F1 drivers in their fifties: why Alonso is nowhere near the oldest

Chiron and Fagioli are in positions one and four in the ‘oldest drivers to start an F1 GP’ list. Chiron was 55 (nearly 56 actually) when he finished sixth in the 1955 Monaco GP, and Fagioli was 53 when he won the 1951 French Grand Prix. He is, of course, therefore, the oldest driver to win a championship F1 grand prix, the only driver born in the 19th century to have won a championship F1 grand prix, and the only driver to have won a grand prix in the pre-WW2 European Championship and the post-WW2 F1 World Championship. Nonetheless, he is now by some margin less well known than the two other great Fs of early-1950s F1, Fangio and Farina, and that must surely be because, unlike them, he never won an F1 world championship. But, if he was not quite as good as Fangio, because no-one was, he was better than Farina. Before F1 had been born or thought of, he had won the 1930 Coppa Ciano for Maserati, the 1933 Coppa Acerbo and the 1933 Italian Grand Prix for Alfa Romeo, the 1934 Coppa Acerbo and the 1935 Monaco Grand Prix for Mercedes-Benz, and more besides. He started only seven championship F1 GPs: six in 1950 (finishing second in four, third in one, and having his chances ruined in a lap-one multi-car shunt in the other) and one in 1951 (which he won). The next year, 1952, uniquely, the Monaco Grand Prix was a sports car race, and he shunted his Lancia in practice for it. At first his injuries were thought to be minor, but a week later, in hospital in Monte-Carlo, he succumbed to them, aged 54.

Chiron was an excellent driver, too: smooth and fast. An urbane and handsome Monégasque, notably fleet-footed on the dance floor, in the 1920s he supplemented his income by plying for hire as a gigolo in the opulent lobby of the Hotel de Paris, Monte-Carlo, earning enough to buy himself a Bugatti grand prix car. He was prolifically successful in it, and in its serial replacements, which were also paid for by wealthy female admirers, and he won the Italian Grand Prix in 1928, the German Grand Prix in 1929, the Monaco Grand Prix in 1931, and the French Grand Prix in 1931, 1934 (in an Alfa) and 1937 (in a Talbot), and more besides.