Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Mille Miglia Part II: Lancia’s Rise, Ferrari’s Fire, and the Legacy of Legends

Transcript

Mille Miglia Part II: Lancia’s Rise, Ferrari’s Fire, and the Legacy of Legends · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  As part of Ferrari Fridays, William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace
• 0:04
  will be discussing all things Ferrari and interviewing people that live
• 0:07
  and breathe the Ferrari brand.
• 0:09
  Topics range from road cars to racing, drivers to owners, as well
• 0:13
  as auctions, private sales, and trends in the collector market.
• 0:37
  Welcome back to the Ferrari Marketplace podcast.
• 0:40
  We are back again for part two.
• 0:43
  Of our story of the millimillia, we have crew chief Eric on as our moderator and
• 0:48
  pundit that just, you know, likes to pipe in and ask some good questions.
• 0:51
  And we got Jonathan Summers, the motoring historian, is also
• 0:55
  participating again to wrap this thing up, take us home in the last 4 years.
• 0:59
  If you all remember, we ended up at around 1953, and we thought that was
• 1:03
  a good break point because as you get into 54, 55, 56 and 57, there's some
• 1:09
  big jumps in regards to horsepower.
• 1:12
  The cars that are utilized and just the times, everything like that.
• 1:14
  So it was a nice break point.
• 1:16
  So we're going to cover the last four years and John's also going to touch base.
• 1:19
  And we'll discuss a little bit at the end there regarding what they're doing
• 1:22
  now with it and how they brought it back.
• 1:24
  Not so much as a race, but you know what they're doing with it now.
• 1:26
  So we'll kind of talk about that a little bit at the end as well.
• 1:29
  But gentlemen, welcome back.
• 1:31
  We got part two going on here.
• 1:34
  Picture it, Brescia, 1954.
• 1:36
  What is going on?
• 1:37
  Yes.
• 1:38
  Well, Lancia are in the house, aren't they?
• 1:41
  This was the year of Lancia, or Lancia is the correct pronunciation, isn't it?
• 1:46
  Well, I was struggling with the Italian pronunciation before.
• 1:49
  The other thing, I misspoke last time.
• 1:51
  I said that Lancia himself was gone.
• 1:53
  Of course, the father, Vincenzo Lancia, the racing driver from the beginning of
• 1:59
  the 1900s for FIA, that guy was gone.
• 2:02
  But his son, Gianni Lancia.
• 2:05
  Was driving this project, this return to motorsport for Lancia as a mark, you
• 2:12
  know, from the reading that I've done, Lancia were, were the team to beat in
• 2:16
  1956 and quite interesting though, they were focused on formula one, the formula
• 2:21
  one car was taking a long time coming.
• 2:23
  They had the mechanical parts, so they felt like, you know, what.
• 2:26
  We can put together a sports car team and the sports car team they put
• 2:30
  together, the cars that they built were maybe not, maybe similar in power
• 2:35
  to the Ferrari, maybe a little to the Ferraris of the period, maybe a
• 2:38
  little less dependent on the model.
• 2:40
  But my sense is that the Lancias went around corners better.
• 2:43
  So, so the Formula One car was, I think, D20, was it the sports car that
• 2:48
  participated in them all was the D24 and the car was sufficiently good.
• 2:53
  You know, the, the best drivers went to them and 54 was won by Alberto Ascari.
• 2:58
  And that would be like Verstappen winning the cannonball nowadays.
• 3:02
  I think that's the right way to think about it in the Ascari was
• 3:06
  formerly a one world champion in, in.
• 3:08
  52 and 53, I think those two years, but back to back for Ferrari.
• 3:15
  And there was a period there where he won nine Grand Prix in a row, which
• 3:20
  doesn't seem that much in comparison to Verstappen, but in era when there
• 3:24
  were only six Grand Prix in a year.
• 3:27
  It meant that Ascari was unbeaten in Formula One for 18 months, so it's
• 3:32
  this period that he makes the move from Ferrari to Lancia and does an
• 3:37
  event that he never really enjoyed very much, never really wanted to do,
• 3:41
  the Mille Miglia, and wins for Lancia.
• 3:43
  What year did Lancia give all those D50s to Ferrari when they got an F1?
• 3:48
  What year was that?
• 3:48
  Right after Ascari was killed.
• 3:50
  Okay.
• 3:51
  It's the spring of 55 and Ascari crashes the Lancia into the harbour at Monaco.
• 3:57
  In the Grand Prix, and then is at Monza the following week.
• 4:01
  And William, you probably know this story.
• 4:03
  He's at Monza the following week.
• 4:04
  He's a deeply superstitious guy, Iskari.
• 4:07
  Literally, if a black cat crossed the road, he would go and drive another way.
• 4:11
  He wouldn't drive where the black cat crossed in front of him.
• 4:14
  Literally, the guy was that superstitious.
• 4:17
  He's at the track.
• 4:18
  Castellotti or Villaresi or somebody was there testing a Ferrari sports car.
• 4:24
  And Ascari says, can I take a couple of laps?
• 4:27
  Oh, the other thing is he didn't have his lucky helmet.
• 4:29
  He went out and drove without his lucky helmet.
• 4:31
  Yeah, he borrowed.
• 4:32
  I can't remember off the top of my head.
• 4:33
  He borrowed one of the other driver's helmets that was there.
• 4:35
  I think it was Castellotti.
• 4:37
  I'm not sure, but I think it was.
• 4:39
  Yeah, he borrowed his helmet.
• 4:40
  Yeah, because he didn't have his thing.
• 4:42
  And I was thinking people are a little bit surprised that he did it
• 4:44
  because how superstitious he was.
• 4:46
  And I was like, this is kind of odd, you know, for him, and went
• 4:49
  out and did it, and that's that.
• 4:51
  And rolls the car at the bend, you know, now it's a right, left, right, isn't it?
• 4:56
  In those days, it was just a left hand kink, which if you think about it, was
• 4:59
  one of the most challenging corners, probably the most challenging corner
• 5:03
  at Monza, and he rolled the car there.
• 5:05
  Yeah, this speaks to this whole thing of, you know, we see roll bars,
• 5:09
  disfiguring historic race cars now, and it can be quite hard to see.
• 5:13
  I always feel like the Cobra is the only car that, you know, the little
• 5:15
  roll bar actually suits most cars.
• 5:17
  Terrible with the roll bar, but really when, when you think about it, the amount
• 5:20
  of drivers that we lost, especially in midget racing in the States, but
• 5:25
  really in open, we're in, you know, in Formula One, the amount of drivers
• 5:28
  we lost, Vazzi, we talked about last time, you know, it's a bang on the head.
• 5:31
  The guy would have been fine had he had a proper helmet, and he
• 5:35
  certainly would have been fine had he had a helmet and a roll cage.
• 5:38
  But yeah, that was the loss of Ascari.
• 5:40
  That was, uh, spring 55, but you get the impression that it's this grand,
• 5:44
  passionate gesture that with Ascari gone, we're going to throw up our hands and
• 5:48
  we're not going to participate anymore.
• 5:50
  My understanding is that they were short money as well, that the effort to develop.
• 5:55
  The D 24 and the D 50, uh, completely, you know, spoiled them financially.
• 6:00
  Not only that, they were also investing heavily in rally at the same time.
• 6:05
  So to run two different major disciplines of motor sport, that's gotta be cost
• 6:10
  ineffective for them at that time.
• 6:12
  So they had to make a decision.
• 6:13
  So without a talented driver, like Ascari in the ranks, you go to the
• 6:17
  other discipline of motor sport, where maybe lesser known, but it's
• 6:20
  more affordable to run long term.
• 6:22
  Yeah.
• 6:22
  I mean, they reckon that Aurelia, wasn't it?
• 6:25
  The B24, that was considered the finest road car of the period.
• 6:30
  All the Formula One drivers wanted one in 53.
• 6:34
  You know, my own personal connection, you know, Mike Hawthorne, I grew
• 6:38
  up near where Mike Hawthorne lived.
• 6:40
  I have a lot of personal associations with Mike Hawthorne, you know, Hawthorne's dad.
• 6:45
  Ran a garage named after the Isle of Man TT because he loved
• 6:48
  motorcycles, but he sold Lancia.
• 6:50
  We sold Lancias and then Jaguars, but he was a committed Lancia guy.
• 6:54
  Absolutely loved Lancia.
• 6:56
  Did Leslie Hawthorne, but we've digressed here somewhat, haven't we?
• 6:59
  So for the Mille Miglia in 54.
• 7:03
  Ascari is in one of the lancers, but Ferrari is still able to
• 7:08
  field a pretty strong team of what, William, Ferrari 375 pluses?
• 7:13
  Was that what they were running then, or was it still 340s?
• 7:17
  They had 24 cars, 24 Ferraris that registered.
• 7:21
  Three or four did not even start, and then obviously had a large portion of
• 7:26
  retired, but you had the 500 Mondial.
• 7:28
  You had a 250 MM, you had 375 also in there, not many of them, MM and a
• 7:34
  plus, 212 export, 16 MM tried and true at 212 inter, 340 America, 250 Monza.
• 7:42
  So, I mean, it was kind of a, again, a scattering.
• 7:45
  Of different models that Ferrari had produced.
• 7:49
  Wasn't the Mondial a four cylinder?
• 7:51
  Wasn't that car that RM had?
• 7:53
  Just this, that was like the twisted up wreck.
• 7:56
  And they were like, literally, it was a, it was a twisted up tin can.
• 8:00
  And they were estimating 1.
• 8:02
  2 million.
• 8:03
  And you rolled your eyes.
• 8:04
  And then it made like 1.
• 8:05
  9 or something.
• 8:06
  Wasn't that a Mondial?
• 8:07
  Yes, it was.
• 8:08
  Yeah.
• 8:08
  And well, not only twisted up, it was burnt.
• 8:11
  It was in the fire.
• 8:12
  That's where people are kind of rolling their eyes and, you know, people just
• 8:15
  couldn't get it, you know, understand it.
• 8:17
  But when you start breaking down, and again, it's going to be how someone
• 8:20
  views it, because is it the actual car?
• 8:23
  Hey, they take the chassis plate off it, put it on a whole new car,
• 8:26
  which you're going to have to do.
• 8:27
  I mean, and maybe they'll save a couple pieces off that chassis just
• 8:30
  for originality reason to say it.
• 8:33
  But whatever they make out of that's going to be completely brand new car,
• 8:36
  but you know, they try to justify it, say, well, here's what one
• 8:38
  complete restoring goes for what now?
• 8:40
  It's like, well, because if memory serves me, I mean, they have the engine and
• 8:43
  transmission for it to to put in there.
• 8:45
  Oh, I didn't know that they can put it all back together.
• 8:48
  But.
• 8:49
  Is it really the car?
• 8:51
  Oh, I think so.
• 8:52
  I thought there was nothing.
• 8:53
  I didn't realize there was the engine and transmission.
• 8:56
  I think if there's the engine and transmission, I think the
• 8:59
  bodywork, that's just the dress on the beautiful woman, isn't it?
• 9:02
  That's what Ferrari used to say.
