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Fangio's body to be exhumed for test

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Five-time F1 world champion Juan Manuel Fangio's body is to be exhumed for a paternity test.

An Argentinian judge has ordered for the test to see if Fangio is the father of Oscar Espinoza. Espinoza is the son of Andrea Berruet, who was Fangio's partner for two decades. Fangio never married and was not known to have had children. He died on July 17, 1995, at the age of 84.

Fangio's body is buried in his hometown of Balcarce in Argentina, but will be exhumed on August 7 and a DNA sample taken from his remains following Espinoza's claim that he is the son of the F1 legend.

Fangio won world championships in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1957 driving for Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes and Ferrari during a career which saw him take 24 grand prix victories from 52 races.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.