Page 27
The Maestro - A Lesson in High Speed Living - continued
Fangio of course went on to live a productive life in Argentina with successful business pursuits. Moss was in a serious racing accident in 1962, in a comma for 6 months, and retired from racing on recovery. But recover he did, with little evidence of the beating he had taken, and at time of writing is still alive, although his age of 89 has finally slowed him down. Up until age 87 he was a dyamo of involvement and activity!
Hawthorn, in January of 1959, was involved in a street race with a friend driving a Mercedes, with Hawthorn in a Jaguar. Hawthorn made a bad move and wrapped the Jag around a pole and was killed at age 30. It was a bit like a sick replay of Le Mans 1955.
Michael Schumacher, between 1994 and 2004 won 7 world driving championships. He made the comment “There is no way you can compare me with him. What he achieved, at the wheel of fairly basic cars in just shirt sleeves and with no helmet, hardly bears thinking about. It wasn’t even the same sport. No, I could never do what he did. That man was a hero.” Schumacher not only won a lot of races but he may well have been a key agent in the rebuilding of the Ferrari racing team. But he lived in the era of “Big Racing” where business systems and marketing dollars made drivers into chauffeurs of the big dollar interests. And Schumacher did not have the reputation of personal integrity that Fangio and Moss left behind them. A lot of controversy and hard feeling followed Schumacher’s trail over the years. Schumacher survived racing but then had a simple skiing accident and at 44 years of age, in effect died. It is not clear what his condition is but there is no question that he suffered a serious head injury that has put him in a very marginal condition.
After his seemingly miraculous 1957 Nurburgring win which clinched his 5th world championship, it was if the wonder story went into closure. Juan was beaten in the next F1 race by Stirling Moss. Then a civilian car crash that could have been a life ender took Fangio out of the the Italian GP due to a hand injury from the crash. The final 57 season race in Casablanca saw Juan afflicted with flue and 4th place was the best he could claim. In 1958 Maserati was close to bankrupsy and their racing effort suffered. Juan’s aging parents were a concern to him in that he knew they were troubled by his own level of risk. The example of Tazio Nuvolari hanging on long past his competitive days impacted Juan. Tazio had been Juan’s inspiration as a youth and Juan was at his funeral, one of the men who pushed Nuvolari’s casket through the streets of Nuvolari’s home town, on a racing car chassis. In the opening GP race of the 1958 season in his home country, Juan drove hard to keep ahead of Stirling Moss who ended up winning the first victory for a Cooper “mid engine” slipper car. In order to stay ahead, Juan burned out his Maserati and ended up in fourth. And as I covered earlier on this website, the death of the front engine dinosaur racer had begun. In February, Juan was kidnapped just ahead of the Havana GP by some of Castro’s men. Next there were major personal frustrations surrounding the Indianapolis 500 and a followup “Two World’s Trophy” event at Monza in Italy. Juan missed Monaco, Holland, and Belgium and then witnessed Musso’s death at Reims in France. In that race the clutch pedal snapped on Juan’s Maserati and the great Fangio looked like a novice as he struggled with the handicapped car. On the long straights of that race he had time to think and he sized up the season to that point and when he finished the race in 4th place with Hawthorn about to lap him (which Hawthorn refused to do out of respect), he got out of the car and made the decision to quit racing.
Collins died shortly after at the Nurburgring and Stuart Lewis-Evans was badly burned (and eventually died) at the final race of the year at Casablanca. That final 58 race on October 19, gave Hawthorn the season championship by one point and three months later, Hawthorn was dead. Tony Vandervell, the owner of Vanwall, the 1958 Constructors’ Championship winner, quit racing in part due to Lewis-Evan’s death. And Juan retired alive and well.
Time and chance is real but given the clearly designed nature of everything around us, our own structure and function included, I think it is worth pondering if our choice of direction and conduct, especially relating to other personalities, has an effect on seemingly random circumstances. Who is above criticism, but both Fangio and Moss stood out as being outliers in certain important and positive ways. Kicking back to my earlier website coverage of Jim Corbett and even my mention of Ruth Stout, sometimes events happen to people that seem beyond probability, such as Corbett’s highly improbable interaction with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. Corbett’s admirable life came to light due to his book writing in his old age. Ruth Stout was unheard of until she was given a pleasant place of honour due to her expressions of her reality through book writing. There are no videos of Corbett sitting on the ladder at Treetops but there is preserved motion picture coverage of Fangio’s final Formula 1 victory at the 1957 Nurburgring. The film footage as well as numerous Kodachrome photos were lost for decades but are now available for all to see. That 1957 race was a highly unlikely cap on Fangio’s racing career. I think it is lesson loaded when viewed in the context of Fangio’s overall career.
