it.

Ascari was up to the challenge - stunning onlookers by beating Fangio, who had dominated the season in his Mercedes, to pole by more than a second. The Lancia proceeded to lead the first nine laps before the clutch failed.

Suddenly it looked as if Fangio and Mercedes would have some serious opposition in 1955, but it was not to be.

Ascari ran strongly in the opening race in Argentina, qualifying second and leading before spinning off on oil, and won non-championship races in Naples and Turin. Then in Monaco he split the Mercedes of Fangio and Stirling Moss on the grid and chased them until their retirement.

Inheriting the lead with 20 laps to go, a victory seemed certain, but failing brakes pitched him off the road and into the harbour at the chicane. Ascari, his nose broken in the impact, needed to swim to safety.

Four days later, he was at home in his apartment in Milan when he got a call from his young protégé Eugenio Castellotti, with whom he was due to share a factory Ferrari in a sportscar race at Monza that weekend.

Castellotti was testing the car and asked Ascari if he wanted to come to watch. There was no intention he should drive, but after lunch he said he fancied a few laps.

To those watching, this was a surprise. Ascari was intensely superstitious and regarded his pale blue helmet as a lucky charm. He had left it at home, and instead wore Castellotti's white one as he headed out of the pits.

On his third lap, he crashed with sickening violence at the high-speed Vialone left-hander. Thrown out of the car and terribly injured, within a few minutes Ascari was dead.

Much has been made of the eerie coincidences between his death and that of his father Antonio, who had also been a leading grand prix driver.

Both were 36 when they were killed, Alberto on 26 May 1955, Antonio on 26 July 1925. Each won 13 grands prix, and drove car number 26. Both were killed in crashes at the exit of fast left-hand corners four days after surviving serious accidents. Both were survived by a wife and two children.

The accident that claimed Alberto Ascari's life remains unexplained. Whatever the cause, there was no doubting the magnitude of his loss.

"I have lost my greatest opponent," Fangio said. "Ascari was a driver of supreme skill and I felt my title last year lost some of its value because he was not there to fight me for it. A great man."

Fact file:
•Races: 32
•Wins: 13
•Championships: 2
•Pole positions: 14
•First race: 1950 Monaco Grand Prix
•First win: 1951 German Grand Prix
•Last win: 1953 Swiss Grand Prix
•Last race: 1955 Monaco Grand Prix

[sagi58]

Fernando Alonso
Number 10 (according to Benson and Walker)



Born: 29 July 1981 (age 31)
Oviedo, Asturias, Spain

Formula One World Championship Career
Teams: Minardi, Renault, McLaren, Ferrari
Championships: 2 (2005, 2006)

 wrote:">
Asturias in northern Spain is a rugged mountainous region that, historically, is renowned for breeding tough, fierce fighters. Fernando Alonso is a true child of his homeland.

There is no more relentless and forbidding competitor in Formula 1. His greatest qualities - among many - are the ability to pound out lap after lap in every grand prix at the absolute limit and always to get the best out of his machinery, however flawed.

These abilities have won him two world titles and 30 grand prix victories - fifth in the all-time winners' list - and have never been demonstrated more impressively than in 2012.

Ferrari started the season with, at best, the fifth quickest car. In the first eight grands prix, Alonso's average qualifying position was eighth. Yet after those races, he was leading the championship. Following his third victory of the season in Germany on Sunday, he continues to do so.

Although his colossal gift is plain for all to see, Alonso responds with modesty when asked to sum up his own ability.

In a BBC interview in 2009, he said: "Maybe I'm not the quickest driver, maybe I'm not the most talented, maybe I'm not the hardest working, but I'm very consistent. I will always be there."

It seems an odd thing to say for a racing driver who is remarkably complete - quick in all conditions, brilliant in an imperfect car, extremely adaptable, highly intelligent, a brave and clinical overtaker, and always a factor.

But on the proviso that it is understood any shortfall he may have compared to a rival in a given area is on the minutest scale, you can see what he means.

Although undoubtedly super fast, Alonso does not very often produce a "special" lap in qualifying, the sort that moves the boundaries of what seemed possible.

It happens - one thinks of his spectacular qualifying lap at Singapore in 2011, for example - but not as often as it does for his contemporaries Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, or Ayrton Senna in the past.

Paradoxically, though, when he finds himself in a car with some kind of problem, Alonso is unequalled, his ability to compensate for the performance deficit quite staggering.

The best example was the 2006 Italian Grand Prix, when he qualified fifth in a Renault missing much of its rear bodywork, before being demoted to 10th after being given a controversial penalty.

His engineers calculated how much performance the car had lost and say it should not have been possible to get that time out of that car. It was one of the most extraordinary qualifying laps of the decade.

