CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

  Even at its best, the road surface is poor, being narrow, cracked concrete along the sea. At its worst it is harrowing. Basically these are the same narrow, high-backed dirt roads over which the first Targa Florio was raced in 1906. A thin crust of tar has been laid on top, that's about all.

  In places where this crust has broken, the holes have been filled by spadefuls of earth tossed down by hopeful Sicilians. But dozens of new holes are gouged out by churning tires during the race, and drivers must be constantly on guard. At racing speeds, such holes could tear off a wheel and send the broken car skidding over a precipice.

  The Targa Florio is all that is left of the great open-road races of the past. Somehow, it has missed causing the wholesale slaughter of the others and so has continued, interrupted only by two world wars. No car has gone into the crowd to mangle and kill, although the Sicilian peasant in a festive mood has no regard for his own or anyone else's safety and presses as close as he can get to the alley down which the race cars hurtle.

  Incredibly, only one driver has been killed in the long history of the race, and that was so long ago that almost everyone has forgotten. High in a mountain pass, a simple stone marks the spot and the day--all that remains of a real live man who wanted to race with the wind.

  The roads are public but on the Sunday of the race are closed from three a.m. until the last car trickles in long after dark. To go from Palermo to Messina you would have to drive completely around the island, take a plane, or wait till tomorrow. In very few parts of the Western world could so much main road be short-circuited for an entire day. But in Sicily no one seems to care. For Sicilians, particularly for peasants who have never ridden anything faster than a mule, the Targa is a fiesta. It is color, noise, and excitement. It is drama. It is unlike anything else their hard, drab lives contain, and so they talk about it all year, and love it for a few hours each spring with a love that borders on passion.

  But because the roads are public, they can be closed only for a few hours (usually three) on the day before the race. And because each lap takes nearly an hour and there are two drivers for each car, this means there is only enough time for one lap for each man at speed.

  Most of the practice thus must be done in rented Fiats during the week before the race, the drivers lapping the circuit as fast as they dare, skirting flocks of sheep, donkeys laden with wide shocks of hay, and peasants riding backward on mules.

  Round and round go the rented Fiats, scattering chickens and children in the villages, hurrying up into the harshly beautiful mountains, down through meadows blue with wildflowers.

  It is a beautiful drive, but the drivers do not have time for beauty. They are trying to memorize each of hundreds of turns in sequence, trying to judge from the reaction of the little Fiat how a Ferrari or Porsche will handle the next day. If they come to an especially perilous curve, they may back up and do it again, and again, and again, trying to imprint it so deeply in memory that there will be no possibility of forgetting in the hurry and press of the race, for to forget then could mean death. It is wearying, unglamorous work, but their lives may depend on how well they do it.

  In Italian the word targa means plaque, and solid-gold plaques were given as prizes during the early years of the race. They were donated by Vincenzo Florio, the sportsman who organized the Targa at a time when his own cars were the only machines in all of Sicily. Sometimes he would teach his friends to drive, mount them in his own cars and send them careening into the wilds of the back country in pursuit of victory and the targa.

  The Targa Florio was in the beginning, and is now to a lesser extent, not so much man against man, as man pitting his machine against the worst Sicily might do to it. It was man in a wilderness. Did he have enough resourcefulness, enough stamina, to overcome the dust, the heat, the battering of the roads, the precipitous plunges down mountainsides, the agonizing sputtering crawl up steep slopes, the doubt—would the car make it at all? When something broke, as it inevitably did, could the driver fix it in time? Could he stagger on as far as the next depot? He might have to skirt wrecked cars, washed-out bridges. He would surely slide off the road at one time or other. Could he and his mechanic drag, push, lever the machine back onto the road again? Suppose they were stopped by bandits? Suppose the radiator boiled dry? Could they make themselves understood in a backwoods Sicilian village where they might come upon peasants who had never heard of Italy and did not speak its language?

