I wasn't entirely sure about
the Mille Miglia
. The best stories are the ones where you get to expose a myth or deflate something which isn't all it's cracked up to be. I thought the Mille Miglia was ripe for such treatment because at times it looked to me like a Gumball for old money and old cars. And I hated the way people referred to it as a race when it was no such thing.
Reasons why? This has to be high on the list
As a place to deconstruct the event, the world's fastest C-Type, first owner one J M Fangio, seemed to be as good a seat as any. To be honest, I'd fly to Nicaragua for a week just to have a 10-minute drive in this car, so a few days in Italy seemed no problem.
The Mille Miglia operates on a scale even a seasoned N24 competitor would find eye-opening. There are over 400 cars, the route is 969 miles long and it takes two and a half days. It was the duration that worried me before we start - you sit in the C-Type for five minutes, have your ear canals re-drilled by the unsilenced exhaust and instantly understand why Moss decided to smash a similar distance in just 10 hours. Clearly he just wanted to get away from the noise with maximum expediency.
The right crowd
The variety of cars competing is a dream for most of us to behold. There's everything from Gullwings to XKs, Healeys to Bugattis, big Bentleys and hoards of little specials from back in the day. The Ferrari count is high and, predictably, when we formed up for the start in Brescia, the vast crowd went loopy for anything with an angry nag on the bonnet. But they also loved the two C-Types Jaguar entered. For the first few miles through the town centre they especially loved ours, my Nissan GT ace co-driver and regular pedaller of this car at race meetings, Al Buncombe regularly letting rip with very loud consequences.
"So, the regularity thing ... shall we sack it off?"
This was so much better than the pre-start gathering earlier in the day. It absolutely sloshed it down with rain and we all felt rather deflated.
Jag had several slebs
in other cars and for some reason they were surprised when Daniel Day-Lewis emerged from a black XK120 and was completely mobbed. Funny that.
But the rain disappeared for the start, the crowds roared and I kind of understood what the fuss was all about. We had 155 miles to cover that evening with a set arrival time of around 12:30am. On the way we'd have to compete in a time trial. Al being a full-time racer, and me being a part-timer but possessed of similar instincts, the thought of using a stopwatch to go slowly was rather alien to both of us, but we tried. And failed. Miserably. I had no idea or interest in how the points system worked, but we ended up with minus 12,000 points and were placed 400th. We were quietly proud at officially being bad at going slowly.
Al kind of forgot that it wasn't really a race...
In Verona Al got involved in what constituted a full-on race with a Porsche 550 Spyder. I am not a good passenger, but the bloke
can really drive
, so I just grinned and hoped. On the Mille Miglia, as we'd discover later, anything goes. But we got a reasonable ticking off from the officials as we waited for an age at a time check.
This was a foretaste of things to come - endless waiting at time controls. And it would quickly begin to spoil the event for me. But having cancelled a load of the route because of flooding, they had to allow all competitors through the final time control of the day with no penalties. It wouldn't happen again.
Day two began early with me at the wheel. It was raining hard and the car was very lively on crossplies, a short axle geared for 125mph in top and 280hp. And with the driver unable to see because his goggles were steaming up. It wasn't much fun really, trying to make time, forgetting the insane value of the car and wondering how the hell we were going to last another 600 miles of the same.
With the sun out Harris could see where he was going
The sun came out for the rest of the day though - we drove some stunning roads south, had some adventures, diced with some fast cars and, just as we drove into Rome and I felt that the event was disproving my scepticism, we had to wait nearly an hour to pass the time control. When you've been driving and shotgunning a car this physical for 12 hours that makes you angry.
After three hours sleep, we were lining up to leave Rome on the final day with not a single cloud in sight. We lost the route almost immediately (a common theme when you watch the forthcoming video) and ended up being led out of town at great speed following a Police car. It was quite unlike anything I've experienced before - legitimised law-breaking that makes you feel alive.
In the afternoon we did something we should have done at the start - gave up on the timing. It just contaminates the experience. The people, the beauty of the scenery, the thrill of the drive, the lawlessness. It also seems profoundly wrong to not stop and enjoy the food, so we had a long lunch and agreed to sprint to the finish.
Another control, another wait, another telling off
Bologna was a blur of motorcycle escorts and madness, we drove through the Ferrari factory and did a lap of Fiorano as a regularity exercise which I couldn't quite believe, and then we headed off for the final leg, by now so disqualified that Al's oversteer on the final corner when we were supposed to be doing 21.72mph met with hearty applause from the marshals.
The final section I won't forget in a hurry. It was dark and damp, the Police bikes had halved the pace and I was stuck behind one 75 miles south of Brescia. Two dim headlights cruised up behind me, then screamed past us and the copper. It was a Ferrari, but not one I could instantly name. We followed and enjoyed the most wonderful drive. It was everything I'd been led to believe the event was about. Extremely fast, a little naughty at times, challenging and, crucially, not something I will ever have the chance to do again. A £10m, two-car convoy tearing through Italy in a manner that would look pretty outrageous were you to film it for a film car chase sequence. It took us over 15 hours to complete the final day. We were completely shattered at the end.
Did we just get away with that? Think so...
Is the Mille Miglia the most overrated event of its type? Not when you use your own judgement to avoid the dreary timing it isn't. When it was bad, when you felt like you were just wasting time and the rain was causing havoc, it was pretty bleak. We should have ignored the stopwatch from the start. The memories of having traffic cleared by those genius Police bikers and then that final dice with what I now know is a Ferrari 250MM are now indelibly branded into my brain.
10 million quid drifting from roundabouts and making a third lane when one didn't exist?
Wow. Just wow. And, of course, only in Italy.