At the end of May, I was in Italy following the Mille Miglia Retrospective. There was a time when I thought it was just a jolly, but now I think that the organizers have it right. The real Mille Miglia was more of a festival than a serious race.
It started as a serious race, as a way of clawing back for the city of Brescia the status it had lost when Monza opened in 1922. A single lap of Italy at a time when most roads, particularly in the mountains, were an unmetalled, serious challenge. Le Mans had, from its inception, run to more than 1000 miles, but a driver was never more than five miles from his pit. The early Mille Miglias could be a trip to the very edge of endurance.
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