• 9:03
  He was all about the engine.
• 9:05
  If you've got the engine, then that's the real thing.
• 9:07
  I was going to say about the whole car.
• 9:09
  You see, I feel like it would be like a continuation Cobra.
• 9:13
  The great thing with a continuation Cobra is it's just like the real
• 9:17
  thing, but you can go out and drive it just like they did in period.
• 9:21
  And if you wrap it around a lamppost, well, that's a sad day, but we've
• 9:26
  not thrown away a piece of history.
• 9:27
  Whereas were that Ferrari Mondial.
• 9:30
  As it had raced in the Mille Miglia.
• 9:32
  You could never do that.
• 9:33
  It would be destruction of a work of art.
• 9:35
  But if it's something which has just been knocked up in a workshop
• 9:37
  10 minutes ago, that's exactly the same as the original was.
• 9:41
  Well, that's awesome.
• 9:42
  You can go to Goodwood and you can cosplay that you are one of the Marzotto brothers.
• 9:48
  I mean, it's the best thing in the world.
• 9:49
  Oh yeah.
• 9:50
  I said, there's an ask for every seat.
• 9:52
  So it just depends on what someone wants to do.
• 9:54
  Yeah.
• 9:54
  I mean, it opens a ton of doors for someone.
• 9:58
  Getting into events and everything.
• 9:59
  And again, I don't know if it's, someone's going to get it at a value price
• 10:03
  compared to like a real original one.
• 10:05
  I say never wreck cause they all pretty much have been wrecked at some
• 10:08
  point to what extent, but you know, it'd be interesting to see in three,
• 10:12
  four years when the car is done.
• 10:14
  I mean, that's gotta be a minimum, if not maybe five years for them to restore that
• 10:18
  car, unless someone just goes whole hog.
• 10:20
  Now you're talking basically building a whole new chassis, all new metal work.
• 10:24
  And then you got everything else.
• 10:26
  I mean, you have your engine and trans you dropped in, but then
• 10:28
  you have everything else and it's.
• 10:29
  And it's not like you can buy, find NOS parts to put on that thing to what extent,
• 10:33
  I don't know, it'll be interesting to see where they get that thing done because
• 10:36
  it's going to make a splash because everyone's going to know where that car
• 10:39
  came from and what they started with.
• 10:41
  So it's going to be interesting to see and some people are going
• 10:43
  to knock it and say, no, I think Joe, it's not even a real thing.
• 10:46
  Everyone say, well, no, it's got the chassis plate.
• 10:49
  Hey, all race cars were wrecked back in the day.
• 10:51
  And you know, how many cars actually out there still have
• 10:53
  their original chassis, blah, blah.
• 10:55
  And there was, um, like a big argument and court thing on that 935, uh,
• 11:00
  was the Kramer Porsche ever was, uh, about which one was the real lungs.
• 11:04
  They both had the same thing and, you know, went to the
• 11:06
  courts and everything about it.
• 11:07
  You know, so you have a lot of that.
• 11:08
  And it's unfortunate, but some people play that game.
• 11:12
  Well, we should touch on this, shouldn't we?
• 11:14
  Because isn't the one Ferrari chassis number that there are three iterations of?
• 11:20
  Yeah.
• 11:20
  But for people who don't understand this, it's really hard to believe.
• 11:23
  But fundamentally, I think what happened was the car crashed, was wrecked.
• 11:28
  Then.
• 11:29
  It was broken up, and one person had the engine and one person had the body,
• 11:34
  and then when old Ferraris became multi billion dollar cars, both people built
• 11:38
  a complete car, replica, original, whatever you want to say, built
• 11:42
  another car around the bits that they had, but for there to be three, there
• 11:47
  had to be some additional knowledge.
• 11:49
  Wrinkle in that.
• 11:51
  Do you know what that wrinkle is?
• 11:52
  Will you?
• 11:54
  This might be similar to what happened to James Dean's 550 Spider and we had
• 11:58
  Lee Raskin on a couple seasons back who's the world's expert on all those
• 12:02
  cars and the way they did it in that case was Part of the chassis supposedly
• 12:07
  went on this national road show for the highway safety commission, but that
• 12:11
  was the body and the engine got sold to somebody and that has its number.
• 12:14
  And then the transaxle had a matching number.
• 12:17
  And so the car got sort of split up in three ways and there's rumor where his
• 12:20
  engine ended up where the transaxle.
• 12:22
  was found under some guy's porch and all these kinds of things.
• 12:25
  So it's not unbelievable that this would have happened to a Ferrari as well.
• 12:29
  And again, goes back to what Trevor Lister was talking about in the
• 12:32
  episode that aired earlier this week about how these numbers don't match.
• 12:37
  And we should really rely on the engine number more than anything
• 12:40
  else at the end of the day.
• 12:41
  Yeah, in my opinion, I agree that's your beating heart of the vehicle, you
• 12:46
  know, and that's why some manufacturers, especially back in the day is that was
• 12:50
  their definitive, which car was, which was by the engine and transmission.
• 12:54
  It wasn't, it had nothing to do with the chassis number.
• 12:56
  It was like an afterthought, but their reasoning was no, Hey, whatever that
• 13:00
  engine did, that's your, that's the car back then because accidents, whatnot,
• 13:03
  and things getting rebuilt, obviously, because the price of these things,
• 13:06
  there's a lot of shady people out there that, you know, are going to do whatever
• 13:09
  they can either a Somehow, some way they got their hands on a chassis plate
• 13:13
  number, or they, um, you know, have one reproduced or something like that.
• 13:17
  And especially this day and age, you know, you can really fake something really
• 13:20
  good in regards to patina and whatnot.
• 13:22
  You know, you're always going to have an argument with someone, you know,
• 13:25
  the person that owns owns it is always going to say, no, mine's the real one.
• 13:29
  The other person owns it's going to say theirs is the real one.
• 13:31
  If it turns out that you don't have the real one, unfortunately, because
• 13:35
  you're gonna take a hit financially.
• 13:36
  But, you know, you could bring in five different experts, get
• 13:39
  five different That's really what it's about though, isn't it?
• 13:42
  It's really about money.
• 13:43
  It's really that people only built all these cars up when
• 13:47
  they were worth lots of money.
• 13:48
  Yeah.
• 13:49
  And now the argument is, is that mine's the real one
• 13:52
  because it's not got the engine.
• 13:53
  And you're saying, no, no, mine's the real one because it's got the chassis.
• 13:57
  And then the bloke that had the paperwork all along and had one wheel left.
• 14:01
  Cause when his grandfather sold the car, he didn't give the title.
• 14:04
  He like lost the title or something.
• 14:05
  Cause that's the kind of thing that happens, isn't it?
• 14:08
  With it.
• 14:08
  That's how it evolves.
• 14:10
  Oh yeah.
• 14:10
  There's a whole world of fakes.
• 14:13
  There's a factory in Russia somewhere, which is making fake.
• 14:17
  Mercedes 300 SLs that are being passed off as real.
• 14:21
  That was something somebody told me.
• 14:23
  Uh, that was like a whisperings on the lawn at Pebble conversation
• 14:27
  I had a couple of years ago now.
• 14:28
  I don't know if that's still going on, but a couple of those
• 14:31
  cars had come onto the market.
• 14:32
  And whilst we're on the theme of these sort of, is it fake?
• 14:35
  Is it real?
• 14:36
  Are you guys aware of, is it Pura Sang?
• 14:40
  Yeah.
• 14:40
  Workshop in Argentina who will make you a replica.
• 14:44
  They've done like Tassio Nuvolari, Achille Vazzi, Zagato body style, Alfa Romeo
• 14:51
  1750s and 2300s and that kind of stuff.
• 14:54
  They're famous for Bugatti Type 21s.
• 14:57
  They'll also build you an Alfa 8C if you really want it.
• 15:00
  I've seen them with the Alfa.
• 15:02
  They just started doing Bentleys too.
• 15:04
  Bentley blowers.
• 15:05
  You know, you have a lot of these companies out there and, and I
• 15:08
  think Pursang, Pursang, however you pronounce it, P U R S A N G.
• 15:12
  You know, they've been at it for a while.
• 15:13
  You know, they were building replicas, but I think they really kind of made
• 15:15
  their stamp in the world in regards to they started doing the Bugattis.
• 15:18
  And they're not cheap.
• 15:19
  It's not like you're talking 89 grand.
• 15:20
  I mean, these are half a million, if not more.
• 15:23
  And they're supposedly tool room copies in essence.
• 15:26
  Of what, you know, the originals were.
• 15:28
  So I mean, basically as close as you can get, and I believe the FIA has
• 15:32
  finally kind of, I want to say caved in or basically said, well, yeah, you can
• 15:36
  get FIA historical papers for these, you know, and run them because obviously
• 15:40
  the value of real ones is so high.
• 15:42
  People won't bring them out and run them on a track.
• 15:45
  People want to see these cars.
• 15:46
  So they're kind of like, all right, well, let's just give them the papers
• 15:49
  and do it and be able to run it.
• 15:51
  It's kind of like there was a proliferation of these companies doing it.
• 15:54
  But then all of a sudden you had a lot of these manufacturers all of
• 15:57
  a sudden pushing back in regards to trademark and all that kind of stuff
• 16:00
  in regards to what they were making.
• 16:01
  Because it can knock on what and the value and everything like that.
• 16:04
  You know, think of Ferris Bueller's Ferrari.
• 16:06
  You know, that thing's actually in recent years, that thing's been jumped
• 16:09
  around a few times regards to sale wise.
• 16:11
  Me personally, I don't put any value with something that's
• 16:14
  got like a movie problem on it.
• 16:15
  So that I could give two shits if it's been in a movie or not.
• 16:19
  Only person I think I put any kind of, I guess, weight to it in regards
• 16:22
  to Bao is maybe Steve McQueen, but not as much as people do.
• 16:25
  I mean, I think it's obscene what some people play just because they say, Oh,
• 16:27
  Steve McQueen owned it four owners ago.
• 16:30
  Didn't know he wasn't the last owner.
• 16:31
  That 911S that he has at the beginning of Le Mans is more interesting than
• 16:35
  the 917 that he drove in the movie.
• 16:37
  Yeah, exactly.
• 16:38
  You know, stuff like that.
• 16:39
  So, um, it's kind of an interesting world getting into in regards to historicals.
• 16:43
  You have it where people, these owners, don't want to bring those cars out and
• 16:46
  run them on a track with anyone else.
• 16:48
  They might do it by themselves and do a solo run around or something
• 16:50
  like that, but they're not going to race in any of the historical
• 16:52
  races just because of value.
• 16:53
  So I think the FIA is kind of caving in regards to authenticity
• 16:57
  and saying, Look, we get it.
• 16:58
  But there are museums out there that do exercise their vehicles.
• 17:02
  Two of them come to mind.
• 17:03
  One of them is the REVS Institute in Florida, and the other is the
• 17:06
  Simeone Foundation in Philadelphia, where they will take these one of
• 17:09
  a kind, basically priceless race cars, And exercise them on track or
• 17:14
  in their parking lots or whatever.