That race was when his campaign for what turned out to be his second consecutive title was coming to a nail-biting climax.

He won his first championship for Renault in 2005, beating Kimi Raikkonen's faster but more fragile McLaren partly thanks to the consistent relentlessness that by then was already a trademark.

Already mighty impressive, Alonso had to step up another gear in 2006. After dominating the early races, Renault faced a determined fightback from Ferrari and Michael Schumacher, who employed the sort of dirty tricks they had perfected over the years to try to derail their rival.

That title came down to a duel between Schumacher and Alonso at Japan's Suzuka, which carried echoes of other great battles at that track between Senna and Alain Prost, and Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen.

After 36 flat-out laps, the race - and effectively the title - was decided when the engine in Schumacher's car failed for the first time in six years. A cruise to the podium in the final race in Brazil made Alonso the youngest double world champion in history.

He had made his race debut for Renault at the expense of Jenson Button in 2003, after a year as their test driver.

The decision was criticised in the British media. But those who felt it was a bad idea had not been paying attention in Alonso's debut season in 2001, when he frequently had his uncompetitive Minardi in places with which the team were unfamiliar.

Once at Renault, a series of superb performances in his first season culminated in his maiden win at Hungary and removed any doubts about his potential.

Through the successful Renault years, though, were the first hints of what many argue is a flaw in Alonso's make-up. On the rare occasions when a team-mate has beaten him, he has not handled it well.

That became a real problem when he joined McLaren in 2007 alongside a novice Lewis Hamilton, who immediately proved to be at least as quick.

It turned into an epic, tense battle that see-sawed backwards and forwards, with virtually nothing to choose between them throughout the year.

Alonso felt McLaren were more supportive of Hamilton - and reasoned that only one of them could win the title in the face of a tough challenge from Ferrari drivers Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.

That person, he believed, should be him - partly because the team had employed him as their leader and partly because he felt Hamilton was ultimately too inexperienced.

The building pressure boiled over in Hungary, when Alonso threatened to go to the FIA with damaging information about the unfolding spy-gate scandal if they did not make Hamilton support him.

The incident ruptured the relationship between McLaren and Alonso for good, and badly damaged Alonso's reputation, to the extent that it has still not fully recovered. The whiff of potential involvement - never proven, always denied - in the 2008 Singapore race-fixing scandal has not helped on that front.

But despite being at loggerheads with McLaren, who did little to disguise the fact they wanted Hamilton to be champion, Alonso still took the title to the wire. Both he and Hamilton lost out to Raikkonen by a single point.

Alonso and McLaren agreed to separate one year into a three-year deal and despite talks with Red Bull he chose to go back to Renault and wait for a seat to open at Ferrari, which it did in 2010.

Had he gone for Red Bull, he might well now be a five-time champion - with the 2009, 2010 and 2011 titles under his belt as well.

Equally, had he better controlled his emotions in 2007 and stayed with McLaren, he might have won four titles in a row.

Alonso shrugs at this. "I have the titles I deserve," he says.

Not all would agree with that.

Having taken the route he did, Alonso should have won a third crown in his debut season with Ferrari in 2010. Despite driving a car inferior to the Red Bull, he went into the final race leading the championship and lost it only because of a catastrophic strategy error by the team.

Alonso is the very essence of the sort of dynamic natural leader on which Ferrari thrive and the team seem a natural home for this proud, determined man. He is contracted there until 2016.

As for Alonso and Hamilton, the events of their season as team-mates left an indelible impression on both.

Neither troubles to disguise that he regards the other as his toughest rival.

Alonso praises Hamilton publicly. And it has recently come to light that while Alonso is happy for Vettel to join him at Ferrari in the future, he has vetoed Hamilton doing so.

Hamilton shares a similar high opinion of Alonso. "I love racing with Fernando, he's, like, the best driver here," he said after winning in Canada this year.

Fact file:
•Races: 188
•Wins: 30
•Championships: 2
•Pole positions: 22
•First race: 2001 Australian Grand Prix
•First win: 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix
•Last win: 2012 German Grand Prix

[sagi58]

Niki Lauda
Number 9 (according to Benson and Walker)



Andreas Nikolaus "Niki" Lauda
born February 22, 1949 - Austria

Formula One Championship Career
Teams: March, BRM, Ferrari, Brabham, McLaren
Championships 3 (1975, 1977, 1984)

 wrote:">
Niki Lauda climbed out of his Ferrari and grimaced as he took off his helmet, revealing a fireproof balaclava stained red with his blood.

Gingerly trying to peal it off fresh wounds, reopened by the demands of an hour and a half's racing, he discovered the balaclava was stuck to the bandages covering his face. He had to resort to ripping it off in one go.

