While the Formula 1 World Championship has gone on a forced hiatus and it is not yet certain that it will return at all in 2020, motorsport fans are left to revisit records of old Grands Prix or documentaries dedicated to the royal motor racing. In addition to the second season of the excellent Formula 1: Drive to Survive series dedicated to the 2019 championship, the same Netflix made another gift to all F1 fans in the form of the documentary A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story, which tells about the career of five-time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio, who is called the greatest racer of all time.

And although Juan Manuel Fangio has “only” five championship titles against seven for Michael Schumacher and six for Lewis Hamilton, no one but him has won these trophies, playing for four (!) different teams (Alfa Romeo SpA (1951), Officine Alfieri Maserati / Daimler Benz AG (1954), Daimler Benz AG (1955), Scuderia Ferrari (1956) and again Officine Alfieri Maserati (1957)), moreover, changing teams right in the middle of the season! It should be understood that Formula 1 in the early and mid-50s. of the last century and Formula 1 in 2000-2020. – these are competitions that are completely different in complexity and danger to the life of the pilot. That is why the best pilots of both the past and the present century unanimously call Fangio the greatest. Ayrton Senna considered him so, Alan Prost, Jackie Stewart, Mika Hakkinen and many others consider him so.

The world champions named above are not mentioned here by chance, they all appear in A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story and talk about their relationship with Fangio and what racing was like in their time, comparing drivers, cars, atmosphere in the team, security measures, etc. In addition to Alan Prost, Jackie Stewart and Mick Hakkinen, the film features mini-interviews with Fernando Alonso, Carlos Reutemann, Nico Rosberg, current Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team boss Toto Wolff, auto designer Horatio Pagani (who, it turns out, is also an Argentinian and came to Italy with a letter of recommendation from Fangio, thanks to which he got a job at Lamborghini), the nephew of the world champion and also a racer Juan Manuel Fangio II, etc.

Moreover, often the authors of the film give the floor to Fangio himself, thank God, archival interviews with the racer are more than enough. What is striking about Fangio in the first place is his modesty. The rider talks a lot about his performances, but never uses the formula “I won”, only “I was lucky to win.” In general, Fangio belittles his merits in every possible way, praising mechanics, designers, car, partners, etc. At the same time, all failures are his own failures, and not the mistakes of the team or someone else. Even about his conflict with Enzo Ferrari, who did not tolerate too independent racers, Fangio expresses himself extremely correctly.

About half of A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story consists of archival footage from the 1950s Grand Prix, interviews with Fangio and contemporary interviews with drivers. The authors decided to focus on the sports career of the world champion, which, in principle, is already so well known to all Formula 1 fans. There is practically nothing about Fangio’s life in Argentina before 1950 and nothing about his life after leaving the big sport, and this is a total of 76 years, not in the film. Moreover, even about the scandalous kidnapping of Fangio by supporters of Castro in Cuba in 1958, exactly two words were said (this is not an understatement), and in passing by the racer himself.

One of the features of this documentary is that all of its characters speak the languages they are used to. The picture sounds direct speech in Spanish, Italian, German, English, and for some reason there are not English subtitles for the entire text. So this is the rare case when we recommend watching a film with Russian subtitles – they, of course, also have enough errors, but some fragments are perceived more easily this way.

Yes, it is possible that true racing fans will not find much new information about the life of the legendary Fangio in A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story, especially about his life outside of motorsport (for example, that after the exhumation of the body of the racer in 2015, two men were recognized as his illegitimate sons), but listening to Fangio himself, other outstanding racers, looking at archival recordings of the first Formula 1 Grand Prix is incredibly interesting.

The film is highly recommended to all fans of royal motor racing, as well as those who are simply interested in racing and who, for example, liked such feature films as Ford v Ferrari / The Outsiders , Rush or Grand Prix .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1vm_qMDn-I