• 17:16
  Have you?
• 17:16
  Yes, exactly.
• 17:17
  Well, Sydney does it once a month, isn't it?
• 17:19
  Like every, the third Saturday or something of the month.
• 17:22
  So anyone, Hey, if you're in that area, go check it out.
• 17:24
  Look it up.
• 17:25
  Awesome museum, the collection, unfortunately, Dr.
• 17:28
  Samuel passed away recently.
• 17:29
  All those cars in there are just, you can almost say priceless because all of them.
• 17:34
  Or a winning car from a race, either Lamar, Daytona or something.
• 17:38
  So they all, they were a winning car.
• 17:39
  That was kind of his prerequisite.
• 17:41
  So he's got some spectacular machinery down there and I
• 17:43
  highly recommend if you're ever down in Florida over by Naples.
• 17:47
  Go to the Rebs Institute.
• 17:48
  It's a phenomenal museum.
• 17:50
  The people are super nice.
• 17:52
  It's a great place to go and spend three, four hours.
• 17:55
  The docents there that walk you around, know this stuff left and right.
• 17:58
  They're super nice and they take you around and answer any questions you got.
• 18:00
  So I highly recommend the Rebs Institute as well.
• 18:03
  You know, they do a phenomenal job.
• 18:04
  Not people, I would say, aware of it, but I don't think they
• 18:07
  know, hey, it's actually a museum.
• 18:08
  You can go there and check things out and, and see what they got going on.
• 18:11
  But, you know, I definitely highly recommend.
• 18:13
  Both of those, if you're ever in those areas, definitely hit those up.
• 18:15
  So now we're going to get back to where we're supposed to be at in the middle.
• 18:18
  Amelia.
• 18:19
  So 1954, there's a lot of things going on in the world of motorsport.
• 18:24
  And we just talked about a scary death and there's some other
• 18:27
  tragic deaths in that year.
• 18:28
  But what's interesting about that is you mentioned where he wrecked in Monaco.
• 18:33
  This.
• 18:34
  repeats itself with Bandini in the exact same spot a couple of years later.
• 18:39
  And we can unpack that on a totally different episode.
• 18:42
  But I want to go back to something, John, you talked about in the first part of
• 18:46
  this discussion, which was Biondetti.
• 18:48
  He was 56 years old.
• 18:50
  He's pretty sick.
• 18:50
  He only has a couple months to live.
• 18:52
  1954, Mille Miglia was his last race.
• 18:56
  And in not that fast a car.
• 18:58
  He finishes fourth, and I reread the Mike Lawrence account from the Brooklyn's
• 19:03
  book that we talked about before.
• 19:05
  He says that he thinks that had he not already been dying of throat
• 19:09
  cancer, he probably would have performed much better than he did.
• 19:12
  He could have even won really a remarkable drive and remarkable performance.
• 19:16
  So is there anything else that we should highlight from 54 going into 55, or do
• 19:21
  we just jump into the next year when Mercedes shows up to shake the tree?
• 19:25
  You were right to highlight B and DE's fourth.
• 19:28
  The other thing that, that we should talk about is that the fact that, so
• 19:32
  there are four Marto brothers and at different points all compete and feature
• 19:37
  significantly in in the Milli milia.
• 19:40
  Of course, Giannino wins twice.
• 19:43
  Is it Vittorio?
• 19:44
  I'm not sure that the V Marzotto finishes second in 1954.
• 19:50
  I think in one of the earlier years we talked about Paolo was super competitive
• 19:54
  from one of the lower classes.
• 19:56
  I want to say had a race, really close race, one year with, with
• 19:59
  Musso, who we know who went on to be a Ferrari Formula One driver.
• 20:04
  So yeah, so, so we should highlight the contribution of these four super
• 20:07
  wealthy brothers, all of whom compete in a meaningful way in the Mille Miglia
• 20:13
  at different points in these last 10 years of its, of the Mille Miglia's
• 20:17
  run as a proper competitive event.
• 20:19
  I guess the other thing to say about 54 is the, is the passing of Tazio Nuvolari.
• 20:24
  And because Nuvolari's died in the last year, and because everyone in
• 20:28
  Italian motorsport has such enormous reverence for him, the route is changed
• 20:33
  to pass through his hometown, Mantua.
• 20:36
  And this gives rise to, and they also do a special little prize.
• 20:41
  So the run from Cremona, where they made Stradivarius violins
• 20:45
  to Mantua, and then on to Russia.
• 20:48
  There's a special prize for this bit at the end.
• 20:51
  I know that bit of the course quite well.
• 20:54
  Many years ago, 2004, I rented and rode and a pre or RSV millet.
• 21:02
  I rented it in Milan and I did the Futa and the Raticosa.
• 21:05
  And I also did this, like, Novellari Grand Prix bit.
• 21:09
  I visited the Novellari Museum in Mantua.
• 21:12
  It's really worth doing if you're there.
• 21:14
  It's a nice part of the world.
• 21:15
  But those final sections, it's super, super fast.
• 21:19
  And the countryside is very, very flat.
• 21:21
  And I was passed by another guy riding an RSV Millet and he did the Follow Me.
• 21:29
  And I really did a brain out with him.
• 21:32
  It was like a Sunday evening and it was a two lane road and there
• 21:36
  were cars on both sides, but we did that European thing where you put
• 21:39
  the bike on the white line and then you can weave in between the cars.
• 21:43
  Well, this guy was really good and we ran.
• 21:45
  At Mille Miglia speeds in those moments, I really felt the Mille
• 21:50
  Miglia and the spirit of Nuvolari.
• 21:53
  So since you bring that up, what people may not realize about the importance of
• 21:57
  Nuvolari, and there's not many people left of that generation that would
• 22:00
  have been our age when Nuvolari passed away, but he was the Ayrton Senna.
• 22:05
  of those times.
• 22:06
  He's regarded in that similar way in Italy, a national treasure
• 22:09
  and all those kinds of things.
• 22:10
  So I want to draw that parallel so people understand the
• 22:13
  importance of Nuvolari's passing.
• 22:16
  You know, we, we tend to exist in this world where we say, Oh, who
• 22:19
  is the greatest driver of all time?
• 22:20
  And then we think, how can I compare Mark Marquez with Vincenzo Lancia?
• 22:25
  I mean, the answer is You can't.
• 22:26
  So, so we narrow it down and we talk about the greatest Formula One drivers.
• 22:30
  And then when we do that, it's quite convenient because it means that we can
• 22:33
  forget about all these pre war guys like Rossemeyer and particularly Nuvolari.
• 22:39
  But Nuvolari for his whole style, for the arriving at the corner sideways, for the
• 22:45
  whole, like, when the mechanics taking too long at the German Grand Prix, he leaps
• 22:49
  out of the car and yells at the mechanic.
• 22:51
  It's this pure Italian.
• 22:54
  Passion.
• 22:55
  Nuvolari is the personification of Italian passion.
• 22:58
  He's the personification of the pissed off short guy.
• 23:02
  And we talked a little bit about him last time, but really we can't underscore how
• 23:06
  much the loss of his sons turned him into.
• 23:10
  Somebody who looked for death on the track.
• 23:14
  He did not want to die in bed.
• 23:16
  So when he stepped into that, she's telling 1948, although it was 48
• 23:22
  and 49, 49 was the Ferrari that fell apart and the racing on the
• 23:26
  bag of oranges and lemons and.
• 23:28
  Ferrari weeping 'cause the car's not strong enough.
• 23:31
  Although Naval LAI's heart is big enough, this is NA's special place in all of
• 23:36
  Motorsport, not just Italian motorsports.
• 23:38
  So I would say, and I say this as a Sen fan, I would say bigger than Senna
• 23:42
  because Naval is Ri Vartan and Sena, he's Sebastian Loeb and Michael Schumacher.
• 23:50
  I dunno if you guys have seen it, but anyone out, you guys listening, there's a
• 23:53
  great magazine called Taio has been out.
• 23:56
  I think the guy like.
• 23:56
  12, 13, I mean, fabulous magazine.
• 23:59
  Really nice.
• 23:59
  We had a chance to check it out.
• 24:01
  What Marzotto and being daddy, which was interesting, especially being
• 24:05
  daddy is they both ran solo, they didn't have anyone riding with them.
• 24:08
  No, no mechanic or anything like that.
• 24:10
  No.
• 24:10
  And you have two contrasting cars, Marzotto coming in second, driving
• 24:14
  the Mondial, which is a four cylinder.
• 24:16
  And just for nerds sake, it's chassis.
• 24:18
  Oh, four Oh four MD.
• 24:20
  But then.
• 24:21
  Being Daddy, you know, he's driving a 12 cylinder, 250mm.
• 24:25
  And just for the nerds, 0276mm is the chassis number.
• 24:29
  So my understanding was, though, that V12 made a bit more power, but
• 24:33
  the 4 cylinder was more reliable.
• 24:35
  So the feeling was, Ferrari liked entering both, felt like hedging his bets.
• 24:40
  That was the thing about that horse.
• 24:41
  I mean, I think it's like 170 horsepower in that range like that, but the
• 24:45
  torque, it was like, as someone said, it's like pulled like a tractor.
• 24:48
  But reliability wise, that thing was, you know, I would say bulletproof,
• 24:51
  but it was, you know, obviously you have less moving parts, that kind of
• 24:53
  stuff, but it was very, very reliable.
• 24:55
  So, and that's why he, you know, obviously Enzo always favored the B12,
• 24:58
  but it's like, no, hey, for reliability wise, whatnot, I'm going to also hedge
• 25:01
  bets and put these cars in there.
• 25:03
  And those four cylinders were actually very, very successful
• 25:05
  throughout, you know, the years that they were campaigning them.
• 25:08
  If, if you have a chance, look it up and try and hear, and listen to hear one.
• 25:12
  And it's got a very unique sound in regards to a Ferrari.
• 25:16
  They're a screamer.
• 25:16
  They're great engines.
• 25:17
  And I think they didn't build four cylinders all that long.
• 25:20
  I want to say it was only made for like six or seven years or
• 25:22
  something like that they did them.
• 25:23
  And then again, obviously everything's dictated by regulations for the
• 25:28
  series as they wanted to race in.
• 25:29
  And what was their best bet in regards to?
• 25:32
  But then having the best car, you know, so everything was kind of built
• 25:36
  around that kind of interesting to see those two contrasting things in it.
• 25:39
  Cause you got 12.
• 25:40
  So I was reading about that co driver thing, right?
• 25:43
  Previously they had to have a co driver then later on it became
• 25:48
  superfluous and kind of dangerous.
• 25:51
  So Fangio.
• 25:52
  never has a co driver because he had an accident in one of the South American
• 25:57
  road races he did years ago before the Second World War, and his best
• 26:01
  friend was killed in the accident, and so he never wanted the responsibility
• 26:07
  of driving with anybody else.
• 26:09
  My sense is a scary So I don't, I can't remember exactly which year
• 26:14
  it was, but a rule did come in one year that you no longer had to have
• 26:20
  what they used to call the riding mechanic, or what we might call, you
• 26:23
  know, the co driver or the navigator.