Lauda had just finished fourth in the Italian Grand Prix, 42 days since being given the last rites as he lay in hospital with burns suffered in a fiery crash at the Nurburgring in the German Grand Prix.

Was his racing at Monza that weekend in 1976 the bravest act in the history of sport?

Aiming to defend a dwindling championship lead, and his position at Ferrari, Lauda played down his condition. He later admitted he was so scared he almost could not drive.

"I said then and later that I had conquered my fear quickly and cleanly," Lauda wrote in his disarmingly frank autobiography, To Hell And Back. "That was a lie but it would have been foolish to play into the hands of my rivals by confirming my weakness. At Monza, I was rigid with fear."

Lauda drove that weekend because he felt it was the "best thing for my physical and mental wellbeing. Lying in bed ruminating about the 'Ring," he said, "would have finished me."

Nevertheless, the willpower required to do it must have been staggering.

Lauda got back into the car that had nearly killed him, while his serious burns were far from healed, and pretty much as soon as the plastic surgery that created new eyelids to replace the ones he had lost in the fire had set.

Not only that, but he qualified the fastest of the three Ferraris, and finished just off the podium.

Lauda's accident at the Nurburgring is the defining moment in the career of one of the most remarkable drivers Formula 1 has ever seen.

Niki Lauda has always been a singular personality, a brusque and matter-of-fact Austrian with a wicked sense of humour and utterly independent mind.

He won 25 grands prix and three world titles in a career split by a two-year 'retirement' and he would be on anyone's list of the greatest drivers of all time. Yet he had to struggle to make his way in F1.

Lauda had to pay for his first drive with the March team in 1971, using a bank loan with his life assurance as collateral, and needed a second loan to move to the struggling BRM team two years later.

Yet within three years of his debut, Lauda was at Ferrari. Along with their young team manager Luca di Montezemolo, who is now the company's president, he rebuilt them after three awful years into the dominant force in F1.

Only inexperience cost Lauda a shot at the title in 1974, his debut season with the team, but he romped to victory in 1975, utterly dominating the field in the Ferrari 312T, one of history's great cars.

When he took five wins, two seconds and a third from the first nine races in 1976, he looked on course for another world championship. But then came the Nurburgring, and the crash that almost cost him his life.

Lauda had been warning for some time that the circuit was too dangerous for F1.

Its 14 miles twisting through the Eifel mountains meant the emergency services were stretched too far, he said, and any driver who had a serious crash was therefore at a disproportionately high risk in an era that was already extremely dangerous.

What happened on 1 August proved him right. For unknown reasons, Lauda lost control at a flat-out kink before a corner called Bergwerk, hit an embankment and his car burst into flames.

Trapped in the wreckage, but conscious, he was dragged clear by four fellow drivers but not before he had suffered severe burns to his head and inhaled toxic gases which damaged his lungs.

Lauda carries the scars, including a mostly missing right ear, to this day and has always had a matter-of-fact approach to his disfigurement. It doesn't bother him, he says, and if others feel differently, that's their problem.

His injuries, in fact, are often the butt of his merciless wit.

Once it was pointed out to him that, owing to the rule that says the original start of a race does not count if there is a re-start, he had not officially taken part in the 1976 German Grand Prix. "Oh yes," he said, in his clipped tones, "so what happened to my ear?"

The accident, and the two races he missed, gave McLaren driver James Hunt - Lauda's rival and close friend - the chance to gain ground in the championship and Lauda was only three points ahead going into the final race of the season in Fuji, Japan.

Race day brought torrential rain. Conditions were appalling. Initially, all the drivers refused to race, but as time dragged on all but three, one of whom was Lauda, changed their minds.

Lauda admits he was "panic-stricken" but has since said he regrets the decision. Ferrari remonstrated with him and tried to convince him to race, but he refused, and Hunt took the third place he needed to win the title by one point.

Enzo Ferrari's negative reaction to Lauda's decision - coupled with his earlier lack of support following the crash - was the final straw for their relationship.

Lauda stayed on for 1977, but left the team as soon as he had won his second title, missing the final two races and joining Brabham for 1978.

The car, with its flat-12 Alfa Romeo engine, was uncompetitive, and Lauda's interest in F1 began to wane. By the end of the following season, he had had enough and typically he wasted no time in acting on his decision.

Part-way through practice at the Canadian Grand Prix, Lauda pulled into the pits and told Brabham boss Bernie Ecclestone he was through. He was "bored of driving around in circles", and he returned to Austria to run his airline, leaving his overalls and helmet behind with a friend.

Two years later, he needed them back. McLaren boss Ron Dennis, sensing Lauda had unfinished business, persuaded him to return and he won his third race back in F1 in 1982.

