page_title: Mille Miglia
section_title: Before World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Mille Miglia / Before World War II
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Piazza della Vittoria. Gli organizzatori della XV 1000 Miglia, 1948. Da sinistra: Giulio Binda, cognato di Franco Mazzotti (Binda rappresentava la famiglia Mazzotti dopo la morte di Franco nel 1943), Aymo Maggi, Filippo Tassara (Presidente dell’Automobil Club di Brescia), Giovanni Canestrini e Renzo Castagneto.[1] English: Piazza della Vittoria in Brescia (in back: The Leonessa d'Italia monument). We see the organizers of the XV 1000 Miglia on 2 May 1948. From left: Giulio Binda, cousin of Franco Mazzotti (Binda represented the Mazzotti family since Franco's death in 1943), Aymo Maggi, Filippo Tassara (President of Automobil Club di Brescia), Giovanni Canestrini and Renzo Castagneto.[2]
context_page_description: The Mille Miglia was an open-road, motorsport endurance race established in 1927 by the young Counts Francesco Mazzotti and Aymo Maggi, which took place in Italy twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957.
  Like the older Targa Florio and later the Carrera Panamericana, the MM made grand tourers like Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes Benz and Porsche famous. The race brought out an estimated five million spectators.
  From 1953 until 1957, the Mille Miglia was also a round of the World Sports Car Championship.
  Since 1977, the "Mille Miglia" has been reborn as a regularity race for classic and vintage cars. Participation is limited to cars, produced no later than 1957, which had attended the original race. The route is similar to that of the original race, maintaining the point of departure/arrival in Viale Venezia in Brescia.
context_section_description: The race was established by the young Counts Aymo Maggi and Franco Mazzotti, sports manager Renzo Castagneto and motoring journalist Giovanni Canestrini, apparently in response to the Italian Grand Prix being moved from their home town of Brescia to Monza. Together with a group of wealthy associates, they chose a race from Brescia to Rome and back, a figure-eight shaped course of roughly 1500 km — or a thousand Roman miles. Later races followed twelve other routes of varying total lengths.
  The first race started on 26 March 1927 with seventy-seven starters — all Italian — of which fifty-one had reached the finishing post at Brescia by the end of the race. The first Mille Miglia covered 1,618 km, corresponding to just over 1,005 modern miles. Entry was strictly restricted to unmodified production cars, and the entrance fee was set at a nominal 1 lira. The winner, Giuseppe Morandi, completed the course in just under 21 hours 5 minutes, averaging nearly 78 km/h (48 mph) in his 2-litre OM; Brescia based OM swept the top three places.
  Tazio Nuvolari won the 1930 Mille Miglia in an Alfa Romeo 6C.  Having started after his teammate and rival Achille Varzi, Nuvolari was leading the race but was still behind Varzi (holder of provisional second position) on the road. In the dim half-light of early dawn, Nuvolari tailed Varzi with his headlights off, thereby not being visible in the latter's rear-view mirrors. He then overtook Varzi on the straight roads approaching the finish at Brescia, by pulling alongside and flicking his headlights on.
  The event was usually dominated by local Italian drivers and marques, but three races were won by foreign cars. The first one was in 1931, when German driver Rudolf Caracciola (famous in Grand Prix racing) and riding mechanic Wilhelm Sebastian won with their big supercharged Mercedes-Benz SSKL, averaging for the first time more than 100 km/h (63 mph) in a Mille Miglia. Caracciola had received very little support from the factory due to the economic crisis at that time. He did not have enough mechanics to man all necessary service points. After performing a pit stop, they had to hurry across Italy, cutting the triangle-shaped course short in order to arrive in time before the race car.
  The race was briefly stopped by Italian leader Benito Mussolini after an accident in 1938 killed a number of spectators. When it resumed in April 1940 shortly before Italy entered World War II, it was dubbed the Grand Prix of Brescia, and held on a 100 km (62 mi) short course in the plains of northern Italy that was lapped nine times.
  This event saw the debut of the first Enzo Ferrari-owned marque AAC (Auto Avio Costruzioni) (with the Tipo 815). Despite being populated (due to the circumstances even more than usual) mainly by Italian makers, it was the aerodynamically improved BMW 328 driven by Germans Huschke von Hanstein/Walter Bäumer that won the high-speed race with an all-time high average of 166 km/h (103 mph).
caption: Some of the founders: From left, Giulio Binda, Franco Mazzotti, Aymo Maggi, Filippo Tassara, Giovanni Canestrini and Renzo Castagneto, pictured in the 1940s.
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