• 26:25
  Now we're just about to talk about 1955 here.
• 26:28
  And it's worth saying that.
• 26:29
  In 1955, Stirling Moss won with Dennis Jenkinson, and the defining factor
• 26:35
  is that Jenkinson is there alongside him, helping him with direction.
• 26:40
  It always kind of made me scratch my head, because you would think that that's
• 26:44
  just something that, you know, would just be common sense, that, oh, we're
• 26:48
  driving this long ass race, thousands of miles, twisting turns and whatnot.
• 26:54
  Why wouldn't you do that for?
• 26:55
  I just, I was amazed that no one else had done it before.
• 26:58
  We were talking about open cars and covered cars and co drivers a moment
• 27:02
  ago from Mike Lawrence, writing in those Brooklyn's books, talking
• 27:05
  about Braco saying that co drivers had largely become superfluous.
• 27:10
  They were only doing things like occasionally helping change a tire or
• 27:15
  in Braco's case, supplying him with brandy and cigarettes if they were
• 27:20
  foolhardy enough to ride alongside him.
• 27:22
  And you know, that's what it speaks to, right?
• 27:24
  Is that it speaks to, in Braco, you have how the sport was and in Moss,
• 27:29
  you have how the sport is going to be.
• 27:31
  How the sport is going to be is professional and planned.
• 27:35
  It's a factory team who've arrived with a T car and a Mercedes 300 SL,
• 27:40
  and you do laps of the course before.
• 27:41
  And when Moss and Jenkinson wrecked a 300 SL by crashing it into the back of
• 27:47
  a farm cart, they went back to Stuttgart expecting Neubauer to yell at them.
• 27:51
  And instead he just gave them another car and said, we're
• 27:54
  really pleased you're not hurt.
• 27:55
  That was how Ben's approached winning the Mille Miglia.
• 27:59
  Now, a word on these pace notes.
• 28:02
  There is a museum in the central coast of California, not far from where I live.
• 28:07
  It's called the Estrella Warbirds Museum and it's mostly planes, but
• 28:11
  then bolted onto it is this sprint car museum, which is one of the best
• 28:15
  collections of sprint cars I've ever seen.
• 28:17
  Within that sprint car museum, in a cabinet is a roller.
• 28:22
  A map of the Carrera Panamericana that was drawn up by Bill Strop and Johnny Mance.
• 28:30
  Really?
• 28:31
  Yeah.
• 28:31
  When Lincoln arrived with a whole bunch of money and was like, let's
• 28:35
  win the Carrera, they went to that old California hot rod at Bill
• 28:39
  Strop and Strop built the Lincolns.
• 28:42
  Strop and Mance developed this system of a roller map.
• 28:46
  Now, one of the other guys on that team was John Fitch.
• 28:49
  John Fitch, an American fighter pilot, was also on the Mercedes team,
• 28:55
  and I believe it was John Fitch, in conversation with Dennis Jenkinson,
• 29:01
  that introduced the idea of the map.
• 29:03
  So Jenkinson is Moss's co driver in 1955 for Mercedes, and he is
• 29:10
  a really interesting character.
• 29:12
  He is small.
• 29:13
  He is English, he has a big bushy beard, he lives in a
• 29:17
  house with no water or heating.
• 29:20
  When he was given a Ford GT40 he waited until Christmas day and then
• 29:24
  he went out and drove it at 160 miles an hour on the public highway
• 29:28
  because nobody else was going to be out on the road on Christmas day and
• 29:32
  he wanted to test the car properly.
• 29:33
  That's Dennis Jenkinson.
• 29:34
  He was world motorcycle champion in the early 50s and I feel
• 29:39
  like he needed to do that.
• 29:41
  Because in the war, he'd been a conscientious objector.
• 29:44
  He didn't believe in the war.
• 29:45
  So in order to escape being branded as a coward, I think he did that
• 29:50
  motorcycle racing afterwards.
• 29:52
  And you can see just what a push against the system kind of a guy he was.
• 29:57
  Most people would, you'd been afraid to sit alongside Sterling Moss as far as.
• 30:01
  Jenkinson was concerned it was the best seat in the house to watch the
• 30:05
  best driver compete in one of the most exciting motor racing events you
• 30:10
  were ever going to participate in.
• 30:12
  So they drove the route, they made what they called the loo
• 30:14
  roll, the toilet roll of this map.
• 30:17
  And it was by being able and, and this is the example I always think about when
• 30:21
  approaching a crest at full speed, 175 miles an hour in the 300 SLR, Moss knew
• 30:29
  that he could just hold the throttle flat because Jenkinson was being like,
• 30:33
  I know it's straight over the crest.
• 30:34
  Everybody else, they're shitting themselves.
• 30:37
  Do I need to lift the throttle?
• 30:38
  Does the road turn left or right over the crest?
• 30:41
  Now, Braco.
• 30:42
  to roofie they knew the road no issue for them but for the foreigners it was
• 30:47
  hard and mercedes benz with the planning and with dsj's map making and then with
• 30:54
  sterling moss's sheer balls out commitment in practice moss said to dsj you know i'll
• 31:00
  probably be a bit afraid i'll probably lift a bit anyway In the race, no chance.
• 31:04
  In the race, it was pedal to the metal over the rises.
• 31:08
  At one point, the car took off and DSJ in the report that he wrote about it
• 31:13
  afterwards from Motorsport, if you've not read it, you need to, it's the be
• 31:17
  all end all piece of motoring journalism.
• 31:19
  Whilst the car is in the air, the two of them meet eyes and then
• 31:22
  the car lands and they carry on.
• 31:24
  This is a 175 miles an hour on a narrow crown piece of.
• 31:28
  Italian road.
• 31:29
  I mean, just stop and think about what that, the implications of
• 31:33
  that do that route, like 10, 12 times, but I know they did it a lot
• 31:38
  to get the notes and everything.
• 31:40
  And now that they do it, not only the notes, but they had their hand
• 31:42
  signals down and do it, but didn't they go do it like 10, 12 times?
• 31:46
  How many times do you think somebody like Tarufi drove from Brescia to No.
• 31:53
  Or Martin at, uh, bologna or Bologna.
• 31:56
  The Italians drove the route all the time.
• 31:59
  Yeah, all the time.
• 32:00
  The, the only way you were gonna be able to commit was by having a driver who
• 32:05
  was ready to be as brain out as moss.
• 32:08
  And remember right in the early parts of Ds J's report it's called With
• 32:13
  moss at the mil, mil otti passes.
• 32:16
  Moss early on and on the approach to Florence Moss slides the
• 32:21
  car, hits some hay bales and damages the front of the car.
• 32:24
  So Moss is trying like Duke's a hazard hard and Castellotti passes him and DSJ
• 32:30
  talks about Castellotti using all the roads like being up on the sidewalks.
• 32:34
  And this is what I really want to fix in people's minds is that when you
• 32:37
  look at the film on TV, it's always in town and the cars have always slowed
• 32:42
  down and it's the control, or it's like a left, right zigzag in town
• 32:46
  where loads of people have stopped.
• 32:48
  And that's where the camera is.
• 32:49
  Cause there might be action there.
• 32:51
  If you watch that shell movie of the 1953 film, there's a couple of clips
• 32:55
  where the camera car is out on the road and you can see the Lancey is
• 32:59
  passing at like 150 miles an hour.
• 33:02
  That's the real millimillia.
• 33:03
  That's the sense of speed.
• 33:05
  And that speed combined with the wildness of Castellotti, this is why
• 33:09
  the attrition rate was so enormous.
• 33:11
  I mean, it's just the whole event just boggles the mind with the speed
• 33:16
  and the danger and the way that particularly the Italians drove.
• 33:20
  Wrapped up inside of your enthusiasm for 1955, John, is something that
• 33:24
  William alluded to several times, is the technological jumps that were happening
• 33:30
  From 53 to 54 to 55 to 56 and so on.
• 33:33
  And it's very, very clear, especially between 54 and 55 hop speeds.
• 33:39
  You're adding at least 25 mile an hour.
• 33:42
  The horsepower is going up and the average speed of the race jumps significantly
• 33:47
  from 87 miles an hour to almost a hundred miles an hour on average.
• 33:51
  That is huge because it was dry.
• 33:54
  It was dry.
• 33:54
  So Moss has this clear run.
• 33:56
  I think on this performance thing, I think the cars gained
• 34:00
  about five miles an hour a year.
• 34:03
  If you think from 47 to 57, if you say five miles an hour a year over
• 34:08
  that decade, that's 50 miles an hour.
• 34:10
  And that seems about realistic that would lift us from 130 or 140.
• 34:16
  to 180 or 190.
• 34:19
  I think there's an incremental increase here.
• 34:21
  I think that Moss's speed was due to it being completely dry.
• 34:26
  It was fairly dry Ascari's year.
• 34:29
  56 and 57 it was wet for a lot of the event.
• 34:33
  56 it rained.
• 34:35
  Absolutely throughout.
• 34:37
  Yeah, I should just say as well.
• 34:38
  The other thing that I think is interesting about Dennis Jenkinson's
• 34:41
  account from a Ferrari perspective is, is that Castellotti's Ferrari had the legs
• 34:47
  on the Mercedes out of the towns, but once the cars were up to cruising speed,
• 34:52
  the Mercedes could hold the Ferrari.
• 34:54
  So what that speaks to for me is that Mercedes had really focused on
• 34:58
  making sure the gearing and all of that was right, whereas Ferrari had.
• 35:02
  Put a giant engine, super powerful engine.
• 35:04
  And then maybe the back axle ratio was right.
• 35:07
  And maybe it wasn't, and maybe the gearbox would hold together.
• 35:10
  And maybe it wasn't, it was just, you know, Ferrari, it's all at
• 35:13
  the altar of the V12 engine.
• 35:15
  It's funny.
• 35:16
  He's speaking about engines, the second place guy, they're actually running
• 35:19
  six cylinders that were the ones that were more, I guess, a prevalent in
• 35:23
  that race and, you know, jump wise horsepower wise, or you're going up,
• 35:26
  you know, it got up to 280 horsepower now in these six cylinder cars.
• 35:32
  They had the 118 and the 121 LMs that they were running in that race.
• 35:37
  Now your 118 was a 3.
• 35:38
  7 liter and your 121 was a 4.
• 35:41
  4 liter, you know, a little more power and whatnot in the bigger motor
• 35:44
  reliability wise, kind of hard to say, but it was three of the guys that thought
• 35:48
  they were running the 118s with the 3.
• 35:50
  7 liter and Ferrari actually, unbeknownst to the owners of
• 35:53
  drivers of those cars actually.
• 35:55
  Stuffed in the bigger motors into it.
• 35:57
  So they're thinking they got this 3.
• 35:59
  7.
• 35:59
  They actually got the 4.
• 36:00
  4.
• 36:01
  So that's kind of funny.
• 36:02
  When it comes to Ferrari again, pulling the, I would say old switcheroo on some
• 36:06
  of their drivers and the owners is stuff in the bigger motor without telling them.
• 36:09
  You know, I don't know the psychological reason why it's whatnot.