Two years later came a third title. Lauda was outpaced by new team-mate Alain Prost, but benefited from experience and better reliability to win by the smallest margin in history - half a point - as McLaren dominated the season, the two men sharing 12 victories between them in 16 races.

Lauda was less competitive in 1985 - although he still managed a win, holding off Prost at the Dutch Grand Prix - and he decided to retire for good at the end of the year. He continues to attend races as a TV analyst for Germany's RTL, his sharp mind and humour fully intact.

Lauda had a beautiful, elegant style - all economy of effort and fluidity, he rarely looked to he trying that hard, but he was deceptively fast. And he used his keen intellect in engineering and political terms to ensure he took full advantage of all the tools available to him.

On pure talent, should he be so high on this list, ahead of the likes of Gilles Villeneuve , Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton ? Probably not.

But few sportsmen have left a mark as powerful as Lauda, whose return from his death bed to win two world titles is one of the most extraordinary achievements in any sport, ever.

Fact File:

•Races: 173
•Wins: 25
•Championships: 3
•Pole positions: 24
•First race: 1971 Austrian Grand Prix
•First win: 1974 Spanish Grand Prix
•Last win: 1985 Dutch Grand Prix
•Last race: 1985 Australian Grand Prix

[sagi58]

Alain Prost
Number 5 (according to Benson and Walker)



Alain Prost
Born: 24 February 1955 (age 57)

Teams: McLaren, Renault, Ferrari, Williams
Championships: 1985, 1986, 1989, 1993

 wrote:">
Alain Prost drove like poetry and was an integral part of one of the greatest rivalries sport has ever known.

The diminutive, curly-haired Frenchman won four world championships and, had fate taken a different turn, it could easily have been him who reached the magic seven long before Michael Schumacher did.

That's quite a career. Yet to this day Prost is to a degree undervalued, dismissed as a calculating figure who played the percentages and when it came to ultimate speed was a poor second best to Ayrton Senna.

If Senna was still alive, though, he would almost certainly dispute that picture of Prost.

It was Prost's outstanding talent against which the great Brazilian measured himself. It was Prost's deceptive speed that pushed Senna to such heights. It was Prost who beat Senna on equal terms more than anyone else - his career win ratio is actually slightly higher.

If Senna was the greatest racing driver of all time, as many believe, Prost got closer to him than any contemporary.

Where Senna was all-action, high-octane attack, Prost was understatement itself.

Out on the track, he hardly ever seemed to be trying. He used so little of the road; the car was hardly ever out of shape, his driving silky smooth and ultra-precise.

He turned in early on the brakes, exquisitely balancing the car to the apex, allowing him to get on the power early and come off the corner like a rocket. And it was all done with an apparent ease and economy of effort that made you think anyone could do it.

The stopwatch, though, told a different story.

John Watson, Keke Rosberg, Jean Alesi, Damon Hill - all former team-mates who were left shaking their heads in admiration at how Prost took their car to limits beyond their reach. Even Nigel Mansell found him tough to handle when they were at Ferrari together in 1990.

But it was Prost's incredible rivalry with Senna that has come to define his career. Their battle for supremacy, as McLaren team-mates in 1988-9 and after Prost moved to Ferrari in 1990, drove both men to new highs and new lows, and Formula 1 to an intensity it has never reached before or since.

As they waged war on and off the track, both men were visibly out of their comfort zones. They pushed each other to the limit and beyond. It was frightening - and exhilarating - to watch.

Only a driver of the very highest calibre could have done this to Senna, and Prost was undoubtedly that.

By the time these two mega-talents collided at McLaren in 1988, Prost was comfortably established as the man to beat in F1. He already had two world titles and should have had more.

His first, won in dominant style in 1985 once the challenge of Ferrari and Michele Alboreto faded after mid-season, was long overdue.

Had Renault's reliability not been so lamentable in 1982, Prost would have cruised to the title, once Ferrari's Gilles Villeneuve was killed early in the year.

In 1983, he was in a seemingly unbeatable position with four races remaining, only for Renault's challenge to fade in the face of an onslaught by Brabham-BMW and Nelson Piquet, helped by a potent - and controversial - new fuel.

And Prost should have won easily following a move to McLaren in 1984.

He took seven wins; team-mate Niki Lauda five, four of which came after Prost suffered reliability problems while running ahead, the fifth after similar issues forced him to start from the pit lane. Prost lost out by half a point.

The mid-1980s was F1's first turbo era, which from '84 came with a fuel limit, and Prost's driving was perfectly tailored to the demands of the time.

Time and again, he would start the race unobtrusively, saving fuel and tyres, sitting calmly some way back from the lead, only to turn it on as mid-race approached.

