1948 South American Grand Prix

The 1948 South American Grand Prix (Spanish: Gran Premio de la América del Sur del Turismo Carretera), also known as Buenos Aires–Caracas, was a motor race held as part of the 1948 Turismo Carretera championship.^[1]

Two entrants withdrew prior to the race starting – Ernesto Hilario Blanco with illness, and Esteban Sokol having crashed his car before the departure.

The first stage was also the longest; just over 1,000 mi from Buenos Aires to Salta. José Froilán González took the start in a Chevrolet, but withdrew not long after as he allegedly didn't realise the race was going all the way to Caracas and didn't believe such a journey could be done – calling his rivals "crazy". Oscar Alfredo Gálvez and Juan Manuel Fangio led the way, but Fangio's charge was halted with differential problems and the Balcarceño lost four hours repairing it. Gálvez thereafter remained unchallenged to the stage finish, with Fangio's Chevrolet stablemate Domingo Marimón finishing second and Gálvez' brother Juan third.

As soon as the race had started however, problems were already emerging. Large crowds thronged the roads outside of Buenos Aires, resulting in two spectator fatalities – one when Octavio Moretti lost control of his Chevrolet and ran over a group of bystanders, and another when an allegedly drunken man crossed the road in front of Daniel Musso's Ford. A distressed Musso abandoned the race at the end of the stage.

Stage 2 took the crews from Salta to the Argentine border town of La Quiaca. Oscar Gálvez claimed his second successive stage victory on the gravel country roads, but Uruguayan star Héctor Suppici Sedes crashed in Maimará and immediately withdrew – returning home to Montevideo.

94 crews crossed the La Quiaca River into Bolivia to recommence the race from Villazón. The 460 km route to Potosí was treacherous at over 3,000m above sea level, and ultimately claimed the lives of Ford team Julián Elguea and Heriberto Román – they failed to negotiate a hairpin outside the town of Culpina and fell 200m into a ravine. Elguea's brother-in-law Domingo Fancio was competing as co-driver to Juancito Moss and the crew immediately withdrew from the race. Oscar Gálvez extended his lead with a third-straight stage win, ahead of Pablo Gulle in second and Marimón third.

Juan Gálvez claimed his first stage win on the road from Potosí to the Bolivian capital La Paz as his brother Oscar struck trouble. The #3 Ford hit a rock and required repairs to the steering rack, but he retained the overall lead heading into a rest day.

Fangio had recovered to 40th after his first stage woes, and went on the attack on the fifth stage over the Peruvian border into Arequipa. The Gálvez brothers consolidated the pace across the Altiplano, but Fangio passed 30 cars over the Andes to claim his first stage win and the first for Chevrolet.

The second-longest stage of the race saw competitors descend to the Pacific coast into the Peruvian capital Lima. Fangio – now inside the top-30 overall – continued to press on until a rollover near Nazca forced him to back off, finishing the stage 23rd and still sitting over 6 hours behind leader Oscar Gálvez, who claimed his fourth stage win. The 25,000-strong crowd that gathered in the capital to see the spectacle were rewarded for their support when local driver Arnaldo Alvarado Degregori came home third.

Thursday October 28 was scheduled as a rest day, however the start of Stage 7 was brought forward from 5am on Friday to 10pm that night due to a coup d'état in Peru that resulted in the installation of Manuel Odría as President. Sleep-deprived crews were ill-prepared for the change of plans, with misty coastal roads adding to the challenge of the last 1,000 km+ stage.

Still recovering lost ground, Fangio was pushing hard – so much so that he and co-driver Daniel Urrutia missed a refuelling point and had to backtrack. Just outside of Huanchaco, on the northern outskirts of Trujillo, Fangio lost control on a left-hand bend and rolled down an embankment at 140kph. Co-driver Urrutia was ejected from the car through the windscreen in the incident, and landed heavily in scrubland. Oscar Gálvez, who had been battling Fangio earlier in the stage, witnessed the accident and stopped to help – much to the objection of Fangio, who wanted the race leader to continue. Having found a badly injured Urrutia, Eusebio Marcilla and Luciano Murro then stopped to help transport Fangio and Urrutia respectively to a hospital in Chocope. Urrutia became the events' fifth fatality having suffered cervical and basal skull fractures, whilst Fangio also suffered neck injuries but these were not life-threatening.

Despite many wanting to withdraw from the race after the incident, Fangio urged his rivals to continue. Juan Gálvez eventually led 53 crews to the end of Stage 7 and the halfway point of the event in the Peruvian border town of Tumbes. Fangio's crash was not the only terminal one in the stage, with four other crews – including the hero of Lima, Arnaldo Alvarado Degregori – forced to retire.

A ship then carried the competitors to the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil, where the race resumed en route to Quito. Juan Gálvez made it back-to-back stage wins to reduce his brother's lead to 1h11m. Pablo Gulle retired from 8th overall with a mechanical failure.

Upon arrival in Quito, the field faced significant economic problems. In order to ensure the race continued, Argentine President Juan Perón personally decreed a donation of AR$100,000 to competitors. Oscar Gálvez led brother Juan over the border into the Colombian town of Pasto to finish 1–2 for Ford. There were further spectator problems in the final kilometres – Víctor García crashed into a crowd killing one and injuring four others, whilst a wooden platform overlooking the finish collapsed and seriously injured multiple.

The tenth stage to Cali proved the race's slowest, with stage winner Juan Gálvez traversing the mountainous route at an average of just under 62kph.

The Gálvez brothers continued their dominance of the race into the Colombian capital Bogotá, race leader Oscar this time leading Juan through the low-altitude Andes passes.

Following a rest day in Bogotá, crews travelled through the mountains to Cúcuta on the border with Venezuela – Juan Gálvez claiming his fifth stage win.

The penultimate stage crossed the border into Venezuela and onto the town of Valera. Oscar Gálvez claimed his seventh stage win as brother Juan went off the road and into an embankment, but recovered to finish the stage having lost two hours to be 2h25m behind his brother in the overall classification. Salvador Ataguille finished the stage in a surprise second and consolidated his place inside the top 10, but still sat a long way behind third-placed Domingo Marimón – Marimón remained some 5h off the lead.

The final stage into the Venezuelan capital Caracas proved dramatic. Juan Gálvez, undaunted by the seemingly insurmountable margin to his brother, pushed his way to the lead of the stage. At the halfway mark entering San Rafael de Onoto, Gálvez misjudged his speed over a series of speed humps – crashing into a ditch and breaking his differential. Organisers had put up signs to warn the drivers of the speed humps the day before the race, but spectators had removed them. Marimón was next on the scene and blocked the road in order to force his competitors to help. Víctor García, who had nearly withdrawn after his crash into Pasto about a week earlier, avoided the incident zone and drove on to win the stage – and became only the fourth entry to win a stage.

Oscar had helped to retrieve his brother, but put excessive wear on his engine in the process and later broke his crankshaft in the village of Los Guayos just 60 km from the finish. He was pushed to the finish line by a spectator in a Buick, resulting in the disqualification of the race-long leader as he failed to cross the finish line under his own power. Gálvez appealed to none other than Juan Perón to have the decision overturned, but Perón insisted in a telegram that the organisers upheld the regulations. As a result, Domingo Marimón and co-driver Pedro Duhalde – despite having not won a single stage – were crowned the winners, finishing with a time of 118 hours, 37 minutes and 18 seconds. Marimón's team-mate Eusebio Marcilla was classified second just 12 minutes behind, followed by Juan Gálvez in third – who lost 3 hours in his final-day drama to finish half an hour behind Marimón.^[3][4]