• 36:11
  Why you wouldn't tell them you're not talking a huge jump, but performance
• 36:15
  wise, obviously it might seem to help a little bit, but again, you know,
• 36:18
  you got single person driving the car.
• 36:21
  And you got these six cylinder cars that are actually, you know, up at the front,
• 36:25
  you know, not only, you know, uh, Moss and Jankstiel winning, second place was
• 36:29
  another Mercedes with Fangio driving it.
• 36:31
  And he was like almost 30 some odd minutes behind them.
• 36:34
  Now it has to do with pace notes or whatnot.
• 36:36
  But as we all know, Fangio wasn't too bad of a driver.
• 36:40
  My sense having studied Fangio is that he did not care.
• 36:45
  I feel like the only time he tried in the Mille Miglia was in 53 when
• 36:49
  he was coming back after his bad accident and he really wanted to prove
• 36:52
  to the Italians that he still had it.
• 36:54
  If you look at Fangio's performance, It, the South American road races that
• 36:59
  would be like five days over the Andes when the car stopped overnight, you
• 37:04
  were still allowed to work on the car.
• 37:05
  So he would like work on the car all night and then get up and drive and drive.
• 37:09
  You know, DSJ said about Fangio that after those South American road races, the bumps
• 37:15
  of the Nürburgring held no fear for him.
• 37:18
  And I feel like.
• 37:19
  He looked at the Mille Miglia with those giant crowds and the distance that wasn't
• 37:23
  that vast in comparison to what he'd done in South America and just thought, this is
• 37:29
  not an event that I want to go balls out.
• 37:32
  It also shows the power of cocaine.
• 37:34
  I mean, the coca leaves, right?
• 37:38
  Okay.
• 37:38
  And, and you say that, right, Eric, this is, this is, I'm pleased we touched on
• 37:42
  this because yes, he used to chew these coca leaves and it's quite well known.
• 37:45
  And I feel like I want to chew them as well and kind of get a sense of, is it.
• 37:49
  I do want to do that part of motoring adventuring to see if they have any
• 37:53
  effect or not, but Moss said in period that before the race, Fangio had
• 37:59
  said to him, have these little pills.
• 38:02
  They will help you with the race.
• 38:04
  According to Moss, this was the only time this has ever happened.
• 38:07
  He did take them after the race.
• 38:09
  He drove the car back to Stuttgart to show the directors of Mercedes of Daimler Benz.
• 38:14
  So that's, he did the Mille Miglia, won it at record speed and then drove the car.
• 38:18
  From Brescia in Italy, across the Alps, and all the way back
• 38:24
  to Stuttgart, northern Germany.
• 38:25
  I believe we call those performance enhancing drugs now, John.
• 38:29
  Dexedrine was the speculation that I'd had.
• 38:32
  Frankly, pilots in the Korean War, if anybody was a fighter pilot in the Korean
• 38:38
  War, probably whatever they were giving those kind of pilots, because it was
• 38:42
  dexedrine for the pilots in Vietnam.
• 38:44
  I don't know what it was for Korea.
• 38:46
  I assume that there was experimentation with performance arts and drugs in, in
• 38:51
  career as well, but I don't know for sure.
• 38:53
  What I was going to say is, is that, you know, just to speak to Moss and Jenkinson,
• 38:58
  they participated in 1956 and 1957.
• 39:01
  And in 1956, They slid the car off the road and would have fallen down
• 39:07
  into like a hundred foot crevasse, but it was stopped by a single tree.
• 39:11
  They got out of the car and were standing at the side of the road.
• 39:14
  And when Fangio came by, he stopped and offered them a lift.
• 39:18
  Now that is proof to me of Fangio's attitude to the Mille Miglia.
• 39:23
  He stopped in his sports racing Ferrari that was going to win the race.
• 39:28
  He stopped and said, are you guys all right?
• 39:30
  Do you need a lift?
• 39:32
  Actually, they walked to the local railway station and went from Or does Fangio's
• 39:37
  behavior speak to the fraternity and camaraderie of drivers in motorsport?
• 39:42
  There's another way you could probably take that particular position, right?
• 39:45
  Well, there is, because in those South American road races, if you
• 39:48
  saw somebody at the side of the road, you would stop and help them.
• 39:51
  And Fangio's great rival in those South American road
• 39:54
  races were the Chavez brothers.
• 39:55
  And there's numerous incidents of the Chavez stopping to help Fangio,
• 39:59
  and him stopping to help them.
• 40:00
  And this is, is really Crazy.
• 40:02
  It would be like Verstappen seeing Hamilton struggling at the side of the
• 40:07
  road with a flat tire and not just helping him back to the pits, but getting out of
• 40:12
  the car and helping him change the tire, even though the others are catching up.
• 40:16
  But you know, these South American road races, they would do them in
• 40:19
  these like Fangio's car was a 40 Chevy and they would cut the fenders and
• 40:24
  then like put the suspension up high.
• 40:26
  So it looked like Baja.
• 40:28
  Trophy trucks.
• 40:29
  Look, now it had that kind of stance and high suspension and all of that
• 40:34
  because that was what it needed to do.
• 40:36
  So in that kind of environment, if you saw somebody off the road,
• 40:39
  you stopped and helped them.
• 40:40
  So I'm sure there was an element of that, but I just feel like you
• 40:43
  can't see Castellotti, Ascari, you can't see them stopping.
• 40:47
  You think Braco would have stopped to see if the young, young English pup was okay.
• 40:51
  Only if he ran out of brandy.
• 40:53
  I was going to say 57, just to finish off Moss and Jenkinson at the Mille
• 41:01
  Miglia, 57, the Maserati 450S gets put together right at the end, right
• 41:06
  before the, you know, we're about to kick off, the race is about to start.
• 41:10
  And the 450S is an awesome looking car.
• 41:12
  I would say probably 190 mile an hour car, certainly 185.
• 41:18
  Mile an hour, really an awesome piece of kit.
• 41:21
  As we know, at the start, it's these long straights from Brescia over to
• 41:25
  Ravenna and then down the Adriatic coast.
• 41:27
  Well, before they've even got to Ravenna, the first piece of heavy
• 41:31
  braking, the brake pedal broke off.
• 41:33
  Well, that's not good.
• 41:34
  Now I just need you to stop and think about that.
• 41:36
  Literally you're about to do the milling, but you've hit the brakes.
• 41:39
  The brake.
• 41:39
  Well, they were so mad.
• 41:40
  They drove the car back.
• 41:42
  They were ready to fight the Maserati mechanics.
• 41:45
  They broke down in tears.
• 41:46
  And you've got this contrast then between the planning of Mercedes Benz and this
• 41:51
  sort of slapdash, can't even weld the brake pedal properly, of Maserati.
• 41:57
  Big contrast.
• 41:58
  I think we've stumbled backwards into 1956.
• 42:02
  So how does this story continue?
• 42:03
  We know it's a rainy Mille Miglia in 56.
• 42:07
  Yeah, we're back to V12s in the Ferraris.
• 42:09
  We're at a pivot point, aren't we?
• 42:10
  Because Castellotti wins in, in a time which is really pretty astonishingly
• 42:15
  close to Stirling Moss's time, yet in rain throughout, in a car which is undamaged.
• 42:22
  Which is remarkable, right?
• 42:23
  If you think about Moss had two or three offs, which Jenks documents, you
• 42:28
  know, we know Verrazzi won in, in 51 with a car that, you know, it looked
• 42:33
  like a NASCAR that had been beaten up, you know, it really carried some
• 42:36
  heavy damage and contemporary reports make play of the fact that Castellotti
• 42:41
  won with the car completely undamaged.
• 42:43
  And some of the reports will even suggest he had this sort of.
• 42:46
  unbroken run.
• 42:48
  I think actually in the race, it was pretty competitive to Rome, but by
• 42:52
  the time he got past Rome, which is about the halfway mark, by the time
• 42:56
  they got past Rome, Castellotti was really very comfortably in command.
• 43:00
  You know, Moss and Jenkinson talked about how wild the guy's driving was.
• 43:05
  The Italians talk about it in a very poetic kind of a way.
• 43:09
  The previous four, Mille Miglia, Castellotti had not finished.
• 43:13
  So, again, we've got this sense that it's pedal to the metal,
• 43:17
  even in the thrashing rain here.
• 43:20
  So, hats off to Castellotti, and it's Castellotti's coming of age.
• 43:24
  I think that's what we'd say is that for Ferrari, Ferrari
• 43:28
  took notice of Castellotti.
• 43:30
  After his Mille Miglia victory, Fangio, who was on the Ferrari works
• 43:34
  team, just briefly at that time, requested that Castellotti drive with
• 43:39
  him in all sports car races, which is a huge compliment to Castellotti.
• 43:44
  Of course, he's killed at a Formula One race at the modern water drone, just a.
• 43:49
  Few years later with him and, and with Musso disappears.
• 43:53
  This whole tradition of Italian racing drivers, the pre-war guys, the Burnetts
• 43:59
  to Rufi, Farinas fa Jolies Villa.
• 44:03
  There's loads of them that we see represented in the milli mil.
• 44:07
  Now by the late fifties, these guys are kind of dead or retired.
• 44:12
  And, you know, there's only Tarufi left.
• 44:15
  And Castellotti is one of these new, young generation.
• 44:18
  And that's illustrated by the fact that he came up through cars, like a modern
• 44:22
  racing driver, like Sterling Moss did.
• 44:24
  Braco cars as well.
• 44:25
  Whereas everybody else we've talked about came up through motorcycles.
• 44:29
  Castellotti, different from that.
• 44:31
  You know, if you look at the times, You know, the time that he won in, I
• 44:33
  mean, it was, it was about 90 minutes.
• 44:35
  So an hour and a half, roughly, you know, behind what most of the year before, but
• 44:39
  people don't understand is, you know, you look at the race itself and people
• 44:42
  say he would have beat Moss's time if he had the same conditions that Moss
• 44:45
  had, he was just absolutely flying.
• 44:47
  But obviously with the rain, the weather and they really hampered his efforts, but
• 44:52
  they were just saying he was just driving.
• 44:54
  Like a madman in, in that weather.
• 44:56
  And again, you know, you got a big jump.
• 44:58
  You're going back to the V 12, now all of a sudden you got 320 horsepower
• 45:01
  in these cars, in these v twelves.
• 45:03
  And again, you know, in the two 90 mm, you know, it's an open top by himself.
• 45:07
  A magazine asked how fast the car was, uh, he said how he
• 45:10
  spent time to 179 miles an hour.
• 45:13
  No.
• 45:13
  So your top speeds increasing.
• 45:14
  Yeah.
• 45:15
  Know you're thinking well, oh, okay.
• 45:16
  That's not so fast.
• 45:17
  But I mean, you.
• 45:18
  Think about what they're driving on the roads.
• 45:20
  They're on just everything.
• 45:22
  They're tapping those things out as fast.
• 45:23
  They could go on a lot of those sections that they could.
• 45:26
  That is, I think if you've only ever, you know, done 120 miles an hour on the
• 45:31
  highway late at night with the windows up.