Suddenly, the TV screens would light up with a succession of fastest laps by Prost. Then, the pit stops done, he would emerge in the lead and in control of the race.

Prost underlined his position as the best all-round driver in F1 with probably his greatest championship victory in 1986.

Faced with the faster Williams-Hondas of Mansell and Nelson Piquet, Prost drove a perfect season to steal the title from under their noses in the final race of one of the most exciting seasons in history.

But as he climbed out of his car after taking the chequered flag in Adelaide that year, his joy visible even at some distance through the narrow aperture of his helmet, a threat to his position at the sport's pinnacle was already on the horizon.

Senna was emerging as the fastest driver on the planet and he had Prost in his sights.

For 1988, McLaren had got hold of the coveted Honda engines, and when team boss Ron Dennis was looking for a partner for Prost, the Frenchman counselled against Piquet, thinking he would be disruptive, but gave his blessing to Senna.

The irony in that stance will escape no-one, for nothing could have been more disruptive to the intra-team harmony at McLaren than the force of nature that was Senna.

Two huge talents, both intensely competitive, highly intelligent and politically astute. It was always going to be trouble.

Senna went to McLaren with the aim of crushing Prost and while he was unquestionably the better driver in their two years at McLaren, so too there were times when Prost beat him fair and square.

Jo Ramirez, the team co-ordinator at McLaren at the time, sums up the rivalry by saying that Senna was faster in a less-than-perfect car, which is what F1 cars most often are. But on the occasional days when Prost managed to get his set-up just to his liking, not even Senna could touch him.

The relationship between the two men, always cool, was tolerable for much of 1988, but it took a turn for the worse after Senna barged Prost within inches of the pit wall while the Frenchman was passing him for the lead in Portugal.

Senna went on to win the title, taking some of the tension out of the pairing, but it broke down completely at Imola in early 1989, when Senna ignored a pre-race agreement not to fight into the first corner.

Mid-season, Prost announced his intention to leave - and he took with him to Ferrari the world title. He won because of poorer reliability on Senna's car, and after the Brazilian was disqualified in dubious circumstances following a collision between the two men in Japan.

The rivalry - with intensity undimmed and Senna fuming at the injustice - continued into 1990. They fought another close title battle, which was settled for the second year running in a crash at Suzuka- this one, unlike that in 1989, undoubtedly Senna's fault.

But in 1991 Ferrari went off the boil, failing to win a race and, in one of their less intelligent decisions, Prost was sacked before the end of the year after likening the car to a "truck" in an interview.

With no drives available, he took a forced sabbatical in 1992, but returned with Williams in 1993. Now 38, and driving only as fast as he needed to, he still dominated the season, winning seven races and taking 13 pole positions.

Prost had a two-year contract, but when Senna signed for 1994 Prost decided he did not want to go through all that again and announced his retirement.

His five-year tenure as a team boss best forgotten, Prost leaves behind memories of a man who drove like an angel, won more races than anyone in history bar Schumacher, and who pushed arguably the greatest racing driver of all time beyond his limits.

That's a legacy that deserves the utmost respect.

Fact File

•First GP win: France 1981
•Last GP win: Germany 1993
•Races started: 199
•Wins: 51 (106 podium finishes)

[sagi58]

Michael Schumacher
Number 4 (according to Benson and Walker)



Born (1969-01-03) 3 January 1969 (age 43)
Hürth, West Germany

Teams: Mercedes, Ferrari, Benetton
Championships: 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

 wrote:">
Michael Schumacher's monumental achievements came about through a perfect storm of an exceptionally talented and hard-working driver, ground-breaking technical achievement, a bottomless pit of money and a ruthless management that exploited every last avenue to its benefit.

The result was a redefinition of what was possible in Formula 1 - five consecutive world championships; 56 victories in seven years from 2000-6; a total of seven titles and 91 wins for Schumacher's career.

At his disposal in the early 2000s, Schumacher had a number of advantages from which probably no other driver in history has benefited for so long.

On top of those already mentioned was arguably the greatest of all - bespoke Bridgestone tyres effectively custom-made for Schumacher himself.

These factors were all instrumental in Schumacher re-writing the record books; he holds virtually every landmark statistic in the sport.

He found himself in the position to exploit them, though, because he was the greatest driver of his era.

That era spanned the gap between the end of the Senna/Prost years and the dawning of a new age with a depth of talent and opposition far richer than Schumacher had to face.

Through the late 1990s and into 2000, only Mika Hakkinen was in his league - the Finn had the speed but not the same discipline and consistency. Then, when the likes of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen arrived in the early 21st century, they only rarely had cars that could challenge Schumacher and Ferrari.

