Mille Miglia 2010

It started around 7 am Saturday. Woke to engine sounds reverberating against the medieval walls of Viterbo thinking "it's too early for the Mille Miglia, they must have left at 5-something from Rome! Must be some kid on his moto." But it kept going, the same sound (or pretty much) over and over again.
"The Ferraris?" I thought...."but weren't they just going to meet the rally in Rome?" Nope! The Ferraris were driving the route too, all 100 or so of them. Larry woke up and staggered out into the street--sure enough, Ferrari after Ferrari (modern road cars) passed by in the drizzle, with license plates from all over the world.

After 10 or 15 of those (no photos of them) went by it was time for caffe and breakfast, the antique race cars weren't due for another hour or so.

Larry got out to the piazza in time to see the first real Millie Miglia entrants come past, they seemed to be in order of vintage, older ones first. His favorite was probably the '53 Fiat 500 (the last photo) though there were many exotic and beautiful machines, each stopping to get a card punched while an announcer told the crowd the names of the driver and passenger, their country and the year, make and model of the car. Then they were off a in a cloud of exhaust to their next stop, all 375 of them.

I didn't know there were SO many gull-winged Mercedes cars in existence! It seemed most of them were here, including one piloted by Mika Haakinen and David Coulthard, both ex-F1 drivers. You can see the photo of the press scrum around the car once they found out who was inside and the doors were opened.

In addition to the official Mille Miglia participants there were a few other folks out driving their antique cars along with route, plus a large number of modern support, press and other vehicles including a group of Mercedes cars--presumably provided by the car firm to some folks they liked for some reason. THESE folks were the jerks of the whole morning, roaring through the checkpoint at dangerous speeds, screeching tires, etc. One bozo was wearing a race driving suit!
Of course the REAL racers, Haakinen, Coulthard, Jackie Stewart, etc. were in normal clothes and driving the cars with respect, unlike these other bozos. Mercedes should rethink this idea or at least pay closer attention to who is driving their cars.

Heather came down to join Larry near the end of the rally, just as his camera battery expired, so it was soon time to walk back home (all 200 meters!) think about pranzo and wait for the Giro d'Italia TV broadcast.

Enjoy the photos but don't ask us to identify the cars, we didn't get an entry list.