Quick history question...

[brayash]

Hi all,

I'm translating an article about Moss' drive at the Mille Miglia, and one of the sentences (in German) talks about "waving the starting flag". I've got a quick question to put to the wealth of knowledge that is the 'PH massive' if that's ok...

The question is, would the race have been started with a chequered flag? Or more to the point, what type of flag would have been used to start the race?

Cheers in advance for any answers that come up!

[stifler]

The starters traditionally had the national flag waved at the start of a race. There are plenty of photos from the start of moss' run. Ill have a look when I get home. I have the motorsport issue that the jenks article was in. I believe that there are 3 or 4 photos showing different angles from the start ramp. I'm sure the flag will be present in these photos. Have you tried the LAT website? That is probably where the photos reside now anyway.

[Marc W]

They used to use the flag of the country the race was held in, so in this case Italian. These days if a flag is needed (Light failure) it's usually a green flag.

[brayash]

Cheers guys,

I had a look on google but couldn't find any pictures of the start. Don't know what the LAT website is? (Am I being a little bit dim possibly...)

I'll treat it as an Italian flag for now then, and if any evidence comes up to the contrary I'll adjust accordingly.

Cheers for the help though

[RicksAlfas]

We printed a book called 722 a few years ago. I've had a look in there and the flag is not clear. It looks like it's got horizontal stripes on it. Could it have been a local flag for Brescia?

The finishing flag is definitely a chequered flag - they didn't know by how much they had won until Fangio crossed the line in car 658.

[GBRM]

brayash said:

I had a look on google but couldn't find any pictures of the start. Don't know what the LAT website is? (Am I being a little bit dim possibly...)

LAT is probably the largest motor racing photo archive in the world and I think (happy to be corrected!!) is owned by Haymarket so if you want a racing photo they are a good place to start and if no-one on PH can provide you with a pic then go to www.autosport.com and click on Forums and then go to "The Nostalgia Forum" and post something there - one of the posters is Doug Nye (DCN) and he was Jenks best friend in latter years and has his archive.

P.S. Before anyone tells me off for directing someone at another website but it is also a Haymarket owned Forum so should be allowed!!

[dr_gn]

brayash said:

Hi all,

I'm translating an article about Moss' drive at the Mille Miglia, and one of the sentences (in German) talks about "waving the starting flag". I've got a quick question to put to the wealth of knowledge that is the 'PH massive' if that's ok...

The question is, would the race have been started with a chequered flag? Or more to the point, what type of flag would have been used to start the race?

Cheers in advance for any answers that come up!

Do a search for Mille Miglia 195(try various numbers here!) or Mille Miglia Start on Youtube and you'll find some archive footage of the start of the race. I didn't find anything too clear, but it certainly didn't look like a chequered flag to me, or the Brescia flag for that matter. Found this however, just to confuse things:

http://www.uniquecarsandparts.com.au/mille_miglia....

Hope this helps.