Racing drivers have to be mentally tough in order to deal with what they do. They love racing, but they know it is dangerous, and that they could get hurt. They also know that it must be their focus in life. If it isn’t, there are not going to win. It’s too competitive a world for those who not motivated or lazy. And, as one gets older, priorities change…

No-one at Reims in July 1948 paid much attention to the 37-year-old Argentine driver, who appeared in a Equipe Gordini Simca Gordini in the Grand Prix de l’ACF. The fans were there to see the hero of the day Jean-Pierre Wimille win his factory Alfa Romeo, and they went home happy. Fangio retired from the main race, but was driving a hopelessly outclassed car, and he also retired in the Coupe des Petites Cylindrées voiturette race that supported the Grand Prix. After the race Wimille invited Fangio to join him for an interview with the daily sports newspaper L’Equipe and told the journalists that here was a driver who had dared to run ahead of me and who someday you will have to write about. He added that he would need to speed up to beat the newcomer.

Wimille had been impressed earlier that year when he was in Argentina, as a guest of President Juan Peron for a series of races to promote the country. Fangio had previously driven only the locally-built Volpi-Chevrolet but was entered in a Maserati by the Automobile Club of Argentina. For the third race, in Rosario, Amedee Gordini offered Fangio a Simca-Gordini, as team-mate to Wimille, and he did so well that he turned the Frenchman’s head. Out-qualifying him and fighting hard in the race.

The track in Independence Park featured a very odd feature, a roundabout where the drivers could choose whether to go left or right. They all felt that going right was faster and so no-one bothered going left until lap 14 when Fangio tried it and emerged ahead of Wimille. He took the place back but Fangio did the same trick again later but in the end retired because he had pushed the car too hard. Wimille was impressed. After the race, he told the Automobile Club that “I know a future champion, and you have one here.”

Wimille was probably responsible for the invitation that Fangio received from Gordini, after regular driver Maurice Trintignant was seriously injured in the voiturette supporting the Swiss GP. Fangio went back to Argentina and went back to his regular role as a driver in the wildly dangerous Turismo Carretera road races, which had races in each Argentine province. Fangio had won the national title twice in 1940 and 1941, his first big win being the Gran Premio Internacional del Norte, a race from Buenos Aires to Lima in Peru and back again.

In the autumn of 1948 be entered the 5,950-mile Gran Premio de América del Sur, from Buenos Aires to Caracas, by way of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. The race would be a fight between Fangio and his longtime rival Óscar Gálvez but Fangio suffered a setback when his car lost a wheel near Lima and the crew lost a night repairing the car. Fangio charged back through the field from 23rd and was in the lead after 100 miles, with Galvez giving chase. With a thick fog and then dazzling reflection on the buildings in the town of Huanchasco, Fangio left the down unable to see for a few moments and went off in a left-hand turn, the car rolling over and over. Galvez did the same thing, but in the other side of the road. Urrutia has been thrown from the car, suffering a fractured skull, which Fangio only avoided the same fate because his feet were tangled up with the pedals. Galvez came to his rescue and Fangio, with face and leg injuries, urged him to go on racing. Eusebio Marcilla eventually took Fangio and Urrutia to hospital in nearby Chicama, but Urrutia was beyond help by the time they got there. For several weeks Fangio pondered retirement but concluded that he still wanted to go racing. In January, he was fully recovered and joined the European visitors for the opening round of the 1949 Temporada on the Palermo Park circuit in Buenos Aires. His friend and rival Wimille slid off in practice and hit a tree and was killed.

With a heavy heart, Fangio set off to Europe a few weeks later with the Argentin Automobile Club team. He would win F1 races at San Remo, Pau, Perpignan, Albi and Marseilles races and a Formula 2 race at Monza. He returned to Argentine a national hero – with an Alfa Romeo contract for 1950 in his pocket…

Five World Championships would follow.