  The Targa was not a race, it was an adventure. Some believed it the greatest adventure in motor racing. It was not a race of exhilarating speeds such as a Grand Prix at Reims; bravery did not count for very much. It was 1924 before the Targa's average got over 40 miles per hour., and even in 1960 an average of 58 miles per hour was good enough to win. Sixty miles per hour seems to be an unattainable dream for the Targa. At such speeds it is relatively difficult for a man to hurt himself, and so it was, and may always be, a race favoring not so much the brave man as the man with the soul of an adventurer. It is no place for a sprinter; it is for a man who loves to pit himself against the country.

  Vincenzo Florio was born in Palermo in 1883, second son of one of the richest men in Sicily. His father's interests included land holdings, hotels, railroads, steamship lines, wine, oils, fish, vegetables, and other exports. The old man died when the boy was eight, the immense business going to Vincenzo's older brother, then 23. The brother put his nose to the grindstone, while little Vincenzo was brought up like a prince. There were yachts, elegant carriages, stately homes, English governesses, and seasons in Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Vienna, and Bavaria. For a time Vincenzo even lived in Glasgow, supervising the construction of a new yacht. Much culture was rammed down his throat and he spoke many languages, including English.

  As a boy Vincenzo was around Palermo only long enough to acquire a reputation as an experimenter with balloons. He and some friends built two. One was inflated by a methylated-spirits lamp burning in the nacelle below the bag; the balloon blew merrily before the wind, snagged in a clothesline atop a convent, and set fire to all the nuns' unmentionables, which had been set out to dry. Brother paid the bill.

  Another gas bag carried a load of rats as passengers. It, too, snagged on a rooftop and all the rats escaped into the building. Brother took care of that problem too.

  In 1898, when Vincenzo was 15, brother had a De Dion tricycle brought in from Paris. As soon as he got it, Vincenzo could think of nothing except racing it against someone. As it was the only motor vehicle in all Sicily, the boy organized a race between a bicyclist, a horseman, and himself on the tricycle. The race was to Mondello, seven miles north. A cramp felled the cyclist halfway there, and Vincenzo sped into the lead. Racing along at an insane 15 miles an hour, the engine began to steam, he had to reduce speed and the horse sprinted home the winner. Perhaps this race could be called the first Targa Florio.

  Vincenzo and brother went up to Paris and bought a Peugeot. Then they bought a Benz, and when the Fiat company came into existence, they bought a Fiat. Soon there were dozens of cars moldering in the Florio bam; some are still there, although Vincenzo is dead now. He died during the winter of 1959; everybody liked him and called him a lovable old man. He was 76.

  Before he was 20 Vincenzo was determined to become a race driver. He organized races among his friends and chauffeurs in Favorita Park near Palermo, and ordered them all to attempt to beat him if they could. He went to Padua and won a short race, beating, among others, Vincenzo Lancia; he finished third in a Mercedes at Brescia. There were major races all over Europe now, and Florio could think of nothing except starting a race of his own. The only hitch—Sicily had no roads.

  In 1905, being then 22, Florio ordered a solid gold targa from a jeweler in Paris, and sent agents out looking for a possible circuit in the back country of Sicily. The agents came back wondering if they had found a circuit or not. Thirty miles east of Palermo, near the village of Gerda, a dirt road plunged south into the mountains, rising, twisting, rising, tw
isting until it had climbed nearly 4,000 feet. Then it zigzagged back to the sea again, in a series of steep falls and hairpin turns. The circuit, if circuit it was, would be about 90 miles long. None of the road was paved, there were no guardrails edging precipices. No car had ever been over that terrain before, and the agents were not sure one could make it. The scenery, of course, was magnificent: the blue glimmer of the Mediterranean far below, snowcapped Etna far to the east, the fortified villages, the gray olive groves, the long straight along the sea lined with lemon trees, the fields covered with wildflowers. But could a motorcar in this year of Our Lord 1905—could a motorcar complete such a circuit?

  And what about the bandits known to infest those hills? Would they let the race go through? Bandits were no joke during that period; they had even dared to kidnap the British consul, who was held for ransom four days in a mountain fastness in the wilds of the back country. The mighty British Empire could never have found him. Powerless, it paid the ransom demanded.

