Juan Manuel Fangio

Fangio won five world championships with four different constructors, a record that stood for forty-six years and a spread of teams no one has matched. He won twenty-four of the fifty-one Grands Prix he started — a strike rate of over 45 per cent, still the highest in the sport's history.

He did not reach Formula One until he was almost forty, having spent his twenties racing modified road cars over thousand-mile courses on South American dirt roads. He survived a broken neck in 1952 and returned to win three more titles.

Fangio was kidnapped by Cuban rebels before the 1958 Havana Grand Prix and released unharmed a day later; he remained on friendly terms with his captors for the rest of his life. He retired later that year.