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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lacks some of the sparkle of previous Donaldson biographies, 10 Nov 2003
Fangio's owm memoirs written with Carozzo are rather poorly edited and the veracity of some passages is open to debate; a new biography of the Maestro by acclaimed writer Gerald Donaldson is therefore of much interest, particularly bearing in mind the quality of his books on Gilles Villeneuve and James Hunt.Sadly this isn't the great book I'd hoped for. There's relatively little in there that hasn't already been said about Fangio, though Donaldson expands quite interestingly on his formative years racing in South America and his arrival in Europe. The meat of the book is given over to his Championship career, although some topics - his uneasy relationship with Ferrari and the politics of Mercedes in particular - seem to be rather soft-pedalled. There is very little about Fangio the man, or his career after racin, beyond some mention of his relationship with Mercedes. There are many quotes from Fangio's surviving contemporaries, giving much insight into the man and the times. I was slightly disappointed with this book - I had hoped to learn a lot about Fangio from it and perhaps gain some insight into his character; as it was I found my preconceptions reinforced and didn't feel I was any closer to knowing what made him the genius he was. Donaldson's style seems slightly stiffer than in his Hunt and Villeneuve books - I wonder if he's not aping the greater formality and deference of the 1940s and 1950s? Good, but difficult to see it as an all-time classic.
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