  For the next 50 years the Sicilian bush would swarm with bandits. There would be evidence that the fist of the Mafia was clenched tight around Sicilian commerce. The business of rooting out hoodlums and murderers would go on and on. Yet the Targa Florio never paid tribute, and was never harmed in any way. But fear of bandits was slow to die. As late as 1922, when the Britisher Henry Segrave disappeared in the mountains on a practice run, it was immediately decided that there could be only one explanation of what had happened to him.

  "Bandits!"

  He had gone out with his French mechanic late in the afternoon. High up in the mountains a water connection broke. By the time they had fixed it and refilled the tank, the sun was down. The car had no lights. It got darker and darker.

  "It's suicide to go on," muttered Segrave, trying to peer through the dark.

  They saw a glimmer of light ahead. A stone farmhouse. They stopped and tried to make themselves understood. Neither spoke Italian. Neither had any money.

  The three or four peasants stared at them, then whispered suspiciously among themselves. Segrave, digging through his pockets, came up with two gaudily colored Spanish lottery tickets.

  "Food, sleep," said Segrave. He tried to indicate in sign language. He pointed to the lottery tickets. "Money."

  The mechanic tried in French. The peasants stared at them, baffled.

  "Molto valori," said Segrave, pointing to the lottery tickets. "Molto prezioso. Very valuable," he added lamely in English. "More valuable than the whole house."

  The peasants took them in, gave them bread, cheese and goat's milk, and a corner of the main room to sleep in.

  Meanwhile, back at the pits, anxiety grew as the car did not return. A posse was formed and armed to the teeth. Either the car had crashed or, and somehow this seemed more likely, it had been stopped by bandits. Up into the hills drove the search car, guns protruding from all the windows. The posse was so well armed that it terrified each peasant from whom it sought information. None admitted having glimpsed Segrave, his mechanic, or the racing Sunbeam.

  It was nearly dawn before the search car gave up and returned to Palermo, every man in the posse convinced that the bandits of Sicily had struck at last.

  Florio himself was unworried by bandits as the first Targa Florio got under way at six a.m. on Sunday, May 6, 1906. Thanks to his great wealth, he had been able to build grandstands along the Mediterranean Straight, digging up pre-Christian bronzes and pottery in the process. He had conducted noisy promotion to entice a crowd out to the edge of the circuit 30 miles from Palermo. He had attracted 10 of the best drivers of the time including Vincenzo Lancia, big, burly, and confident; and a calm, cigar-smoking Englishman named Pope; and Florio's chauffeur, Victor Rigal; and the bearded Frenchman Le Blon, whose wife stuck with him during 12 jouncing hours out on the circuit.

  The real miracle was that so big a crowd did come. People had started out along the thin, dusty road from Palermo the night before; they faced the same uncomfortable trip back when the race was over. And the race itself would last from dawn to dark; they would see the cars only once every three hours. Yet they came, no one ever understood why.

  As for the race itself, Pope had a gas line split when high in the mountains, the tank swiftly spilling into the dust. A tethered goat munching on some grass listened to Pope cursing. Fifty years later there was still no gas pump in that part of Sicily.

  Lancia's engine broke up under the pounding. Henri Fournier crashed into a stone wall. At a mountain depot, Florio's chauffeur, Rigal, stopped for fuel, but someone poured water in the tank instead, supposing that one liquid was as good as another.

  Le Blon and his young, pretty wife were plagued by tire trouble. Blowout after blowout stopped them, about 20 in all. In those days this meant hacking the torn rubber off with jackknives, hammering the new tire on, inserting the tube, wrenching the lugs tight, pumping the tire up, cranking the jack down, then cranking the engine back into life-20 strenuous minutes or more, and Le Blon and his wife kept at it all that brutally hot, dusty day.

