Ten days in Sicily — Targa Florio · Trofeo Marathon · GP 1966

by Tony Adriaensens and Brian Joscelyne

This book is based on a story of four British young men who went to Sicily in May 1966 to watch the last real road race, the Targa Florio. Arriving in time for the Syracuse Grand Prix they drove their Fiat 124 saloon press car to Syracuse to watch this first GP race in Europe for the new three-litre formula. Not all teams had a new 3-litre engine ready - except for Ferrari, Brabham and Cooper, all still used "old" machinery. John Surtees won the race in the new Ferrari. Jack Brabham experienced trouble early in the race with his Repco 3-litre V8 and was out as were both the new Cooper-Maseratis driven by Jo Siffert and privateer Guy Ligier.

The next weekend - May 8 - all four were present for the start of the Targa Florio. They experienced the excitement of the pre-race practice runs, combined with a commemorative run to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Targa - the Trofeo Marathon, for veteran and vintage cars with special guest Elisabeth Junek.

However, the Targa was overshadowed by severe storms and heavy rain. The result was that 30 cars retired among them all the pre-race favourites like local hero Nino Vaccarella on Ferrari P3 and Gunther Klass on the 8-cylinder Porsche Carrera 6. The exciting race was won by Willy Mairesse and Herbert Müller in a Scuderia Filipinetti-entered Porsche Carrera 6.

All four gentlemen were amateur photographers who used Kodachrome slide film, famous for its vivid colour quality. Author Tony Adriaensens had the chance to use their photo collections which he combined with work from other photographers to get a complete, high quality visual on all participants to the 1966 Targa Florio.

Two of the surviving "travellers" wrote down their personal memories to tell the story of their journey to Sicily. This, in combination with the personal experiences from drivers (Nino Vaccarelli, Ignazio Capuano, Jack Wheeler, Alan Minshaw and Rauno Aaltonen, etc.) plus period race reports taken from the best magazines of the day in English, German, French and Italian gives you a complete view on what happend in those Ten days in Sicily:

• May 1: XV Gran Premio di Siracusa
  First Grand Prix in Europe for the new 3-litre Formula
• May 6: Trofeo Marathon
  Meeting Internazionale di Sicilia per la 50. Targa Florio
• May 8: 50th Targa Florio
  Difficult, exciting, full of incidents and emotions - real and false

Buch, Hardcover, 25 x 22,5 cm, 392 Seiten, 150 farbige und 90 s/w-Abbildungen, englischer Text
limitiert auf 1.000 Exemplare
Einzelstück - Zustand: sehr gut