Word: fangio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...world's No. 1 road-racing driver, Juan Manuel Fangio is an old friend to danger. The 46-year-old Argentine has seen its blurred face in the swirling landscape of a hundred tracks, known its angry snarl whenever his sports car skidded through a tight turn. But one evening last week he stared at danger in a new form: the muzzle of a pistol. Poking the weapon at him in the lobby of Havana's Hotel Lincoln was a tall young man in a leather jacket. "Fangio, you must come with me," he ordered...
...town to race in the Gran Premio de Cuba, Fangio was himself the prize of no ordinary kidnapers. His captors rushed to tell the world who they were, as they launched a week of revolutionary sabotage right in President Fulgencio Batista's front yard (see HEMISPHERE). No sooner had they hidden the racing ace than they were bragging to the newspapers: If President Batista wanted to hustle up the tourist trade with a big sports-car race next day, he would do it without Argentina's defending champion...
...Next afternoon the cars were ready, the Malecon that curves along Havana's lovely coastline had been cleared. A crowd of 150,000 lined the broad boulevard. The Cuban National Sports Commission delayed the race for more than an hour while local cops ran down false rumors of Fangio's release. Then France's Maurice Trintignant slid into Fangio's empty seat in a blue Maserati, and the big buckets of power were sent careening around the 3½-mile course...
...Fangio, meanwhile, was under guard in a comfortably furnished apartment. He had eaten well (steak and potatoes, chicken and rice), and he had slept "like a blessed one." Faustino Perez, Castro's second in command, had come personally to apologize for the inconvenience. The rebels even supplied a radio so that Fangio might listen to the race. But he preferred not to. "I became a little sentimental," he said. "I did not want to listen because I felt nostalgic." Yet Fangio was also fearful that his life was endangered, not by his abductors but by a clash that might...
Turn to Trouble. On the Malecón, the danger more familiar to Fangio began to haunt his fellow racers as they whirled into the long (315 miles) grind. Britain's Stirling Moss took the lead in a Ferrari, Missourian Masten Gregory, driving another Ferrari, was second. Fangio's Maserati, in Trintignant's hands, fell far back to 13th place. By the end of five laps, all the drivers saw that almost every turn was slick with spilled oil; they knew that they were in for trouble...