{"id":19158,"date":"2019-05-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/bugattis-fifth-victory-at-the-targa-florio\/"},"modified":"2020-10-06T11:45:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T11:45:14","slug":"bugattis-fifth-victory-at-the-targa-florio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/en\/bugattis-fifth-victory-at-the-targa-florio\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugatti’s fifth victory at the Targa Florio"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although it hasn’t been held since the late 1970s, the Targa Florio is still known to many racing fans today. For the first time it was held in 1906, when the entrepreneur Vincenzo Florio decided to organize his own car race on the streets of his family in the Madonie region of Sicily. It wasn’t a simple, four-kilometer circuit, as one might expect today. Instead, originally one lap was over 148 kilometers long. The first race saw the arrival of ten vehicles, which were dispatched every ten minutes. After 9 hours and 32 minutes the winner crossed the finish line. In 1919, the organizers shortened the lap to 108 kilometers, in 1932 again to just 72 kilometers. Nevertheless, the Targa Florio was considered one of the most demanding races in the world and therefore challenged several manufacturers to bring their best drivers and cars to the startline. From time to time it even received the status of a World Championship race for sports car racing. Starting in 1978, the event was converted into a rally with shorter special stages along the original route.

In the 1920s, more and more Bugatti racing cars came along. Next to private drivers also the factory team joined in and first won the race in 1925 with a Type 35 and the Italian driver Bartolomeo Costantini at the wheel. He also won in the following year, this time with a Type 35T. In 1927 Emilio Materassi drove a Type 35C to victory and in 1928 Albert Divo crossed the finish line first with a Type 35B. Finally, the ‘Usines Bugatti’, as the factory team was officially called, made history in 1929 when they took the victory for the fifth time in a row, again with Albert Divo at the wheel of a Type 35C. It was the first and only time in the history of this race that the same team won five times. A quite remarkable achievement, after all, as the 108-kilometer course had more than 1,400 corners and slope sections, which hardly any driver could memorize. The race back then went over five laps, so about 540 kilometers of total distance. In contrast to today’s closed race tracks with clinically clean asphalt, the often narrow mountain roads of the Targa Florio still showed their original gravel surface and were anything but free. Behind every tight corner, donkey carts or herds of cattle could lurk on the road. Especially during the training days, which were advertised in the weeks before the event, there was normal traffic out on the streets even until the 1970s. The participants had to work their way through.<\/p>\n\n\n

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