Mille Miglia Diary

7:30 AM: The driver, Adriano, arrives on time, having left home at an ungodly hour. The car is loaded and is on its way to Bassano. Peter and I spend the morning studying the roadbooks and waiting for news. The roadbooks are quite daunting. There is a spiral bound book for each day. While the maps are in the same “tulip” format that I’ve seen on other events, they are much more detailed, with extensive symbology for every possible roadside detail (churches, cemeteries, gas stations, stores, etc.) In addition, there are some very confusing tables laying out the regularity sections (time trials, passage controls and average trials) with terminology in Italian (CO, CT, PC, PM, etc.) which needs to be deciphered. In all there are 2200 kilometers, 144 time trials, 8 average time trials, 34 passage controls, and 23 time controls to cover. What have we gotten ourselves into?

11:00 AM: We receive word from Bassano that the problem is solved. The question was whether we had a fuel or spark issue and it turns out that the distributor has failed. Luckily Francesco has a spare on hand and the car is loaded and on its 100 km journey back.

3:30 PM: We receive the car, which is now driving perfectly. We decide to take a quick 15 km practice loop around the paddock area, which is detailed in the roadbook with signage, etc. This also allows Peter to get a feel for the car. We return to the paddock where cars are grouped together for a police-escorted drive to the “MM village” in the center of Brescia. In front of us are an American team in a Jaguar XK120. This is the second time that they have done the event and their advice is “Run your own Mille Miglia. You don’t have to get caught up in the craziness.” We are greeted by large crowds at the MM Village where the cars are “sealed” (metal tag is secured around the steering column). I run into the Americans again who ask what my starting time is tomorrow. I say I don’t know but do a brief mental calculation that we are number 253, and as cars leave every 30 seconds, and the first car leaves at 12:30 PM we should be leaving at around 2:36 PM. I also notice that many of the cars have elaborate timing devices, not just traditional rally timers, but complicated computer-like equipment. We have an app on our iphone that calculates speed and distance.

8:00 PM: We have a nice dinner in old town Brescia and go to bed, relieved that we are actually going to start the race, but still apprehensive about what lies ahead.