Fangio's Near Fatal Crash At Monza

(dianefineart.ca)

"When I came around I began to remember the things that had led up to the accident. I said to myself, 'How easy it is to die.' I had gone from life to a kind of death in no time at all, without feeling a thing." - Juan Manuel Fangio

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juan Manuel Fangio seldom had accidents but when he did fatigue was usually a factor. His worst accident, the one that nearly killed him, came after a six-hour solo drive through the Alps in a road car. He kept himself awake by slapping his face and arrived, utterly exhausted, just a few minutes before the start of the 1952 Grand Prix of Monza…

 

Having not practised for the race he was theoretically not allowed to take part, nor was he obligated to do so, since he had not yet signed a contract with Maserati, and this was not a championship race. But Juan, who was above all a man of his word, had promised Maserati owner Count Orsi that he would drive in the team's debut. The Monza race organisers were also counting on the appearance of the reigning World Champion, and much of their pre-race advertising was based on it. The other drivers, all 28 of them, welcomed Juan's belated arrival and they had all agreed that he should be allowed to start, albeit from the back of the grid. Perhaps some of them felt even the great Fangio would not be much of a threat in a car he had never driven, let alone seen, before. Yet Juan was full of confidence - given that Monza was a circuit he knew particularly well and that on many occasions in the past heavy doses of race-induced adrenaline had overpowered dangerous levels of fatigue and he had raced well.

In front of him now was a confusion of snarling, smoking, flame-spitting exhaust pipes. With an ear-splitting roar the field surged forward. From the start Juan began an all-out attack that saw him overtake six cars on the first lap, several of them in a breathtaking manouevre around the outside of the 125mph Curva Grande. His confidence thus boosted he embarked on an even faster second lap that took him past nine more cars before he arrived at the twin Lesmo corners, which were usually taken in second and third gears. Later, Juan thought he might have tried to take the second Lesmo in fourth. In any case the Maserati was travelling far faster than his fatigue-impaired faculties could handle.

The right-front wheel clipped a low kerb on the inside of the corner and the light impact set in motion a sideways skid. Still confident that his quick reflexes would come to his rescue, Juan delayed correcting the slide and allowed the car to drift wider still. His intention was to regain control on the outside of the corner where there was more room to manouevre, but his exhausted reflexes were not up to the task and the car went beyond the point of no return. Slamming into a row of straw bales, made rock hard after years of exposure to the elements, the Maserati A6GCM proceeded to run amok.

What followed was for Juan a momentary blur of flying straw and dust, followed by a sequence of sensations that seemed to unfold in slow motion. There were glimpses of sky-blue, tarmac-black and forest-green - images that turned lazily over and over like a slowly revolving kaleidoscope. There was the odd feeling of his body being gripped by alternately demented and playful centrifugal forces that for a surprisingly long time tossed him around like a toy, then casually catapulted him high into the blue and green void. He recalled hearing the sound of a howling engine fading into the distance and feeling on his body the cooling comfort of a fresh breeze, in which he was almost gently soaring. But in his final moments of consciousness he realised the serene blue of the sky was gone and only the dark green of a grove of onrushing trees remained in his vision. The last thing he remembered was the smell of the fresh grass and damp earth on which his contorted body lay.

The frightening ferocity of the accident, and its seemingly interminable duration, shocked the group of marshals and members of the Carabinieri standing at their post amongst the trees at Lesmo. The oldtimers among them gasped in horror, remembering the terrible day in the 1933 Grand Prix of Monza when Campari, Borzacchini and Czaykowsky were all killed in massive crashes at Lesmo. Now, the onlookers stood transfixed as the red Maserati flew high into the air and flipped over and over and over like a leaf in the wind. On those occasions when it was completely inverted the car's yellow-shirted occupant could be seen gripping the steering wheel firmly, as if he was still in control of the wildly gyrating projectile. Then, in the midst of one of the endless series of terrifying somersaults, the driver became detatched from the hurtling projectile and soared skyward in an arc, before plummeting like a stone to a hard grassy knoll where he landed with a sickening thud, convulsed once and lay still.

When the track workers rushed to his aid they found him shoeless, (they were later recovered from the cockpit of the totally destroyed Maserati) and his crash helmet was scraped on its peak and along the left side. Carefully, they carried his inert body to a waiting ambulance which took him to the Monza infirmary. From there he was transported to Monza's Hospital Maggiore.

For the first few hours Juan wavered in and out of consciousness. At one point he awoke and saw two vaguely familiar faces bending over his bed regarding him anxiously. One of them was carrying a laurel wreath and for a desperate moment Juan wondered if it had funerial implications. Then he recognized the Ferrari drivers Giuseppe Farina and Andre Simon. They had finished first and second in the Grand Prix of Monza and Farina had brought the wreath as a tribute to their fallen comrade. They were shocked by his appearance, the once strong and virile body lying inert and the half-closed eyelids flickering faintly on the deathly pale face drained of all animation. "Farina, Simon," came the barely audible whisper and the chastened pair slowly backed out of the room.

Juan was kept heavily sedated for several days, during which time only the hospital staff and a few of those closest to him were allowed near his bedside. On the second day of his confinement he awoke to find his hand being held by a beautiful nurse. At least he assumed she was a nursing sister because she was wearing the nun's habit worn by all the hospital nurses. In fact, it was one of his Italian girlfriends, who in her desperation to see her beloved had persuaded the sympathetic nuns to allow her into his room. As she sat there on one side of his bed another woman came in. It was Andreina 'Beba' Berruet Espinosa, known to everyone as Mrs. Fangio, though they were never married.

Beba, who was as volatile as she was vivacious, and as jealous as she was protective, grabbed Juan's other hand and held it firmly in her grasp. While she warily accepted the presence of the woman in the nun's habit Beba reacted violently to the next visitors, two pretty young girls carrying a big bouquet of flowers. In fact, they were Juan's nieces, from the Italian branch of the Fangios. But Beba didn't know about the family relationship and angrily ushered the girls out of the room, across which she hurled the bouquet of flowers.

Juan was notoriously discreet about his romantic life, though his long-term, frequently tempestuous relationship with the feisty Beba - she of the flashing dark eyes and dazzling smile - was well known. By the time of his Monza accident they had been an intermittent twosome for many years.

For six days Juan was kept completely immobile, lying in bed on his back with his broken neck and spine in traction. Three weeks later his neck, shoulders and upper torso were encased in plaster. After 12 weeks the cast was removed, in a light-hearted ceremony - attended by Froilan Gonzalez and Felice Bonetto, other drivers whose hospital visits were much appreciated by Juan. There followed a lengthy program of physiotherapy, from doctors, nurses and specialists. Juan's much-needed psychological treatment was self-adminstered.
 

"When I was lying there in hospital, thinking that I was wasting that year, the good year for me as I was World Champion and was bound to earn a lot of money, I became very nervous and had high fevers because I was so worried. Then I said to myself, why worry, I've gained my life. I'm alive."

- from FANGIO, The Life Behind The Legend (by Gerald Donaldson)

 

 

The acclaimed FANGIO biography is available from Amazon in electronic and print editions