4th, Nürburgring Heroics: Fangio's Thrilling Hat-Trick
In August 1954 Juan Manuel Fangio won the German Grand Prix in a Mercedes-Benz W196. The following year the race was cancelled, following the Le Mans disaster, but in 1956 it was back on the calendar, and Fangio won it in a Lancia-Ferrari D50.
In ’57 he won it once more in a Maserati 250F – a hat-trick at the Nürburgring, in three different makes of car – and if this race has become something of a cliché in the folklore of the sport, that is of no account, for it was Juan Manuel’s greatest day of days.
The bare facts of the 1957 German Grand Prix are simple enough: it was Fangio against the Ferraris, for Vanwall, victorious at Aintree two weeks before, was in terrible trouble with its shock absorbers at the Nürburgring, to the point that Moss, Brooks and Lewis-Evans were effectively also-rans: “We had our own motor race,” said Stirling, “running seventh, eighth and ninth in the early stages. I finished fifth in the end, very stiff and sore and exhausted…”