  Somehow Madame Le Blon, her tongue swollen with thirst, her clothes gray with sweat and dust, goggles caked to her face, stayed with her husband to the end of the race. She must have loved him very much. They finished sixth, nearly three hours behind the winner, a man named Gagno who drove an Itala. His time was nine hours, 32 minutes, his average speed 29 miles per hour.

  The next year there were 50 entries in the Targa Florio, and it looked as if the race had caught on. But it hadn't. In 1908 there were only thirteen starters, and in 1909 the same. Hoping to attract cars, Florio dropped the distance to one lap; for spectators this meant a few seconds of excitement at the start, a three-hour wait, and a few seconds of excitement at the finish. Entertainment-starved as always, Sicily loved it. But contestants were not too interested. This race was entered by Florio himself, because of the shortage of entries. He finished second, driving a Fiat.

  This was not the only kind of competition Florio dabbled in. He also organized competitions in flying, boating, motorcycling, swimming, shooting, surf riding, floral displays, photography, local costumes, and the decoration of carts. He would spy young ladies designing dresses for a parade and immediately put up a prize for the best dress. He loved to play the grand seigneur, to watch other people race to his rules.

  Sometimes, in the most dashing manner he could think of, he would race himself--without taking any chances. By 1912, the Targa had been diverted from the mountains to a race around the entire island of Sicily. Florio announced that he himself would drive a Mercedes in the race; he invited two friends and a journalist to ride with him. For three hours Florio motored along. Now he was following tram lines. Just then the tram tracks mounted a sort of bridge. The road veered to the left, but Florio, daydreaming at the wheel, did not. There was a rending crash as the Mercedes impaled itself on the props supporting the bridge. Shaken, Florio announced his "retirement" from racing.

  Florio donated cups (always bearing his name) to races all over Europe; at one time there was both a "Coppa Florio" and "Targa Florio" in competition in his one race. He also dabbled at manufacturing his own make of car (to be called a "Florio," naturally) and played at the management of the Monza race circuit near Milan. It was during his management that crowds pressed so closely onto the circuit that more than two dozen were slaughtered by a runaway car. Only Florio's personal friendship with Mussolini, and some photos of police failing to restrain the crowd, got him off. But he was always generous to journalists, and he spoke their many languages, and so he enjoyed a good press to the end.

  He left nothing behind him except his race--which has gone on for so many years that nearly everyone has forgotten that a man named Florio ever existed. That race always was vitally important to him; except for the two world wars he would permit nothing to stop it. In 1957, the Portago crash in the Mille Miglia resulted in road racing's being banned throughout Italy. Desperate, Florio ran the Targa anyway, reorganized into a rally and attracting
not one name driver. It was as if the Targa--in any form at all--were his sole reason for being. Without it he would die.

  After nearly five years of holocaust, World War I had dragged to an end. Ten million young men had been slaughtered. Europe lay spent and bleeding. It would be 1921 before motor racing was resumed—except in Sicily, where Vincenzo Florio worked busily to resume the Targa at once. Whatever happened, the race must not be allowed to lapse.

  The race had always been run in the spring, and now Florio aimed for the spring of 1919. This proved too ambitious. There were no cars, no drivers. Interest in racing, smothered by the war, had to be stimulated first. Florio worked desperately to recruit entries, and by November felt that he had enough. Within a year of the final shot of the most murderous war of all time, two years before any other race, the Targa Florio was back on its feet.

  Just prior to the war, Florio had abandoned the original mountain circuit and run his races around the island, because he had been accused of diverting to the back country roads of his circuit, road allocations destined for the improvement of the most important Sicilian roads.

  By 1919, this charge had been forgotten, and the race turned back into the mountains. The circuit had been shortened from more than 90 miles to about 67, the new circuit bypassing the old one's deepest penetration of the island.

  Many of the best and most reckless prewar drivers were dead, including the great Georges Boillot, who had joined the French flying corps, attacked seven German planes single-handedly, and been machine-gunned in the skull for his trouble. Another Boillot had died storming a German trench, but in 1919, a third brother, Andre, arrived in Sicily to try to win the Targa Florio.