Regardless, Schumacher at his peak would have been a challenge for the best of any era. His combination of blistering pace, metronomic consistency and dubious morality was a potent mix indeed.

His particular excellence was his ability to operate at his peak on every lap, of every race, for years at a time. Ferrari - and before them Benetton, where he won his first two titles - exploited this to leave less-fortunate rivals looking flat-footed.

This is one of two over-riding characteristics that defined his 'first' career. The other is controversy.

It followed Schumacher from the very beginning, when after a jaw-dropping debut with Jordan at the 1991 Belgian Grand Prix he was poached by Benetton - with a little help from F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone - by the next race, despite being under contract.

A first win came in his first full season, on the first anniversary of his debut, and in the mixed conditions in which he so-often excelled.

A second arrived a little over a year later in Portugal, fending off the new world champion Alain Prost with the help of the sort of questionable tactics in defence which were to become all too familiar.

The trickle soon turned into a flood - both in terms of victories and controversies.

Ayrton Senna joined Williams for 1994 and was expected to continue the team's domination of F1, but the new FW16 was a handful, and Benetton had pulled out all the stops with the B194.

Senna, his skill over-riding deficiencies in his car, took pole position for the first race in Brazil but he was chased down and beaten by Schumacher, Senna suffering the ignominy of spinning in the closing laps in his desperation to keep up.

When he was taken out at the first corner at the second race at Aida in Japan, Senna stood watching Schumacher's Benetton canter to victory, and became convinced something was amiss. He felt Schumacher was benefiting from electronic driver-aids that had been banned after 1993.

It was the start of a cataclysmic year. Senna was killed at the next race in Imola and Schumacher dominated the season before things started to unravel at Benetton.

A too-perfect start in France got tongues wagging, before Schumacher was disqualified from the British Grand Prix for ignoring black flags.

At the disciplinary hearing into that offence, Schumacher was given a two-race ban - and the team were cleared of using illegal driver aids found in the car's electronics on the grounds there was no evidence they had been used.

The ban - and a second disqualification after winning in Belgium because his under-floor plank was too worn - meant the title went down to the wire between Schumacher and Williams' Damon Hill.

Schumacher won it but only after he deliberately drove into Hill, who was trying to pass him after seeing the Benetton go off the track at the previous corner. The collision put both men out of the race.

After crushing Williams drivers Hill and David Coulthard in 1995, Schumacher joined Ferrari. His first season at Maranello was one of his greatest.

He won three races in a car that was miles off the pace, his driving on a separate level from the rest. The best was a stunning victory in torrential rain in Spain, where he routinely lapped as much as five seconds faster than anyone else.

When the key people from Benetton - technical director Ross Brawn and chief designer Rory Byrne - joined Schumacher at Maranello for 1997, it was the start of a new era that changed the face of F1.

Working under team boss Jean Todt, they would redefine what an F1 car was capable of - not only in terms of performance, but also reliability and consistency of operation, raising standards to a level that it took rivals years to match.

Schumacher took the 1997 title to the wire against Williams' Jacques Villeneuve - only to be disqualified from the season (but allowed to keep his victories) after trying for the second time to win a championship by barging a rival off the track. This time, it failed, and he was found guilty.

He came close again in a titanic battle with Hakkinen and McLaren in 1998, broke his leg in a crash in the middle of 1999, and finally delivered in 2000. The long-awaited title - Ferrari's first drivers' crown for 21 years - came after a stupendous flat-out battle with Hakkinen at Suzuka in Japan.

That opened the flood-gates; Schumacher and Ferrari won another four championships in a row. Only in 2003 did he face any sustained opposition.

The winning streak finally ended in 2005, when a rule change intended to stop Ferrari in their tracks did exactly that - Bridgestone were unable to match rivals Michelin in building tyres that now needed to last an entire race.

The rule was quickly reversed for 2006 and Ferrari were competitive once more. But again Schumacher hit below the belt in his title fight, notoriously parking his car on the track in qualifying at Monaco to stop Alonso taking pole.

In the end, Schumacher lost the title battle to Alonso, but his first career ended on a high with a superlative fight-back drive at the final race in Brazil.

After three years away, struggling to find something to give his life meaning, Schumacher was back, this time with Mercedes, but it was as a pale shadow of what he used to be. Only rarely has he got anywhere close to what he was.

His generally underwhelming performances ended with him being forced into retirement by Mercedes' decision to sign Lewis Hamilton. And they have ignited a debate within F1 about the advantages Schumacher had at his disposal, and how in that context his career should be judged.

But while he undoubtedly had the cards stacked in his favour for long periods, the evidence for him being one of the greatest is overwhelming.