• 45:34
  Sitting in your leather chair with your Bose stereo and your Mercedes Benz or
• 45:38
  your BMW, or, you know, in a modern car, you just have no idea of what 120 mile
• 45:45
  an hour was like in an open car, like that car that Castellotti, uh, won in.
• 45:50
  You doubly have no idea what, I mean, for me on sports bikes, right, at 120, you
• 45:56
  can move the bike, at 150, getting the bike to change direction is really hard.
• 46:02
  When I watch motor GP guys flip the bikes over at 170 or 180 miles an
• 46:08
  hour, I have no idea how they do it.
• 46:10
  It's not just the dexterity of the lines.
• 46:12
  It's the whole physical thing.
• 46:14
  Well, well, Castellotti in that Ferrari, 180 miles an hour.
• 46:18
  I mean, he lost his visor.
• 46:20
  And the race reports would talk about how he was in a lot of pain because
• 46:24
  the rain was cutting out his face.
• 46:26
  And you'll even see some pictures where he's raising his hand.
• 46:29
  He's driving one hand and he's got his hand across his face because the rain is
• 46:33
  coming down and cutting his face so much.
• 46:35
  He's, and he's, he's got goggles and used goggles for
• 46:37
  the, after the visor blew away.
• 46:40
  Yeah, just impressive.
• 46:41
  Do you want to say the manliness?
• 46:42
  I don't know what you'd say but just just the dedication and commitment
• 46:45
  these guys had, you know, a lot of guys you would think that they would
• 46:48
  just stop after that, you know, be like, I can't see or I can't do this
• 46:52
  or it's just, you know, unstop them.
• 46:53
  It's gladiatorial and it's about honor.
• 46:56
  You know, Castellotti was a wealthy landowner from, I mean,
• 47:00
  we're in California now, there's a town just near here, Lodi.
• 47:03
  He was from Lodi in Italy, which is, you know, Northern Italian town.
• 47:08
  And he wanted to put Lodi on the map.
• 47:10
  He was a handsome, wealthy guy.
• 47:12
  He could have just been a playboy.
• 47:14
  Instead, he really wanted to prove himself.
• 47:17
  He did date a movie star, Delia Scalia was her name.
• 47:20
  She had one of these page boy haircuts, a bit like Steve McQueen's wife.
• 47:24
  The Italian press used to love it because, you know, he would, at the Rome Control,
• 47:28
  they shared a kiss and obviously that was the great fodder for the front pages as
• 47:33
  opposed to the back pages of the news.
• 47:35
  And again, it came down to personal preference had to do with the weather,
• 47:38
  you know, and just all the, you know, circumstances these guys were driving in.
• 47:42
  But you had Quite a few more coupes, closed top Ferraris
• 47:46
  running in that event as well.
• 47:48
  You know, you had your 250 GTs in that and running in them.
• 47:50
  And as we know from previous ones, a lot of it was personal
• 47:54
  preference of the driver.
• 47:54
  Now, Enzo's philosophy was, no, you only can win in an open top car.
• 47:58
  I think a lot of these guys like, well, I don't think you could see what
• 48:01
  the weather or maybe figure it out.
• 48:02
  But a lot of these guys chose to run closed top cars.
• 48:05
  And that race as well, too.
• 48:06
  Villaresi argued with Ferrari and then in 51, Villaresi won in a closed car.
• 48:12
  Yep.
• 48:12
  The quote was that he didn't want to drive in a bordello of noise, which I, I
• 48:18
  feel like the, whatever the Italian for a whorehouse of noise is, it's probably
• 48:22
  more dramatic sounding than that.
• 48:24
  That's what it is, right?
• 48:26
  The.
• 48:26
  You know, I drove half of the route in a Fiat Punto rental and I drove half of the
• 48:30
  route on this RSV Mille and the RSV Mille, it had a performance and the experience
• 48:35
  was similar to, I think the way it would have been in the faster cars, of course,
• 48:38
  the Punto was directly similar to the vast majority of the cars doing the route.
• 48:44
  And I, and I do think the interesting thing for me about that was I drove
• 48:47
  down the Adriatic coast to Pescara.
• 48:50
  And then when I turned inland at Pescara, I couldn't believe
• 48:52
  how quickly the roads changed.
• 48:54
  I literally.
• 48:55
  Nearly slid this Punto off because you'd been used to these straights
• 48:59
  where you could just like run flat.
• 49:01
  And I actually did the Autostrada down the coast now because the old coast
• 49:04
  road, it's all tourists and so on now.
• 49:07
  So you can't run at the representative speeds.
• 49:09
  Whereas I felt on the Autostrada, I could like run at a representative speed.
• 49:13
  But once you get off those straight roads, it's immediately
• 49:17
  super mountainous and twisty.
• 49:18
  And I nearly put this Punto, uh, off the road.
• 49:22
  What you saw, I'll say the introduction, but the, uh, show up is the 500 TR as
• 49:27
  everyone usually calls the Testarossa showed up, but now it was only a four
• 49:31
  cylinder wasn't a 12 cylinder, but yeah, they had one 500 TR entered in that race.
• 49:35
  He retired now all of a sudden you have that name that kind of
• 49:38
  is very synonymous with Ferrari.
• 49:41
  Testarossa, the redhead, all of a sudden show up in that race.
• 49:44
  Just not for nothing, right?
• 49:46
  Genius marketing.
• 49:47
  Dasher Redpaint.
• 49:49
  And you've a whole model name.
• 49:50
  You've created a whole.
• 49:51
  I'm put in mind of Picasso in his later years, who would like, if
• 49:55
  he needed some money to pay for a restaurant bill, he would draw a
• 49:58
  sketch and then sell it to another one of the patrons in the restaurant.
• 50:02
  And that would pay for his meal.
• 50:03
  But he literally, like, on the napkin, he'd just, like, draw whatever he felt.
• 50:07
  And if you look at his later art, it really has that feeling of, I'm going
• 50:11
  to draw whatever I want to create.
• 50:13
  I want to just hit a slightly macabre note here.
• 50:16
  Six deaths in 1956.
• 50:19
  A series of different accidents.
• 50:21
  I've not drilled into who, why, what went out.
• 50:24
  But this really speaks to the fact that this.
• 50:29
  Is a city to city road race, which was always dangerous.
• 50:36
  But when we were doing city to city road racing and the cars were doing 120 or 140,
• 50:42
  that was really dangerous, but that was.
• 50:46
  You know, maybe not lots of people would be killed.
• 50:48
  Now we've moved to the stage where the cars are doing 180 miles an hour.
• 50:53
  That little bump, now the car's fully airborne over that little bump.
• 50:58
  Now I know when we talked about it with Sterling Moss a minute ago, it was a
• 51:00
  wonderful story and it was like the Dukes of Hazzard and what plucky Brits.
• 51:04
  But really, if you stop and think about that, looking back, It's impossible
• 51:09
  to imagine that the people organizing the Mille Miglia didn't believe
• 51:14
  that it was just a matter of time before there was a horrific accident.
• 51:17
  You feel like everybody was relying on, you know, the Virgin
• 51:21
  or fate or somebody to save us.
• 51:23
  Cause literally you can't race 180 mile an hour cars through crowded streets
• 51:28
  without sooner or later that the being, you know, the big one as they call it.
• 51:32
  And of course that was.
• 51:34
  1957.
• 51:34
  I don't mean to just kind of gloss over it, but every year, I mean, it
• 51:37
  wasn't like one or two, you know, there was a decent amount of people
• 51:41
  getting killed in that race every year.
• 51:43
  And, you know, I don't know if it had to do with the fact is obviously in the
• 51:45
  time, you know, you don't have, you know, the AP wire and all that kind of stuff.
• 51:48
  You don't have the internet, obviously, or anything like that,
• 51:50
  but there were significant amounts of people getting killed in that race.
• 51:54
  You know, year in, year out and not, you know, drivers.
• 51:57
  Yeah, but there were spectators as well that were getting killed at these races.
• 52:01
  57 obviously was, you know, the capper of it.
• 52:03
  It's all Jesus, you know, kids and everything like that.
• 52:05
  But if you look going back to that race, there was every year, there was
• 52:09
  a, you know, 5, guys dying racing.
• 52:12
  But then there was also a spectator here or there or whatnot.
• 52:15
  Also, you know, got killed as well, you know, wandering
• 52:17
  out in the road or whatnot.
• 52:18
  Because as much as they tried one, hey, they, all the roads were closed.
• 52:22
  Now you're going to have a few of those.
• 52:24
  Old Italian guys and their farmers and whatnot saying, I don't give two shits.
• 52:28
  This is, you know, I'm going to keep working and do what I got to do.
• 52:30
  And just, you know, wander out in the road and do whatever I got
• 52:33
  to do, driving a tractor on it.
• 52:35
  I, you know, I don't know if people realize that it wasn't just a 57
• 52:38
  that all crap, nine people got killed and kids and everything like that.
• 52:41
  That, oh, we got to stop it.
• 52:42
  No, there was death.
• 52:43
  You're in, you're out.
• 52:44
  And the other Italians, Braco, rolled a car into a crowd and
• 52:48
  killed 12 in an event in the 40s.
• 52:51
  We were slating Braco here, I mean for what it's worth, Farina
• 52:55
  also had those kinds of incidents.
• 52:56
  The way that you need to frame this is you need to see this through
• 52:59
  the eyes of contemporary Italians.
• 53:02
  Mussolini came to power and Italy became a fascist nation.
• 53:05
  in 1921.
• 53:07
  So throughout the 20s and the 30s you have this ethos of survival of the fittest
• 53:12
  and Mussolini and the Italian fascists believed that the natural state for a
• 53:16
  nation was to be at war and that there would be some attrition and combat.
• 53:23
  There would be some death.
• 53:24
  That was why it was just accepted as part of the sport.
• 53:26
  And I think post war, we see that becoming unacceptable.
• 53:30
  And we see the Pope stepping in and saying, you know what?
• 53:33
  This kind of carnage in the name of what the greater good, the
• 53:37
  advancement of Italian motorsport.
• 53:39
  And that's what Taruffi says that early on, it felt like you were really
• 53:43
  advancing the art of automobility.
• 53:46
  Whereas by the fifties.
• 53:47
  It's not really like that.
• 53:49
  We've sort of outgrown the environment we're playing.
• 53:51
  We've perfected the automobile.
• 53:53
  And to be fair, the Mille Miglia is not a special corner case in this instance.
• 53:58
  Death was common in motorsport across the board.
• 54:02
  Whether it was Formula One, Grand Prix racing, Le Mans, Indianapolis 500.
• 54:06
  It's just a sign of those times.
• 54:09
  And as a result of that, safety equipment got better.
• 54:12
  It didn't get better for a long time because even folks like Sir
• 54:15
  Jackie Stewart were still fighting for safety in the seventies.
• 54:20
  We have really taken leaps and bounds in that department in the modern times.
• 54:23
  But what's important about this particular story and how it comes to a head with the
• 54:28
  Ferrari movie that just came out is 1957 is sort of the wreck that changed the
• 54:32
  world, especially the motor sports world.