The powerful example I see in the Fangio story is the concept of him being called “The Maestro” and just what it was that allowed him to achieve a success that seemed to fly in the face of probability. It was as if he walked through a spray of machine gun bullets, unscathed, while everyone around him was cut down. And at the end of the ordeal he discovers that he achieved a stylish haircut and the precise removal of an ugly wart on his nose. Then, life went on with a steady flow of other types of fulfilment. Can we identify what it was that he did right and whether there are logical causal factors underlying the reality of his fully documented success?
I feel a key feature of Fangio’s life was that he built on solid foundations and he exercised a multi discipline or multi tasking approach. Many products today are “made to sell”. They have surface glitz, are quickly assembled to appeal to current fad imagery, are priced with immediate rather than long term appeal in mind – they are surface and shallow and in the long run, cheap. Cheap as in crap. Not cheap as in value. You might say the same thing about many people. But Fangio was solid value. He was built, layer by layer, using quality materials. He ironed out foolishness via the hard logic of experience – of “doing”! He took life as it arrived and did the job at hand with integrity and principle. And when he came out of the hairpins and saw the straight away ahead, he stood on the accelerator and had the power to achieve remarkable speed. And then, he knew how to use the brakes and steer. He knew how to read the signs and guess the traction characteristics of the roadway and listen to the sounds of his machine and understand the language. The mind and body that arrived in Europe and confronted Formula 1 was already constructed to excel. There was no mystery or fluke involved. A study of his past simply revealed the base of the massive ice berg.
Jumping back to Ruth Stout, I see a similarity between Ruth and Juan and also Jim Corbett. Here is another except from “If You Would Be Happy”;
The main thing is to be alert, to remember to pay attention. How much pleasure can you get out of an apple? If it is handsome, either in shape or color, you can enjoy it through your eyes. Next you can smell it, then feel how smooth it is. Now as you bite into it, listen, and you may hear a pleasant crackle; we learned to enjoy that sound when we were youngsters. And as you eat it you will savor the taste.
For the height of aesthetic pleasure I might choose a white single peony. I know of nothing which is lovelier to look at and I know of no finer, more delicate fragrance. And the large satiny petals simply beg you to touch them; they look so fragile, yet you can smooth them gently with your fingers and do them no harm.
Now do I hear some impatient grumbling? Is someone saying, “Well, if eating an apple and smelling a flower is what she calls happiness, I guess we can all be happy. She could have saved herself the trouble of writing a book.”
Well, of course, that’s not all there is to it, but let’s agree that we’ve gone a step farther than gulping down food without tasting it and looking at a flower without smelling it. We started at the bottom of the ladder, remember? If our three-year-old boy tells us he wants to learn trigonometry, we first must teach him how to add one and one. Unless you have progressed farther than the majority have in learning how to be happy, you will do better to start at the beginning. Yes, I know that many of us are searching for something lofty, something fine and almost beyond description, but I doubt if we will find it if we can’t even keep enough of our attention on the food we are eating and on the scents and sounds and sights around us to get a reasonable share of the pleasure they have to offer.
By all means let us often look up at the stars as we walk through life, but if, now and then, we don’t glance down at the path we are travelling, I am afraid we will have just one tumble after another.
How similar Stout’s rant is to Corbett’s description of walking through the forest and finding excitement in dozens of aspects of the experience while his hiking companion only fretted about the bad footing on the trail (see web page 3 for the capsule statement of student style – to the insensitive, seemingly opposite, but to the discerning, so similar.). Fangio, Corbett, and Stout, and you could add Moss to that list, all Lived. They were active doers in the moment with a zest for life and progress – and a regard for those they came in contact with such that there was reciprocal interaction. No one is an island in the System of Life. Progress of action and thought development comes from effective interaction. And positive interaction is built on reciprocal respect and consistent and principled action. Jerks are a throttle on the interaction of personalities. Good guys throw the flood gates wide open and with that definition comes a wisdom element that is a cable mesh over the flow channel that sifts out exploiting jerks!
