Mercedes-Benz's withdrawal after 1955 had left the championship to Italian constructors and the emerging British teams. Fangio had driven for Ferrari in 1956; he now returned to Maserati. Scuderia Ferrari fielded Mike Hawthorn alongside Eugenio Castellotti, Peter Collins, and Luigi Musso. Stirling Moss moved from Maserati to Vanwall, joined mid-season by Tony Brooks in his first full season. Gordini withdrew from Formula One entirely after 1956. Three rounds were cancelled before the season began — Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain — due to financial difficulties stemming from the Suez Crisis; the Pescara Grand Prix was added as a replacement.
The season was overshadowed by multiple deaths outside Formula One racing. Ferrari driver Eugenio Castellotti was killed testing a new chassis at Modena Autodrome in March. Alfonso de Portago died along with his co-driver and nine spectators when his tyre blew during the Mille Miglia in May. Herbert MacKay-Fraser made his Grand Prix debut for BRM at the French Grand Prix and was killed in a sports car race at Reims one week later. These losses made 1957 a particularly difficult year for Scuderia Ferrari, who failed to win a single championship race.
Maserati dominated the opening round in Buenos Aires, finishing first through fourth. Fangio won his fourth consecutive Argentine Grand Prix, while Moss damaged his throttle on the opening lap and retired. Castellotti's death in testing in March meant Argentina would be his final Formula One race.
Fangio won at Monaco in a race where Moss crashed early and Collins and Hawthorn both suffered problems. The French Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts saw Fangio lead from mid-race, with Ferrari taking second through fourth behind him in a formation that underscored Maserati's pace advantage.
The British Grand Prix at Aintree became the first World Drivers' Championship race won by a British constructor. Vanwall's Moss and Brooks shared the winning car — Brooks was unwell and handed it to Moss, who had previously stopped with technical trouble — to take a result that opened a new era in British motor racing. From this season onward, British constructors won races in every season until 2013, with the sole exception of 2006.
The German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring produced what is universally regarded as Fangio's masterpiece. Starting from pole, he pitted mid-race in a stop that took over a minute rather than the expected 30 seconds, dropping him nearly a minute behind Collins and Hawthorn. What followed was a pursuit without precedent: Fangio broke the lap record ten times, and on the penultimate lap passed Collins and then Hawthorn to win the race. It sealed his fifth championship. The performance remains the benchmark against which all exceptional drives in Formula One are measured.
At Pescara — a 25.6-kilometre public road circuit, the longest ever used in a World Championship race — Moss dominated, stopping for a drink mid-race while still maintaining his lead, and winning comfortably. Ferrari did not send official entries in protest against the Italian government's moves to ban road racing after the Mille Miglia tragedy. At Monza, Moss, Brooks, and Lewis-Evans gave Vanwall the front three grid positions. Fangio finished a close second to Moss in a slipstreaming battle.
Juan Manuel Fangio won the championship with 40 points (under the best-five-results rule) and announced at the end of the year that he would not return for another season. Stirling Moss finished second with 25 points and Tony Brooks third with 11. Maserati also withdrew at the season's end for financial reasons.
The Nurburgring drive is the defining moment of the season and arguably of Fangio's career. When he rejoined the race after his extended pit stop, both Collins and Hawthorn were within reach; within a handful of laps he had passed them both and was away. His pace at the circuit was so far beyond anything demonstrated before that witnesses struggled to find context for it.
The British Grand Prix result was equally significant: the first championship win for a British constructor, with Vanwall, marked a structural shift in where competitive Formula One machinery would be built for the next two decades.
The 1957 season concluded an era. Fangio retired, Maserati withdrew, and the championship prepared to enter a phase dominated by British constructors with rear-engined cars. The five championships Fangio had accumulated between 1951 and 1957 represented a standard that endured for 46 years. The Nurburgring drive entered motor racing mythology as evidence that a driver of sufficient skill could overcome machinery shortcomings that would have been race-ending for any other competitor.