• 54:35
  And John, you foreshadowed this about the Italian drivers.
• 54:38
  And Taroufi was one of the last of the old guard in this sense.
• 54:42
  And he's quoted as saying, stop us before we kill again.
• 54:46
  We need to get our arms around these races and the Mille Miglia, especially because
• 54:51
  it's a bit more wild west than organized races that were sanctioned by the FIA.
• 54:57
  Like Le Mans and some of the other ones that were out there.
• 55:00
  So the movie depicts this horrific crash of Portago.
• 55:05
  And I'll let you guys kind of explain that and why it's significant and how
• 55:08
  it changed motorsport from 1957 forward.
• 55:11
  Ferrari for the mille mille has four cars, two, three, three fives.
• 55:15
  Two, three 15s that the difference is, you know, some are a 3.
• 55:19
  8 liter.
• 55:19
  The others are, are a 4.
• 55:21
  1.
• 55:21
  So, you know, you fast and effing fast.
• 55:24
  Basically you have a driver lineup, which is focused on young up and comers.
• 55:30
  And you've also got Ferrari who is recently grieving
• 55:33
  from the loss of his son.
• 55:34
  And I don't know if the movie speaks to this or not.
• 55:37
  I'm yet to see the movie.
• 55:38
  I'm really looking forward to seeing it.
• 55:39
  You know, I deliberately wanted to do this call and talk about.
• 55:43
  The 1957 Mille Miglia and talk about the Mille Miglia and Ferrari in
• 55:46
  general, before I've seen, you know, Michael Mann's interpretation of it.
• 55:50
  I'm fascinated to see Michael Mann's interpretation.
• 55:53
  In those Ferraris, you have young up and coming Formula One drivers, Peter
• 55:57
  Collins, Wolfgang von Trips, Alfonso de Portago, and the old Italian charger.
• 56:04
  Tarufi, by the way, we should just do a thumbnail on the Pataco for a minute,
• 56:08
  Spanish, half a dozen different titles, a wealthy playboy, Spanish champion,
• 56:14
  I think tennis, maybe golf as well.
• 56:17
  Bobsleigh champion, you know, set a record time on the Cresta run for
• 56:21
  people who understand bobsleighing.
• 56:23
  I can't pretend that I do, but I even, I understand what the Cresta run is.
• 56:26
  Maybe it was because of those Vauxhall Crestas.
• 56:29
  1960s that my grandfather had.
• 56:31
  But no, DePortago is this all round sportsman who established
• 56:36
  himself as a racing driver.
• 56:38
  People thought he was just a wealthy playboy.
• 56:40
  There were plenty of them that tried to participate in Formula 1, but
• 56:43
  no, DePortago was the real deal.
• 56:45
  Earned his place on Ferrari team.
• 56:47
  Although I would say that one of my favorite stories about him is that
• 56:50
  the way that he recognized his car was when they were first allocated
• 56:54
  the car, he would scratch a mark on the dashboard by the rev counter.
• 56:58
  So he recognized his car.
• 56:59
  And I just think of that every, and the next time you're at a Ferrari event
• 57:03
  and you're looking at all of these dudes picking the gravel out of the
• 57:06
  tire, just think about Fond de Portago.
• 57:09
  And just, I just put a scrape in it with a screwdriver there.
• 57:12
  So I know which car's mine and yes.
• 57:14
  All the others of the Italians are gone by this time.
• 57:17
  And Taruffi is left with this burning desire to win the Mille Miglia.
• 57:22
  At the time, Ferrari has this rather odd relationship with Peter Collins.
• 57:26
  I think reading between the lines, he sort of adopted Peter
• 57:29
  Collins sort of as his son.
• 57:31
  And then when Peter Collins got married, he sort of, you
• 57:33
  know, stepped away from that.
• 57:34
  But there was some very bizarre thing going on.
• 57:38
  And in the stuff that you read about Castellotti, The Italians were upset
• 57:43
  that Ferrari favored the blonde haired British boy rather than, you know, the
• 57:47
  Italian in terms of the cars that they gave them in Formula One at least.
• 57:52
  The Ferraris that enter in 1957, I would say if we roll with this five miles
• 57:58
  an hour faster each year, what we're saying is these are 185 mile an hour
• 58:04
  cars, which is stupefying, frankly.
• 58:08
  Still on six inch tires.
• 58:09
  Yeah.
• 58:10
  360 horsepower under 2000 pounds.
• 58:12
  And this pattern and William, you touched on this in the last episode
• 58:16
  that with Ferraris, the ancillary components fail, it's the suspension.
• 58:21
  It's the steering.
• 58:22
  It's the gearbox.
• 58:23
  It's the back axle.
• 58:24
  It's not the engine.
• 58:25
  The rest of the car will fall apart around the engine.
• 58:28
  And certainly with these big capacity, 12 cylinders with the amount of torque
• 58:32
  they produce, they are gonna just.
• 58:35
  Take apart the drive train.
• 58:36
  Hey, Dean Batchelor, the editor of car and driver.
• 58:40
  He was super keen hot rod guy, but a super keen Ferrari guy.
• 58:45
  And he wrote about these big capacity V12 sports racing Ferraris because the
• 58:50
  gas tanks were over the rear wheels.
• 58:54
  When you got in the car in Brescia at the start, the car's got fresh suspension,
• 58:59
  fresh brakes, and a full tank of gas.
• 59:01
  By the time you're at Rome, the tanks are empty, so it's handling
• 59:05
  a completely different way.
• 59:07
  You gas up at Rome, and now it's handling a completely different way again,
• 59:11
  because now it's got all that weight at the back, but the suspension and the
• 59:14
  brakes aren't what they were before.
• 59:16
  The line that Batchelor has is, they were not for the faint hearted.
• 59:20
  You really need to be on the case just to survive the race, let alone win.
• 59:25
  Yeah.
• 59:25
  You're talking like 35 to 40 gallons of gas.
• 59:28
  You're not talking 10, 20.
• 59:30
  I think Moss is SLR had a 50 gallon tank.
• 59:33
  Yeah.
• 59:34
  That's a lot of weight.
• 59:35
  Yeah.
• 59:36
  A lot of weight.
• 59:38
  And to your point, you know, when everything kind of breaking down and
• 59:40
  all of a sudden you get to a point where all of a sudden this car is
• 59:42
  driving completely different because you got hardly any gas and then all
• 59:44
  of a sudden it's just taking a beating and then all of a sudden you dump.
• 59:47
  Three, 400 pounds of gas back into this thing.
• 59:50
  Cause that's probably what you're probably talking about easily.
• 59:52
  Yeah.
• 59:53
  All of a sudden it's just going, it's like behind your toes.
• 59:56
  I wonder, you know, Ferrari had a falling out with his tire maker in 55 and
• 1:00:02
  Marzotto retired or one of the Ferrari guys retired when a car threw a tread
• 1:00:08
  and the spare that he had didn't fit.
• 1:00:10
  And it was cause Ferrari had these like issues with tires and you do, you wonder.
• 1:00:15
  Let's tell the story of the race a little bit that the Ferraris are dominant
• 1:00:19
  and trade the lead amongst each other.
• 1:00:22
  Peter Collins is leading but loses a transmission.
• 1:00:26
  So the race is between Tarufi and Von Trips right in the finishing stages.
• 1:00:33
  DePortago loses a tire, we think, probably lost a tire, and without wanting to go
• 1:00:38
  into detail, there is horrific detail out there now, and I'm not seeing the
• 1:00:42
  movie, maybe the movie will even do it, my understanding was it was one side of
• 1:00:46
  the road in a ditch, the other side of the road in a ditch, through a wall, there
• 1:00:50
  were some people on the wall, a lot of children, both Edmund Nelson, DePortago's
• 1:00:56
  co driver, and DePortago himself, gone immediately, and with it, Really the end
• 1:01:03
  of the Mille Miglia because the Pope gets involved, there's talk of excommunication,
• 1:01:08
  Ferrari faces manslaughter, charges, an interesting story which an Italian told
• 1:01:14
  me and may or may not be true, but when you drive in Italy now, there are not
• 1:01:18
  cat's eyes in the middle of the road.
• 1:01:20
  You know, the reflectors in the middle of the road in Italy, they don't do them.
• 1:01:24
  And apparently I'm not research this, but what he told me was the, the
• 1:01:29
  reason that they don't have cat size in Italy was that it was decided that the
• 1:01:34
  reason the Protago's tire came apart.
• 1:01:38
  was because he skidded over a cat's eye and that's what caused
• 1:01:41
  it to come off the rim and crash.
• 1:01:43
  So cat's eyes were the cause of the accident, not that you'd raced for
• 1:01:47
  900 miles, uh, more than 170 miles an hour on dodgy cross ply, narrow tires.
• 1:01:54
  And there was none of that in a 400 horsepower car.
• 1:01:56
  No, no, it was none of that.
• 1:01:57
  It was those cat's eyes caused the accident.
• 1:02:00
  So all of this overshadows To Rufy's really pretty, awesome,
• 1:02:06
  considered balanced drive.
• 1:02:09
  And, and really every other Mille Miglia, he'd always been there, but
• 1:02:13
  there'd always been some, if you know Indianapolis 500 history, there'd always
• 1:02:17
  been some kind of Lloyd Ruby moment where, you know, the car had gone wrong
• 1:02:21
  or one year a backmarker moved into his path and forced him off the road when he
• 1:02:26
  was leading, you know, he had, his hat was in the ring every time since 1930s.
• 1:02:31
  And now finally, I think it's sad because You know, they were cheering him.
• 1:02:36
  And then after what had happened with the Potago, the cheering was considerably
• 1:02:41
  less and it took the edge off what was undoubtedly a huge achievement.
• 1:02:46
  I guess the final thing to say is Ferrari, the way Ferrari has it.
• 1:02:50
  is that he says to Von Trips at the last control, it would be
• 1:02:54
  really nice if Tarufi could win.
• 1:02:57
  And Von Trips, who was a German nobleman who, like Di Portago, was racing
• 1:03:01
  for honor, racing to prove himself, racing to, I think, to establish.
• 1:03:06
  himself as something different from what everybody knew Germany had
• 1:03:10
  been just a few short years before.
• 1:03:13
  In Von Trips you really get the sense of a gentleman driver wanting to prove himself.
• 1:03:19
  So Von Trips, according to one version of the story, allows To
• 1:03:24
  roofie to, to win to roofie's version is to roofie had nursed the car.
• 1:03:29
  The car was stronger and on some bends, just outside Cremona.
• 1:03:33
  He's able to demonstrate to Von Tripps that he's better and able to win
• 1:03:37
  the race and goes on and wins again.
• 1:03:40
  More research is probably required into that one, but hats off to to roofie.
• 1:03:45
  And that is the end of the melee milieu.
• 1:03:48
  But is it really the end?
• 1:03:49
  So because of that crash, it puts a huge dark cloud over motorsport and
• 1:03:55
  they press pause on the Amelia Amelia.
• 1:03:57
  But if you jump us forward a couple of decades, it's reborn.
• 1:04:02
  And the rebirth.