Let’s look at another Ruth Stoutism;
Building your life is like making a pie. Your favourite is cherry, but you haven’t any cherries, so you settle for apples. Here is the flour, but you are unfortunately out of lard which in your opinion, makes the best crust. Well, all right, you will use bacon grease. Next, there’s a calamity – the sugar bin is empty. Why not try honey? Besides being sweet it is supposed to have a lot of nutritive value. No cinnamon? Then use twice as much nutmeg and a little vanilla, why not? But you find that the vanilla bottle is empty, so how about some almond extract? Interesting to see what that will taste like.
So you make the pie – and you build your life – with makeshift ingredients, and it may happen that both will turn out better than they would have it you could have had exactly what you wanted.
I am not going to endorse the details of Ruth’s ingredient choices but again, the personalities under discussion all reacted to the circumstances that life threw at them with enthusiasm and resourcefulness, kept rolling and doing, and crawled when the going was tough and flew when their sails caught the wind.
A Maestro of Life is not an individual who is a one trick pony. The Maestro isn’t shallow nor short term. When a decision is required or a cross road is reached, multiple channels in his or her brain snap open and impact the decision, but a decision is made, and the “doer” moves ahead.
Fangio made a decision in the 1950 Monte Carlo Grand Prix race. He was in multi tasking mode and observed the spectators and recalled history and adapted to the situation. An inexperienced speed and winning freak, a one trick pony of car control, would have barrelled around the corner to destruction. The Maestro prevailed.
Fangio came from a solid, hard working family and was blessed with certain physical capacities that allowed him to excel at driving and mechanical matters at a young age. He was devoted to his parents. He was raised in a close knit, rural based, supportive, small town environment that must have impacted his outlooks in major ways. His world was already formed and grounded before he made his debut in Europe. And when he returned to his home country, his life went on in a pleasant manner until his death as a senior.
The Jurisdictional Maestro
A marvellous skill is to be a person of solid principle while retaining a capacity to apply solid principles to changing circumstances. If a skilled horseman/wagon operator suddenly is confronted with a modern automobile you had better hope that a situation that requires braking doesn’t result in him ignoring the brake pedal while pulling back on the steering wheel and yelling “whoa”.
I have no doubt that the Bible is The Book of books. As illustrated earlier on this website, a child can easily establish that everything we know is designed and created by a Super Personality and “any One” with the Zap to “Make ALL” isn’t going to be challenged with the production of a Book that, even if not immediately fully understood in its totality by synthesized mortals, is clearly produced by a Big Author who hits us with significant verifiable information that only a Big Author could have generated.
But many religious types grab onto principles from a Book that was obviously crafted to serve readers thousands of years apart, and treat the information much like the wheel grabbing horse driver. Others, usually of an extreme secular viewpoint, stick their head in the sand with regard to basic origins and consequently disregard the whole Book or in less extreme cases simply disregard the older sections of it.
If you KNOW that something is designed and constructed by a mind and creative capacity that is dramatically superior to your own, you are a fool to get tied in a knot with regard to the details of “how”. Nice to know, but better to ponder the “why”. Why were things done the way they were or made the way they were? What was and what is the Big Mind up to? If you are evaluating how things should be done in any situation, the “why” behind a principle is far more important than a single exact application example. When circumstances change, what then? Capacity to handle these evaluations varies wildly.
I think it would be fair to say that the personality called Christ would qualify as the Ultimate Maestro of Life. It seems that He has the Ultimate Multitasking Approach that allows Sustainable Life and it makes sense that the Bible indicates that the only hope that a synthesized mortal has of achieving Sustainable Life is via some type of connection to this Super Personality. Is He constantly talking to us but we don’t hear? Don’t let it look like I am playing down humans with the “synthesized mortal” handle. Children of God is a better name but it is vital for progress that we modestly appreciate our current mortal status and appreciate the creative powers of Dad, and His Son, a Son who we are told is the only Super Personality that mankind has ever had significant contact with. Without a Biblical tip off on that point, that information would be hard to determine, I think. But it is mighty useful information to be aware of.
So, how does a person in 2019 apply anciently stated Biblical principles to the present day. Do rules given to Moses and those under his direction still apply and if so, how? To be a “high level Maestro of Life”, on a human scale, I think there is a challenge at hand. On the one hand, I think it is folly to disregard the words of the Old Testament of THE Book (or New Testament) and on the other hand I do think that current circumstances have to be considered with regard to application.
What impact does the move from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant have? What impact did Israel moving from a theocracy to having a human king have? What impact does the lack of a theocratic nation of Israel have? How do economic principles that applied to a specific theocratic nation in a specific location on the globe and to a physical temple system, all integrated in a whole, apply to current circumstances? What impact does direct access to a multi-channel Living Church Leader have on individual human lives; lives that lots of other humans love to control, bottle up, and extract physical wealth from, often with the humanly programmed appreciation of their gullible victims?
