20 years ago, Agustin Canapino He was a 15-year-old teenager who played in the simulator for hours and begged his father to give him the opportunity to get into a real car. This Sunday, at the age of 35, He won his fifth title in Turismo Carretera and achieved the 17th place of his career in Argentine motorsport. -in six different categories-, a figure with them surpassed Juan Maria Traverso. He didn’t even need the race. After taking the pole position on Saturday – including a record – it was enough for him to win the first series on Sunday at Mouras de La Plata to become the owner of the 2025 edition of the Gold Cup.
Symbol of Chevrolet, a brand that won the first of its 23 TC championships with Juan Manuel Fangio, the driver from Reef also achieved victory in 2025 in his first full season after the adventure of a year and a half in IndyCar Tourism Highway 2000 -he will be his first champion- and has a good chance of being crowned next weekend TC pickupwhere he is six points ahead of Mariano Werner, making him the first driver in history to win three championships in the same calendar year.
After this experience in American motorsport, which ended abruptly and with a confidential agreement between the parties in August 2024, Canapino was received by Canning Motorsports for the TC race at the Autódromo Juan y Oscar Gálvez. Less than two months later, at the same circuit in Buenos Aires, but as a guest at the 200 kilometers of the TC2000, he won his first race – directly aboard the last car built by his father – and could not avoid tears. However, he returned very late and there was no longer any chance of fighting for a title..
The same thing didn’t happen this year when he decided to run in four categorieswhich also forced him to share the weekend with two different championships (Road Tourism 2000 and National Tourism), a tiring experience that he has already warned that he will not repeat since he will complete TC, TC Pick Up and TN in 2026. Nevertheless, he reached the home straight as the leader in the three and was already champion in the one. In the TC the difference was so disastrous – he won five of 13 races held, four of them in a row, which happened only four times and the last in 1990 – that three weeks ago in Toay he had a mathematical chance of being crowned, which was finally decided in La Plata.
“In the United States I didn’t have a good time and I suffered in many ways. It’s a way for me to live again, it means reinventing myself in that sense, and it fills me with hope and joy.”said the man who won his first title as a child back then in La Pampa.
It was in the Megane Cup, which he joined in 2005 at the age of 15 and which he left as champion at 17. The boy who started without subordinates – he did not drive karts because that period of his life coincided with the 2001 crisis – and left Arrecifes at 18 to live in a studio apartment in Castelar, closer to his father Alberto’s workshop in Morón, later became the youngest champion in the history of Tourism Highway. 20 years old. “I remember the happiest day of my life”he told Clarín in 2017.
Especially in this interview after his second TC title, the question inevitably arose whether he had caught up with Fangio and that he was four stars away from Flaco Traverso, a record that he finally surpassed in Mouras. “I don’t even take it into account because these names come from another planet; it even seems disrespectful to me that they call me that.”he had assured at the time.
However, his name cannot be separated from the most important in the history of motorsport, such as that of his father, coach Alberto Canapino, who not only held this role but also his “idol” and his “teacher”, so his unexpected death from coronavirus in 2021 was a big blow for him. In fact, at the end of the year and nine months after losing his father, he was Super TC2000 champion. “Today I really regret not being able to celebrate with him. But I feel like he accompanied me a lot and I remembered him in all the laps, especially when it started to rain very heavily because then the race became more difficult.”he expressed after getting out of the Chevrolet Cruze in Gálvez and kissing the exact spot on the trunk where Alberto’s signature was affixed.
Four years later, in Mouras, He achieved his fifth title in the TC. Without even running the race… And although the 2017 photo of this hug, framed so that he can look at it every day, has not been repeated, Agustín Canapino will be able to print a new one to remind himself that great sadness is not eternal and that life always offers opportunities to be happy again.
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