The kidnapping of Juan Manuel Fangio
Havana, Cuba, 1958
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In 1957, Fulgencio Batista's government created the Cuban Grand Prix, a sports car race on a street circuit along Havana's Malecón, to attract tourists, mostly from the United States. The Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio, five-time Formula 1 world champion, won the first edition and returned in 1958 with the official Maserati team, setting the fastest times in practice.
On the night of February 23, 1958, the eve of the race, an armed man from the 26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro's rebel group, walked into the Hotel Lincoln and took Fangio from the lobby. Batista ordered the race to go ahead and spread barricades and guards across the city. The race was stopped on the sixth lap, after a car left the track and hit the crowd, killing seven spectators; Stirling Moss took the win.
Sources
In the game
Empty Grid
Havana, Sunday, February 23, 1958, 11:00 pm. In the lobby of the Hotel Atlántida, two blocks from the Malecón, there are still shards of an ashtray on the marble floor and a forgotten straw hat near the elevator.
Fangio was moved between three houses, listened to the race on the radio and said afterward that he had been treated very well. About 29 hours after the kidnapping, he was handed over to the Argentine embassy. The rebels' aim was to shame the regime before the world, and the episode reinforced the impression that Batista was losing control of the country, which fell in January 1959. The story became the 1999 Argentine film Operación Fangio.
