This was the introductory picture for a story that Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s historian and statistician Donald Davidson wrote for ROAD & TRACK about the Two World Trophy 500 Mile Races, run in 1957 and 1958 on the new, more steeply banked track with sunken, non-convex banks, rebuilt at Monza, in the Royal Park near Milan.

In the 1958 race, won by Jim Rathmann in the Zink Leader Card Special, Juan Manuel Fangio drove the Dean Van Lines Special that had prevailed in the ’57 event with Jimmy Bryan at the wheel. This time around the car only managed to complete one lap, but it made history in a way not evident at the time, when it became the link that connected the end of one fabulous career with the beginning of another.

Five-time World Champion Fangio, only days before retirement, was in a cockpit that now belonged to a promising 23-year-old newcomer that Dean had recently signed, one Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr.

Years later, asked about A.J. during a barbecue at the Fangio’s old family house in Balcarce, Juan told me “Look at what a great champion he has become. Back then he must have thought of me just as I thought of Tazio Nuvolari when I was the new hot dog, while the great old man looked like in bad need of hanging his goggles for good.”

Original in the collection of Mr. Bill Warner