Juan Manuel Fangio is the only Argentine driver to have won the Argentine Grand Prix, he won four times, more than any other driver.
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Juan Manuel Fangio nicknamed El Chueco (the bowlegged or bandy legged one) or El Maestro (The Master or The Teacher), was an Argentine racing car driver. Fangio was born on 24 June 1911 in Balcarce. He holds the highest winning percentage in Formula One at 46.15%, winning 24 of 52 Formula One races he entered. Fangio is the only Argentine driver to have won the Argentine Grand Prix, which he won four times in his career, more than any other driver. After retirement, Fangio presided as the honorary president of Mercedes-Benz Argentina from 1987, a year after the inauguration of his museum, until his death in 1995.
From childhood, he abandoned his studies to pursue auto mechanics. He dominated the first decade of Formula One racing. He won the World Championship of Drivers five times, a record that stood for 46 years until beaten by Michael Schumacher, with four different teams (Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Maserati), a feat that has not been repeated. Fangio’s first Grand Prix race was the 1948 French Grand Prix at Reims, where he started his Simca Gordini from 11th on the grid but retired. For the first World Championship of Drivers in 1950, Fangio was taken on by the Alfa Romeo team alongside Farina and Luigi Fagioli.
Andrea Berruet, did have a long-lasting relationship with the five-times world champion with whom she broke up in 1960. Fangio had a relationship with Catarina Basili, whom Fangio had dated during a brief separation from Berruet. Fangio also had a son with Basili, Rubén Vázquez (1942). He also had another brief relationship with Susana Rodríguez, who was 16 years old at the time. He had a son with Rodriguez as well Juan Carlos Rodríguez (1945).
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Fangio was never married, but was involved in a romantic relationship with Andrea Berruet with whom he broke up in 1960. They had a son named Oscar ‘Cacho’ Espinosa (1938) who was acknowledged as the unrecognized son of Fangio in 2000. In February 2016, it was confirmed that Rubén Vázquez was also Fangio’s son and Catarina Basili was his mother, whom Fangio had dated during a brief separation from Berruet.
In June 2016, a DNA analysis concluded that Juan Carlos Rodríguez (1945) and Espinosa were brothers on paternal side with a 97.5% certainty. He was born from another brief relationship with Susana Rodríguez, who was 16 years old at the time.