For some it's the many outstanding victories; for others it's how he used to blitz the field on his first flying lap on a Friday morning, just to emphasise his superiority.

For this writer, it was all that and more. Above all, it was a qualifying session in Argentina in 1996, when he hauled the recalcitrant Ferrari F310 onto the front row with a display of driving acrobatics that had to be seen to be believed.

At times like that, the avalanche of numbers was irrelevant; it was perfectly clear how good Michael Schumacher was.

Fact File:
Races 304 (303 starts)
Championships 7 (1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004)
Wins 91
Podiums 155
Career points 1,560
Pole positions 68
Fastest laps 77

[sagi58]

Juan Manuel Fangio:
Number 2 (according to Benson and Walker)



Born: 24 June 1911 (Balcarce, Argentina)
Died: 17 July 1995 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

F1 World Championship career: 1950 – 1951, 1953 – 1958

Teams: Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes, Ferrari

Championships: 5 (1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957)

 wrote:">
It seems hard to believe now, but the world almost never got to see the genius of the man who is still regarded by many as the greatest racing driver there has ever been.

Juan Manuel Fangio set records so immense that, in percentage terms, they will surely never be beaten. The Argentine competed in 51 Formula 1 grands prix, of which he won 24, set 28 pole positions and 23 fastest laps. In seven full F1 seasons, he won five world championships.

Yet he almost never made it to Europe.

Fangio cut his teeth in long-distance races staged over thousands of miles on the dirt roads of South America.

In 1948, his car went off the road in Peru and tumbled down a mountainside. His co-driver Daniel Urrutia, his best friend, was thrown out and when Fangio found him, he was dying.

Fangio, already 37, at that stage had competed in only one grand prix, in France in 1948. Following Urrutia's death, he considered quitting. But he resolved to carry on and returned to Europe the following year. And so the legend began.

Fangio was average height and balding, and one of his two nicknames was 'El Chueco', or 'bandy legs', from his days playing football as a child. His motor racing career earned him another epithet - 'Maestro'.

Success in F1 came relatively late in life. Fangio was in his forties before he won his first world title in 1951. But even in losing the inaugural F1 world championship title in 1950 to Alfa Romeo team-mate Giuseppe Farina by a narrow margin, already there were signs that he was on another level from the rest.

One of the characteristics that makes great drivers stand out from the very good is the capacity to multi-task, to focus on things beyond simply driving a racing car on the limit. There have been few better examples of that than at Monaco in 1950.

A multi-car crash at Tabac on the first lap left the track blocked. Fangio, leading, was unaware of the incident, and as he headed along the harbour front he seemed sure to plough into the wreckage, which was out of his sight around the corner.

Instead, he suddenly slowed, stopping just short of the blockage. How had he known?

"I was lucky," he recounted. "There had been a similar accident in 1936 and I happened to see a photograph of it the day before the race. As I came out of the chicane, I was aware of something different with the crowd - a different colour.

"I was leading, but they were not watching me. They were looking down the road. Instead of their faces, I was seeing the backs of their heads. So something at Tabac was more interesting than the leader - and then I remembered the photograph and braked as hard as I could."

Luck, clearly, had had nothing to do with it.

After his first title, Fangio missed half of 1952 after suffering a broken neck in a crash in a non-championship race at Monza early in the season, the result of fatigue after driving all night from Paris to make the start of the race.

When he returned in 1953, his Maserati was outclassed by Alberto Ascari's Ferrari, but from 1954 he was unstoppable. Fangio won four titles in a row, two for Mercedes (after he won the first two races of '54 in a Maserati), and one for Ferrari, before returning to Maserati in 1957.

Stunningly fast but also clever and politically astute, Fangio always made sure he was in the right car, and his ability meant it was always his for the taking.

He was the epitome of elegance, calm and ease. His philosophy was always to win at the slowest possible speed. Out of the car, no-one had a bad word to say about him.

"What made him so great," said Stirling Moss, "was his concentration and his balance of the motor car. He wasn't a technician. He was just a great artist of driving. But above all that he was a gentleman and a wonderful man."

Fangio was so good that he rarely needed to push to the limit. So on the days he did give his ability free reign, it was somehow all the more shocking and impressive.

One of those days was at Monaco in 1956, when he drove probably the least Fangio-like race of his career.

His Lancia-Ferrari D50 was not the most elegant of cars, either in its appearance or its handling. Even allowing for that, this drive was something else.

Fangio spun on oil on the first lap. Moving back through the field, he damaged the nose of his car on that of team-mate Peter Collins. Back up to second, he hit the wall at Tabac.

His own car now barely driveable, he stopped and took over Collins's, rejoining the race 90 seconds behind the leader, Moss in a Maserati.

