THE TARGA FLORIO
G'day folks,
It was the kind of race
where if a car broke down, the driver would have been invited inside
by locals for spaghetti. The track, littered with horseshoe nails,
meandered through the tiny twisting streets of quaint Sicilian mountain towns
while villagers watched Ferraris speed by at 100 miles an hour, perilously
close to their doorsteps.
The Targo Florio embodied la Dolce Vita and brought
international recognition to Sicily for seven decades, but it was its own
dangerous beauty that would ultimately lead to its demise.
Founded in 1906, it was one of Europe’s most important
and popular races when the Grand Prix tournaments that would succeed it
were still just isolated events, not a series like today’s Formula 1.
A 21 year-old Enzo Ferrari drove his first race in 1919 on
the Targa track, and in 1924, Mercedes selected one of their young
engineers to compete in a car he had designed himself. The driver,
who won the race that year, was Ferdinand Porsche.
The Targa Florio track was the most difficult in the
world and unlike any other driving experience. The original Grande 148 km
circuit was a single lap of 2,000 corners, most within the ancient crumbling
Sicilian villages.
Drivers needed at least 60 laps to learn the course and
practice days were held in public traffic with local cars going about
their daily business, livestock by the roadside and children playing in the
street.
Every year on race days, which were treated like a national
holiday, villagers gathered in the streets, set up their furniture
on the sidewalks or even on the roads, played cards and drank
Martini, waiting to cheer on the racers as they whizzed by.
Nino Vaccarella, a native Sicilian from Palermo was their
favourite driver, who rode in the most powerful car ever to participate in the
race– a Ferrari, naturally. In 1962, he was about to win the race when he
slowed his car to wave to fans and drove into a wall. His name can still be
found written in graffiti along the lost Targa tracks.
Graham Hill
Industry experts called the race that regularly chewed up
now-priceless sports cars, “totally insane”– and it’s a miracle there
were only nine fatalities in the event’s 71 year history. The race had a
particularly bad year in 1973 with two fatal accidents and several
disastrously close calls which caused the event to fall out of favour with
the international racing community. The automative governing body began
demanding all official international circuits have mandatory safety
walls, but for Targa’s 44-mile track of combined public roads and tiny
Sicilian streets, it was an impossible demand.
When a driver crashed into the crowd at 100 mph in 1977,
killing two and putting himself into a coma, it was the final nail in the
coffin for Targa. Police forcibly stopped the race on the 4th lap and no car
would ever see the Targa Florio finish line again.
Clancy's comment: Ah, those were the days. By the way, Graham Hill, four times world champion, drove in this race. He first drove a car at 25 years-of-age - from one side of London to the other.
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