Road Race

As we appr­oached Le Mans 2005, I felt I should write a piece about the 1955 catastrophe for a Website I helped found (www.pitpass.com). With several million words stored on my PC, all I had to do was pull out a piece I wrote 10 years ago to use as the basis, because none of the facts had changed. Like everyone else, I had written that road racing declined after the accident at Le Mans and by “Fon” de Portago’s fatal crash in the 1957 Mille Miglia, which killed several children.

After Le Mans, several races were cancelled and Switzerland banned circuit racing altogether. After 1957, the Mille Miglia was never again run as a race. The thesis seemed good, not least because everyone said the same, but something in the back of my mind said that everyone, me included, was wrong. Then I remembered something that Peter Arundell once told me.