Fangio chased the Englishman for two hours, on - and sometimes over - the limit throughout. At the finish, he was six seconds behind.

Fangio described it as "maybe the strongest race I drove" but most would save that accolade for his final win.

The 1957 German Grand Prix has passed into F1 folklore as one of the defining races in the sport's history, arguably the greatest performance ever produced by any driver.

It took place at the Nurburgring, the 14-mile track through the Eifel mountains regarded as the toughest test of a racing driver ever devised.

Fangio was on pole in his Maserati 250F, about three seconds faster than Mike Hawthorn's Ferrari. He built up half a minute's lead before making a planned pit stop and rejoined 50 seconds behind with 10 laps remaining.

For three laps, he made no real impression on Hawthorn and team-mate Peter Collins, circulating together at the front, but then he let loose.

He began lapping 15 seconds faster than the old lap record - set by himself the year before. By the end of lap 19, he was 13 seconds behind Hawthorn and Collins. The next was a new lap record, more than eight seconds faster than his pole time. By the end of it he was right with the Ferraris, and soon swept by to victory.

Talking to the journalist Nigel Roebuck in 1979, Fangio left no doubts about the magnitude of the achievement.

"Even now, these many years later, I can feel fear when I think of that race," he said. "Only I knew what I had done, the chances I had taken.

"The Nurburgring, you know, was always my favourite circuit, without any doubt. I loved it, all of it, and I think that day I conquered it. On another day, it might have conquered me, who knows? But I believe that day I took myself and the car to the limit - and perhaps a little bit more. I had never driven like that before, and I knew I never would again."

The race made him world champion for the fifth time and the end of that season effectively brought the curtain down on his career. "It was becoming work for me," he said. He took part in only two of the first five grands prix of 1958, and after finishing fourth in France he retired, aged 47.

Fangio returned home to his birthplace, Balcarce, to run a Mercedes dealership, and was appointed president of Mercedes-Benz Argentina in 1974. From time to time, he returned to Europe to demonstrate his former race cars. He died in 1995.

One of his foreign trips in his later life was to the 1993 Brazilian Grand Prix, where he shared an embrace on the podium with Ayrton Senna, who worshipped him.

"Even if I or someone else can equal or beat Fangio's record," Senna once said, "it still will not compare with his achievement.

"What he did in his time is something that was an example of professionalism, of courage, of style and as a man, a human being. Every year there is a winner of the championship, but not necessarily a world champion. I think Fangio is the example of a true world champion."


Fact File:

Races: 52 (51 starts)
Wins: 24
Podiums: 35
Career points: 245 (277 9⁄14)
Pole positions: 29
Fastest laps: 23

n.b. Up until 1990, not all points scored by a driver contributed to their final World Championship tally (see list of points scoring systems for more information). Numbers without parentheses are Championship points; numbers in parentheses are total points scored.

[sagi58]

Here's more on Fangio:

 wrote:">Tribute to Fangio

[youtube]/oKxw090DVFI[/youtube]

A glowing tribute that chronicles the racing career of Juan Manuel Fangio (Italian pronunciation:; June 24, 1911 -- July 17, 1995), nicknamed El Chueco ("the bowlegged one", also commonly translated as "bandy legged") or El Maestro ("The Master"), was a racing car driver from Argentina, who dominated the first decade of Formula One racing.

From childhood, he abandoned his studies to pursue auto mechanics. In 1938, he debuted in Turismo Carretera, competing in a Ford V8. In 1940, he competed with Chevrolet, winning the Grand Prix International Championship and devoted his time to the Argentine Turismo Carretera becoming its champion, a title he successfully defended a year later. Fangio then competed in Europe between 1947 to 1949 where he achieved further success.

He won five Formula One World Drivers' Championships—a record which stood for 46 years until beaten by Michael Schumacher—with four different teams (Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Maserati), a feat that has not been repeated. We see him racing with: Maserati, 1953 Mille Miglia, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari wins, 1953 Reims Maserati, Ferrari, British Gran Prix -- Ferrari, Monza -- Italian GA, Ferrari -- Maserati, Pan America w/ Lancia, 1954 Mercedes Benz, 8cyl. W/ Fangio, Demolish the rest -- World Gran Prix wins, 1955 Sterling Moss joins Mercedes, 1956 Ferrari Fangio, Moss -- Maserati, 1957 Maserati -- he tests car -- Monaco -- German Gran Prix, Maserati vs. Ferrari.

[sagi58]

F1 World Championship career: 1950 – 1951, 1953 – 1958

Teams: Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes, Ferrari

Championships: 5 (1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957)

So... I just did the Math, apparently, Fangio won 62.5% of the seasons he contended.
HUGE success percentage, I'd say!!