Elsewhere on this website I have quoted a statement attributed to Galileo where he said “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Circumstances change and reality forces every person to make decisions. Earlier on this website I plug the reality of the designed physical system in which we find ourselves, forcing changes and educational pressures on us. Some seem to be better at making decisions that lead to good results versus some who are less skilful in this regard. But the term “jurisdictional”, I feel is a wonderful concept that captures the skill of recognizing Basic True principles and applying them to changing circumstances. A true jurisdictional maestro will be able to adapt from horses to automobiles to aircraft. Details and circumstances change – basic principles remain constant. “Jurisdictional Maestro” is a wonderful concept to describe a Master or Maestro of Life! Is it fair to contrast Life versus Religion? If there is a clash, then “religion” is where there is a problem. True Religion and the Maestro of Sustainable Life are one and the same. In a world where the terminology of Religion and Evolution have been hijacked, one has to be really cautious about trying to secure meaningful terminology.
I have had plenty of “religious” contact in my life and I feel that there are huge numbers of “one trick religionists” who build temples and man them with individuals (often themselves) who encourage the breaking of the First Commandment. They snag Biblical statements, ignore other Biblical statements, and fly in the face of current reality and common sense, and illustrate the antithesis of being Maestro’s of Life. And they are often very successful at capturing the minds of other humans and becoming a “spiritual leader” of the masses. It seems to be enjoyable and lucrative being a substitute god!
I must at this point digress. I am working on an angle that has more than one simple flow line and I have to build a feeder plant to get the main factory into operation! It’s the reality of life. Nothing is totally simplistic with complex systems!
Years ago, a religious type who I thought well of, tossed up a story somewhat like the one I am going to relate. He believed that the world we live in is highly impacted with a twisted mind set that afflicts everyone to some extent in all area of living, and that the situation is intentional on the part of the Super Designer. Read my section on Page 21 - 23 regarding Compulsory Immunization and you will see an illustration of the thinking.
Imagine a world with a large number of, shall we call them “Temples of Truth”. These structures are like Hollywood movie sets with a glitzy promotional frontal façade that welcomes visitors with excited enthusiasm. You go inside the front door and you are confronted with stairs and doors and halls and balconies and finally a rear exit. You travel through the labyrinth and when you are in the Temple you will undoubtedly meet the local priests and perhaps even the High priest. But when you exit the back door and turn around, what you see is perhaps a penitentiary, or a brothel, or a sleazy down side tavern or pawn shop. Maybe even a bingo parlour or casino! You might see an orphanage which has the perverse feature of separating children from their parents. You might have memories of a stranger offering you, as a small child, candy in order to entice you into his vehicle. You might see a smoking battlefield or a massive cemetery. You might see a shanty town full of poverty struck people with wasted lives behind them. And many of those poor folks may be addicted to drugs that can only be secured on the backside of their “temple of choice”.
Many of the temples will be negative, more in the way that they control those who enter, rather than due to specific ideas that they promote. When a temple of truth acts like carbon monoxide that displaces oxygen, you should realize that you have a problem. And the term "cult" might be accurate. There are a lot of "temples of control" and they seem to have lots of clients!
So often, truly noble causes set up their Temples of Truth, very often with a single facet mission that in itself may be totally noble. The early leaders and adherents to the temple may be admirable individuals although often the leadership will be initiated by or hijacked by a black hearted, self serving con artist agent at work pushing a hidden agenda - sort of a nickel plated scoundrel. But over time, it is rare that any of the Temples of Truth endure and avoid the stigma of a grotty backside. Life is not a simplistic, single facet show, and claims to one trick success are immediate evidence of a con job. And personalities with a potential for sustainable life are not single facet islands who exist apart from everyone else. Nor are they single issue advocates at war with members of dozens of other Temples of Truth.
I have made the point elsewhere (Page 12) that it is a principle of current life that no one seems to hold all the cards and no one is devoid of cards. There may be Maestros of this specialty or that, and we can very often learn a lot from them, but there is only one True Super Maestro of Life. And that Super Maestro has the handle on “Sustainable Life”.
