Juan Manuel Fangio

At 84 years old, Juan Manuel Fangio physical status not available right now. We will update Juan Manuel Fangio's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

After finishing his military service, Fangio opened his own garage and raced in local events. He began his racing career in Argentina in 1936, driving a 1929 Ford Model A that he had rebuilt. In the Tourism Highway category, Fangio participated in his first race between 18 and 30 October 1938 as the co-pilot of Luis Finocchietti. Despite not winning the Argentine Road Grand Prix, Fangio drove most of the way and finished 5th. In November of that year, he entered the "400 km of Tres Arroyos", but it was suspended due to a fatal accident.

During his time racing in Argentina, he drove Chevrolet cars and was Argentine National Champion in 1940 and 1941. One particular race, the 1940 Gran Premio del Norte, was almost 10,000 km (6,250 mi) long, one that Fangio described as a "terrible ordeal". This rally-style race started in Buenos Aires on 27 September, and ran up through the Andes and Bolivia to Lima, Peru, and then back to Buenos Aires, taking 15 days, ending on 12 October with stages held each day. This horrendously gruelling race was held in the most difficult and varied conditions imaginable- drivers had to traverse through hot and dry deserts, insect-ridden jungles with crushing humidity, and freezing cold and sometimes snowy mountain passes with 1,000 feet (300 m) cliff drops at extremely high altitude- sometimes in total darkness, all on a mixture of dirt and paved roads. Early in the race Fangio hit a large rock and damaged the car's driveshaft, which was replaced in the next town. Later on at an overnight stop in Bolivia one of the townspeople crashed into Fangio's car and bent an axle- he and his co-driver spent all night fixing it. Following this repair the fanblade got loose and punctured the radiator, which meant another repair before it was later replaced. They drove 150 miles (240 km) through scorching desert with no water, and during a night stint the headlights fell off and they were secured with his co-driver's necktie. The weather in the mountains was so cold that Fangio drove with his co-driver's arms around him for hours. These mountainous routes in Bolivia and Peru sometimes involved going up to altitudes of 14,000 feet (4,300 m) above sea level—a 40 percent reduction of air thickness, making breathing incredibly difficult and the engine being severely down on power. When Fangio finally got out of the mountains and back to Buenos Aires, after traversing all these external challenges, Fangio had won this race, which was his first big victory.

In 1941, he beat Oscar Gálvez in the Grand Prix Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, which was a 6-day, 3,731-kilometre (2,318 mi) public road race starting from and ending at Rio de Janeiro, going through various cities and towns all over Brazil such as São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. For the second time, Fangio was crowned champion of Argentine TC. In 1942, he took tenth place in the South Grand Prix. In April he won the race "Mar y Sierras", and then had to suspend activity due to World War II. In 1946, Fangio returned to racing with two races in Morón and Tandil driving a Ford T. In February 1947, Fangio competed at National Mechanics (MN) at the Retiro circuit, and on 1 March, he started the race for Rosario City Award. Subsequently, Fangio triumphed in the 'Double Back Window' Race.

In October 1948, Fangio however suffered a personal tragedy in another gruelling race, this time a point-to-point race from Buenos Aires to Caracas, Venezuela- a 20-day event covering a distance of 9,580 kilometres (5,950 mi) through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and finally Venezuela. Fangio, with his co-driver Daniel Urrutia battled hard with brothers Juan and Oscar Galvez, and Domingo Marimon throughout. On the 10th day, on the Lima to Tumbes stage in northern Peru, on coastal roads along the Pacific Ocean, Fangio was driving at night in thick fog generated from the ocean in near-pitch black darkness when he approached a left-hand bend at 140 kilometres per hour (87 mph) near the village of Huanchaco, not far from the small city of Trujillo. With his cars' lights not helping him much thanks to the thick fog, he approached the bend too fast, lost control of the car and tumbled down an embankment, and Urrutia was thrown out of the car through the front windscreen. Oscar Galvez stopped to help Fangio, who had neck injuries, soon found the badly injured Urrutia. Another competitor, Luciano Marcilla, stopped and took Fangio and Urrutia to the nearest hospital in the town of Chocope 50 km (31 mi) away. Fangio survived but 35-year-old Urrutia did not, suffering multiple fatal cervical and basal skull fractures. Domingo Marimon won the race, but the race was a disaster and was marred by the deaths of 3 spectators and 3 drivers (including Urrutia). Fangio believed he would never race again and entered a depressed state after the death of his friend, but he soon got out of his saddened state, and his successes in Argentina caught the attention of the Argentine Automobile Club and the Juan Peron-led Argentine government, so they bought a Maserati and sent him to Europe in December 1948 to continue his career.

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