• 1:04:03
  is absolutely about the time there was a proper collector car movement
• 1:04:10
  established that really before the 1970s, there was no real collector
• 1:04:15
  car movement into the 1980s.
• 1:04:17
  That was the beginning of a collector car movement.
• 1:04:20
  And those of us with gray hair will remember that there was a bit of a boom.
• 1:04:24
  Well, there was more than a bit of a boom.
• 1:04:26
  There was a huge boom in Ferrari prices in, in the late eighties.
• 1:04:30
  And, and around about that time, the Mille Miglia was reestablished
• 1:04:35
  as a historic motoring event.
• 1:04:37
  You know, we arrive in Brescia, the look and feel in Brescia is very similar to the
• 1:04:42
  way that it was cars that are invited to.
• 1:04:44
  Participate of the cars that participated years ago and the Italian government
• 1:04:48
  is involved in, if not in closing the roads in providing a police escort to
• 1:04:54
  allow the cars to drive the route of the Mille Miglia, but now we stop in
• 1:04:59
  nice five star hotels, eat nice food and patch each other on the back and
• 1:05:04
  remember days of your, and if that sounds.
• 1:05:08
  A shadow of the event as it was.
• 1:05:10
  Yes, absolutely.
• 1:05:11
  It is.
• 1:05:11
  But if you talk to anybody who's participated in modern millimilia,
• 1:05:15
  they'll tell you that it's really hard to enjoy that five star food because,
• 1:05:19
  you know, you're up at six in the morning and you're responsible for looking after
• 1:05:22
  the car and you know, those Italian police convoys, they will let you run.
• 1:05:27
  Autobahn speed, you know, more than a hundred miles an hour.
• 1:05:30
  They love motorcycles, BMW motorcycles.
• 1:05:32
  So, you know, the Italians have a passion for motorsport, which
• 1:05:36
  carries through to this day.
• 1:05:37
  So it's a, it's an awesome event.
• 1:05:39
  Is it what Moss won in 1955?
• 1:05:42
  No, because that was nonstop.
• 1:05:44
  This is.
• 1:05:46
  Very much the feel of it.
• 1:05:48
  And it would be an awesome event to do if I was wealthy enough to do it.
• 1:05:53
  I know one guy I in, uh, actually used lives in Lodi who did the event a few
• 1:06:00
  years ago with a guy who has an alpha Romeo and he did it with this guy.
• 1:06:06
  Because years ago, my friend, Phil, his skill.
• 1:06:09
  Well, he has many skills, but his skill is Corvette mechanical fuel injection.
• 1:06:14
  And he was at Goodwood one year and the guy with the Corvette with the
• 1:06:17
  mechanical fuel injection, he could tell the car wasn't running properly.
• 1:06:21
  So he helped the guy tune his Rochester mechanical fuel injection.
• 1:06:26
  And the guy was like, you are welcome to my house whenever you wish.
• 1:06:30
  And it turns out the bloke was an English Lord.
• 1:06:32
  With the hot rod guy from Lodi, who just happened to really know how to do the
• 1:06:37
  Rochester mechanical fuel injection, was able to help the English Lord win
• 1:06:41
  the Goodwood race in the Corvair, and thus was invited to do the Mille Miglia
• 1:06:45
  in the Alfa Romeo a few years later.
• 1:06:47
  So, Yeah, a significant digression there, Eric.
• 1:06:50
  I'm sorry about that.
• 1:06:51
  No, but you bring up a very valid point in the sense that the Mila Melia in some
• 1:06:55
  ways can be compared to Goodwood and on a grand scale, countrywide in Italy,
• 1:07:01
  it's Italy's version of Goodwood now.
• 1:07:02
  And that's something to.
• 1:07:04
  Appreciate but also celebrate and it's nice that we can be part of that
• 1:07:09
  again and it's not something that's just lost on the pages of history
• 1:07:12
  that pun intended died in 1957.
• 1:07:15
  It's now still alive and vibrant and in a new way, but in a good way.
• 1:07:19
  Trying to, I guess they corral everyone and keep everyone in check, but not
• 1:07:23
  everyone follows it because they want to be doing the, they got these great
• 1:07:26
  cars, so they want to open them up, but there's all the times like it's a rally.
• 1:07:30
  So they have all these different sections time wise and whatnot.
• 1:07:32
  So in a way it's trying to hold people back because if you're
• 1:07:36
  familiar with how those work, you know, Hey, you got A to B got, this
• 1:07:39
  is what you're supposed to get to B.
• 1:07:41
  And so they try and crowd people in, but.
• 1:07:43
  You see it all the time and you see videos like that, you know, you got guys
• 1:07:46
  crash and whatnot because they're just going balls out in their car because
• 1:07:48
  if they want to do it, you know, the town police, they're more than happy
• 1:07:51
  to, uh, help you out in that manner and get ahead of you and clear traffic.
• 1:07:55
  It's an interesting event and don't necessarily have to own a car.
• 1:07:59
  There's actually a few companies that have cars that you can go and
• 1:08:01
  they actually do the whole thing.
• 1:08:02
  You rent the car or everything like that and do it.
• 1:08:04
  So.
• 1:08:05
  You know, you don't have to necessarily have to have a car
• 1:08:06
  pre 1957 to have to compete in it.
• 1:08:09
  You know, there's several different ways to participate.
• 1:08:11
  It's an interesting event, but again, as John said, it ain't cheap.
• 1:08:15
  Because they drive past you as well.
• 1:08:17
  I mean, you can also go and, you know, have your Italian vacation and, you
• 1:08:22
  know, be there as the cars drive by, you know, it's free to go and be in Brescia.
• 1:08:26
  At the start, you know, I've not been, but the atmosphere of that, when you
• 1:08:30
  see film of it, it looks and feels exactly the same as it did in period.
• 1:08:34
  The kind of people who participate, it always was wealthy, showy people.
• 1:08:39
  I mean, think of the Marzottos and they're, you know,
• 1:08:42
  wearing their shirts and ties.
• 1:08:43
  I mean, that it's always been that kind of event.
• 1:08:46
  Yeah.
• 1:08:47
  It's always been part motor sport, part Italian festival.
• 1:08:50
  You have a lot of people too, that just.
• 1:08:53
  Have a modern car and just follow along and drive in it because it's not like
• 1:08:56
  the route's a secret, but I mean, you could have a rental car if you want
• 1:09:00
  to go over there and just follow the route and follow the people and stay
• 1:09:03
  in your own place and everything.
• 1:09:04
  Then kind of pseudo take part in it.
• 1:09:06
  But Hey, if you want to check it out and see it, I mean, you'd be amongst
• 1:09:10
  all the cars and the competitors and hanging out and doing what you have to do.
• 1:09:13
  And from my understanding, no one really cares.
• 1:09:15
  Hey, you're having fun with it as well.
• 1:09:17
  You're just not staying in the five star hotels and.
• 1:09:19
  Kind of, as John says, how much you're actually enjoying that because there's
• 1:09:23
  some days you're driving for 12, 14 hours.
• 1:09:26
  Yeah, and if you're doing that in an open car, you are beating it up.
• 1:09:31
  Guys, I have to say this two part history and celebration of the
• 1:09:35
  Mille Miglia has been an education.
• 1:09:38
  The collector car information, the history of Ferraris coming from William
• 1:09:42
  and John, you bringing this plethora of information about the stories and
• 1:09:45
  the drivers and the adventures that were happening during the millennial.
• 1:09:49
  I come away from this in awe.
• 1:09:51
  There's a lot of things that I knew or I had heard in passing, but I feel like
• 1:09:54
  I'm more familiar with the stories now.
• 1:09:56
  I feel like I'm closer to the race and I appreciate you guys
• 1:09:59
  spending the time to educate not only me, but the audience that's
• 1:10:02
  listening to these episodes as well.
• 1:10:04
  Yeah, I got, you know, um.
• 1:10:05
  Obviously we could have got a lot more in depth.
• 1:10:07
  I mean, not saying that we didn't get in depth.
• 1:10:09
  I was gonna say the first part of this thing was like, what, you know, hour
• 1:10:11
  and a half over, it was two hours long, just so much more information in detail.
• 1:10:14
  Cause as you go into the years, you can see, you know, you had three,
• 1:10:17
  four cars with Ferraris around, but then by the end there's 20 plus cars
• 1:10:20
  in the event, you know, Ferraris.
• 1:10:22
  So, you know, it's, it's a great, great event to really kind of dig into.
• 1:10:26
  So I highly recommend, you know, there's plenty of books out there.
• 1:10:29
  There's a great reference book that I use is it's probably one of the
• 1:10:32
  guys could be Giano Marzotto wrote it called Red Arrows Farmer's at the Mill.
• 1:10:36
  Amelia.
• 1:10:36
  It's a great book.
• 1:10:37
  It has everything about all the fires are participated.
• 1:10:39
  It goes throughout all the years.
• 1:10:40
  I think that's fantastic.
• 1:10:41
  Book gives you chassis numbers, everything like that.
• 1:10:43
  So if you really want to get into something, it's not a cheap book
• 1:10:46
  because they didn't make many of them.
• 1:10:47
  But, uh, it's a great book to hunt down, you know, appreciate everyone listening.
• 1:10:51
  And like I said, I think we only scratched the surface of what we get into, but.
• 1:10:55
  I think we kind of gave everyone a good listen and a good overview of the middle
• 1:10:58
  of million and definitely recommend doing a little more digging into it.
• 1:11:01
  And, uh, so I want to thank Eric for, uh, being our moderator and
• 1:11:05
  pundit in this and helping us out.
• 1:11:06
  And obviously John, the motor and historian, you know, helping out as
• 1:11:09
  well, giving us all the history and background stuff, cause you definitely
• 1:11:12
  have these, these guys will be back on definitely some other ones down the
• 1:11:15
  road, we're looking at, you know, Targa Floria as well, and some other events.
• 1:11:18
  So, uh.
• 1:11:19
  Keep your ears peeled and eyes open for those when they drop.
• 1:11:22
  So, but again, I appreciate everyone listening to the Ferrari Marketplace.
• 1:11:24
  Get yourself hooked up on the MPN, the Motoring Podcast Network,
• 1:11:28
  because we have a lot more episodes, a lot more podcasts that will be
• 1:11:31
  getting dropped onto the site and we appreciate it guys and enjoy your day.
• 1:11:35
  And thank you guys.
• 1:11:41
  This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports, as
• 1:11:44
  part of our Motoring Podcast Network.
• 1:11:46
  For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational
• 1:11:50
  content from organizations like the Exotic Car Marketplace, The Motoring
• 1:11:54
  Historian, BrakeFix, and many others.
• 1:11:56
  If you'd like to support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring
• 1:11:59
  Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.
• 1:12:04
  patreon.
• 1:12:05
  com forward slash GT Motorsports.
• 1:12:07
  Please note that the content, opinions, and materials presented and
• 1:12:10
  expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has
• 1:12:14
  been published with their consent.
• 1:12:15
  If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators
• 1:12:19
  of this episode via email or social media, as mentioned in the episode.