Anyone who swears total allegiance to any one ‘temple of truth’ is likely breaking the First Commandment and figuratively could also be accused of breaking the 7th. Such action can usually be seen as for-mentioned “Truth Immunization” (page 21 - 23) where the inoculated individual is no longer impacted by the meriad “Truth Viruses” that are everywhere. And realize, in the narrow context that I used earlier, these “Truth Viruses” are of course being defined as highly beneficial.
There is only one Religious Leader who never dies and this Individual indicates that He is there to provide guidance to true followers of His Religion of Life. That is the logic of True Christianity – assuming the words are not conveying a hijacked meaning! I contend that Truth is under our noses and everywhere and that you can’t turn around without getting it in the eye – yet, like people were fooled into not noticing the flights of the Wright Brother’s aircraft, amazingly few people can smell the coffee! It is as if the Boss is yelling at us but seemingly no one hears the shouted advice, at the moment at least. If some do hear something, their reaction is often “Why should I listen to You? I hear plenty of good stuff from my chosen ‘temple of truth’. Excuse me, but I sort of prefer “clear cut lies” to “Truth”. Truth isn’t sufficiently simple. Black and white, one trick ponies, are where I am at”.
Have you considered how complex “Life” really is. Life is not a collection of singular entities that roll around on a table like billiard balls. Or a single amoeba that suddenly “appears”. Life is more like a clump of poplar trees that are all connected by a root system. Seemingly multiple trees but really only one system. Or maybe a bee colony with its subdivisions. But these examples are far too simplistic. Ridiculously simplistic.
When you are born, you pick up bacteria and all sorts of other microscopic entities from your mother. Cesarian babies often have problems because of short circuiting the system and avoiding being “inoculated” with microbes. And once you are out and at it, where would you be without a mother and a society and without a broad food supply system and without oxygen and the ability to utilize water and then a supply of water and on and on. The concept of “life” suddenly appearing is ridiculous because “Life” is a huge interconnected system. How huge? I would argue that it is bigger than the universe. BIG! Because all that we know as Life, especially Human Life, with free and conscious personalities that have creative power and self determination, has a connection to the Personality that made everything we can detect. And the Everything is complex, interconnected, and brilliantly designed. Remove that connection and I contend that, what we know as Life would evaporate. I am not sure if it would be an instant event or a sickeningly gradual event. But it is clear that we didn’t get here by accident and given the interconnection of all things, I think it is a pipe dream if anyone thinks that we have independent longevity as a physical system. On a personal and individual level, no one is going to argue. Especially those over 150 years of age! And the consciousness spark is a very fragile entity.
Where am I going? We live in a designed system. A multi facet system. The more effective a Maestro of Life is, the broader his capacity to take all the angles into account. A one trick pony is a loser in the big arena. And an “independent” loner with minimal connections to and appreciation of the physical and social systems around him, if he survives at all, is not going to do well and thrive.
If someone were to ask me as to my “religious” handle, I would feel most comfortable telling them that I am an Aficionado of Life; and that I would like to move closer and closer to being a Maestro of Life. To say that I am a Christian, in this day and age, I feel, is to tap into hijacked and inaccurate terminology. That title is no longer accurate and certainly wouldn’t help others to understand my viewpoint. If a person from Christ’s human days were to be plunked down in 2019, shown current “Christianity” and asked to comment, he would likely say something like “Well, this certainly looks like a type of Babylonian religion. And I am amazed at all the conflicting “temples of truth” that seem to fall under the same general heading”.
But the same person would have the handicap of being unaware of all the information mankind has gathered in the last 2000 years of living experience, the last hundred dwarfing the previous 1900. When that historic person is ultimately resurrected, he or she is going to gain a lot of appreciation for LIFE from those that lived after and those that lived before. “LIFE” has a present and it has a past and a future and a True Maestro of Life needs to, and ultimately will, appreciate these facets.
The life of Juan Fangio has a dramatic story to tell to those with eyes and ears to hear. So does the life of Ruth Stout and of Jim Corbett. So does the life of your next door neighbour. So does your live and mine. We are all part of the System of Life and we all illustrate Principles of Life, in positive ways and in negative ways. Like physical beauty or ugliness, the dramatic nature of our lives varies, but any Living Being with thinking and creative abilities combined with freedom is a unique entity and dwells at the core and purpose of physical LIFE.
Fangio had an intense will to race motor cars and he also had good judgment on risk levels and how to deal with risk. He only drove as fast as he needed to to win. He had a saying “a crazy man finishes in the cemetery”. But he presents an analogy of Life. Get in that car and DRIVE! Don’t kill yourself driving. But move. Don’t sit still. LIVE! He wasn’t an ultimate Maestro of Life, but he was an outlier from whom anyone can learn major lessons of value. And I think it is worth pondering, “Did this highly unlikely life career happen totally by time and chance or was there manipulation involved? Is the story of little Juan Fangio being presented by a Big Invisible Maestro?”
