The Argentine driver was one of the great figures of motorsport and remains one of the legends of Formula 1 with his five world titles. But before triumphing in the highest category of motorsport, He had to follow other types of careers that propelled him to fame and gave him the opportunity to make himself known all over the planet.
One of them was that of February 27, 1949, when in Mar del Plata he won the San Martín International Grand Prix to prove your worth behind the wheel. Nearly 300,000 people gathered around the track in the town of Mar del Plata, in the height of the summer season, and all watched the cars competing on the 4,045 meter El Torreón circuit, which ran along the coast from Playa Bristol to Cabo Corrientes, via Playa Saint James.
There would be 37 laps on the Argentinian track, which would take them 149.665 kilometers, and there was Juan Manuel Fangio, next to the author of the pole position, Luigi Villoresi, in addition to Alberto Ascari. At the start, the local driver, who shortly after said he had seen up to 30,000 compatriots from Balcarce, very close to Mar del Plata, took the lead.
People exploded with joy to have their hero up front, but he still had to continue at the highest level to keep the rest of the European stars filling the grid at bay. On the tenth lap, the first world champion with Ferrari stopped, so the Argentinian took the opportunity to remove the broken exhaust pipe with his own hands, leaving the other Italian to reduce the gap.
Luigi Villoresi set the fastest lap on lap eleven, and was less than six seconds behind shortly after, to the point that at the Piscine Couverte hairpin he attempted to overtake from the outside. The public, who did not want to miss the event, narrowed the course, leaving sections barely ten or fifteen meters wide, but Juan Manuel Fangio, despite the fact that his rival fought wheel to wheel, managed to stay in the leadespecially after his exceptional maneuver in the Torreón curve.
His advantage was definitive, and with his Maserati 4CLT He crossed the finish line in first place, although none of the Italians finished second. The one who was fighting for the lead against the local hero had to retire, so his compatriot momentarily inherited second place, but shortly after he stopped twice, giving up definitively less than eight laps from the race.
For all these reasons, Birabongse Bhanudej, better known as Prince Bira of Siam, stood on the second step of the podium in Mar del Plata, for third place of Óscar Gálvez, although both ended up overtaking. Juan Manuel Fangio's victory allowed him to show that he had what it took to take on the biggest in the world and, a year later, he made the jump to Formula 1 with the creation of his own championship in 1950.
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