Bring Back Real Road Racing! Well, Maybe Not...

Readers of this blog know how much Pilote admires the old, "real," road races like the Mille Miglia and the Targa Florio.  The only thing that comes close to them in challenging a modern racer are the pavement stages of World Rally Championship events.  But Special Stages are much shorter, and a driver can learn them because they repeat.  Not to mention modern aids like radio communication between driver, navigator, and base.  And video and computer tracings from previous runs.

But I digress...  I've often thought it would be great to bring back real cars on real roads (and the WRC comes close).  If crowd control could be...controlled...which it can't, wouldn't it be fun to bring back 10 laps of the 44-mile Targa Florio course?  That would separate the drivers who can read a road from the ones who can shave the last .001 second from laps and laps of a 3-mile closed course as smooth as a billiard table.

But this video shows why we should savor the past for what it was--and leave it there.  Thanks to Watchtower for alerting me to it.  He said it made him nervous just to watch it.  Me too.  A ton and a half of WRC car crashing through somebody's living room window at 100+ is a price I'm unwilling to pay for the return of real road racing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jSYiU-JdRw

Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson in their legendary Mille Migla win in 1955: 99 m.p.h. for 1000 miles.  "Jenks" pre-
figured modernity by putting his route notes on a long strip which he wound around two shafts in a waterproof case.
He scrolled through the notes as the race progressed, communicating them to Moss with hand-signals.