Life is happening within each of us and all around us and there is a valuable past history and a constantly unfolding future. How can anyone be bored! And if you strive to be a Maestro, you will constantly be learning and adding new facets to your approach. And each new facet will allow you to lap more quickly, more safely, and more reliably. The Big School is currently THE exciting and dynamic place to be and everyone in it is on the cutting edge of time. Making the most of constantly being provided with a spot in the front row of the starting grid is a massive perk of the Gift of Life!
The System of Life is huge but small. When you see any one person, so often there are many links to other people you know about, despite the size of the world's population. Let me point out some interesting connections relating to Juan Fangio, seen here with Alberto Ascari on his right and Giuseppe Farina on his left. Each won a Grand Prix World Championship in the first 3 years of the organized series.
Juan express his view that Farina drove like a madman. "I cannot understand how Farina didn't die sooner. We used to say that he was protected by the Madonna but he should have considered that she couldn't be at his disposal all the time."
Tazio Nuvolari was an icon of auto racing. He was a small man with a huge reputation of being a daredevil and a tenacious competitor who managed, somehow, to stay alive on the race track. He made his reputation in Europe but he was a major inspiration for a little boy in Argentina named Juan Fangio. Fangio eventually met Tazio as the famed racer was in his downward years and was one of the casket attendants at Tazio's funeral. Tazio kept racing past his prime and his somewhat tragic example may have been an influence that motivated Juan to retire while still alive.
Giuseppe Farina was a type of protege of Nuvolari. Nuvolari got his first chance to drive for Ferrari due to the death of Alberto Ascari's father, who was killed in a racing accident. And Nuvolari raced against Achille Varzi, who eventually had a significant connection to Fangio.
On the left is a photo of an older Nuvolari. Tazio loved racing and organizers would pay him to start due to his fame and crowd appeal but his edge was gone and Fangio felt it tragic to see him beaten.
Achille Varzi was a contemporary of Nuvolari and visited Argentina as racing resumed after the war. Fangio met him and raced against him and a friendship was quickly formed. Varzi died in a crash shortly after Juan arrived in Europe and Juan attended his funeral. Varzi's wealthy father also befriended Juan and was very helpful in supporting Juan's early racing efforts in Europe.
The three photos above are of Jean-Pierre Wimille, who in 1949 was one of the best European drivers. He had been a French resistance fighter in the war. He gave credit to Achille Varzi for a significant impact on his success. He chased Varzi for several laps in the 1935 Spanish Grand Prix and stated "I have just learned, in a few laps following Varzi, more than all my other races put together taught me!"
On a racing visit to Argentina, Jean-Pierre befriended Fangio and gave him advice that Fangio valued greatly. Wimille was a top driver and also a gentleman and Fangio gave him credit for being a major role model. Sadly, in January of 1949, just before the Formula 1 series was instituted, Wimille was killed in a relatively minor accident in Argentina, when he swerved to avoid a woman crossing the race track. A small funeral was held in Argentina and Fangio was a pallbearer there and when a national memorial service was held later in France, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were among the dignitaries. Unnoticed, but also in attendance, was the appreciative Fangio.
A newspaper tells of Fangio's kidnapping by Castro's associates. Fangio was amused that despite being F1 champion 5 times, it was his kidnapping that made him known in the USA. The Americans seemed to go out of their way to belittle his achievements and it seemed that the aura of their somewhat simplistic Indianapolis 500 and similar races eclipsed the European F1 world. The situation may well be an analogy of general "American" thinking!
Collins, Fangio, and Hawthorn are pictured, celebrating the 1957 Nurenburgring victory of the "Old Man". After this amazing moment, it was if circumstances shunted Fangio back to much tamer life in his home country. Within a year and a few months, both Collins and Hawthorn were dead.
About 25 years ago, Ayrton Senna, a three time world championship winner from Brazil, died in a crash. He was known for amazingly fast circuits as well as for high risk moves and blatant stunts like ramming competitor's cars. Was he a crazy gambler? He gained fame for winning but did his career end well? Interesting to contrast Senna, Collins, Hawthorn, and Fangio as to which was a Winner of the Grand Prix of Life. This much is certain, Fangio stayed in the race two to three times as long as the other racers!
