Targa Florio

The race was created in 1906 by wealthy race driver and automobile enthusiast Vincenzo Florio, who had previously founded the Coppa Florio race in Brescia, Lombardy in 1900. The inaugural 1906 race covered three laps of a 92-mile (148 km) circuit — 276 miles (444 km) in total — over treacherous mountain roads with around 2,000 corners per lap and over 3,600 feet (1,100 m) of elevation change. Alessandro Cagno won in nine hours, averaging 30 mph (50 km/h).

By the early to mid-1920s the course had been shortened to 67 miles (108 km) and ranked among Europe's most important races, predating both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Mille Miglia. The wins of Mercedes in the 1920s made a strong impression in Germany; Christian Werner became the first non-Italian winner since 1920 when he triumphed in 1924. In 1927 Eliska Junkova, one of the great female drivers in Grand Prix motor racing history, became the first woman to compete in the race. A Targa Florio motociclistica was held from 1920 to 1930; Ernst Jakob Henne won in 1928 on a BMW.

The 1931 race returned to the Grande course after roads and bridges on the Medio course near Polizzi Generosa were destroyed by landslides. The 1932 event introduced the Piccolo course, made possible by a road through Caltavuturo and Collesano ordered directly by Benito Mussolini at the request of Florio. Tazio Nuvolari won that last classic Targa organised by Vincenzo Florio.

By 1933 Florio, then 50, had been ousted by politics and the race declined. The AIACR European Championship, dominated by German Silver Arrows, the Le Mans 24 Hours, and the Mille Miglia all overshadowed the Targa. In 1935 an attempt to rename the race Targa Primavera Siciliana failed; the final Piccolo-course race of that era was won by an Alfa Romeo P3 "Type B" Grand Prix car. In 1936 a limited event saw a few amateurs complete two laps of the Piccolo course. From 1937 to 1940 a circuit race in Palermo was held for the Voiturette class, dominated by the Maserati 6CM; the last two rounds were won by Luigi Villoresi.

After the war, young organisers Antonio Pucci and Raimondo Lanza di Trabia revived the Targa Florio in 1948 as a single lap around the island. Clemente Biondetti won in a Ferrari 166 S after 12 hours. The 1949 race ran in rain from a night start, lasting over 13 hours. In 1950 no permissions for a mountain road race were granted, and another island tour was held. In 1951 the 72 km Piccolo course was restored; Franco Cortese won in a Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica. The next three years saw Lancia wins over eight laps for 576 km.

When the FIA World Sportscar Championship was introduced in 1953, the Mille Miglia was selected as the Italian round. After the Carrera Panamericana was cancelled following the 1954 event, its mid-October slot in the 1955 championship was taken by the Targa Florio. To fit championship requirements of 1,000 km or more, 13 laps were run for 936 km. Stirling Moss/Peter Collins and Juan Manuel Fangio/Karl Kling finished 1–2 in Mercedes-Benz 300 SLRs, securing the championship for Daimler-Benz over Scuderia Ferrari, Jaguar, and Maserati.

The 1956 championship excluded the Targa after Count Florio insisted on running 10 laps rather than the 8 demanded by CSI officials. The non-championship 1956 Targa Florio saw the first of many wins for Porsche.

Following the 1957 Mille Miglia disaster in which 12 people were killed, the Italian government banned motor racing on public roads. The 1957 Targa was held only as a regularity contest. From 1958, replacing the discontinued Mille Miglia, the Targa Florio returned to the World Sportscar Championship as the Italian round, a status it held through the 1973 season.

Several course variants were used across the race's history:

Grande (148 km / 92 mi): single lap, 1906–1911 and 1931

Island tour (975–1,080 km): 1912–1914 and 1948–1950; fastest island completion by Mario and Franco Bornigia in an Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Competizione in 12 hours, 26 minutes, 33 seconds at the 1950 race

Medio (108 km / 67 mi): 1919–1930; lap record 1 hr 21 min 21.6 sec by Achille Varzi in an Alfa Romeo P2 at the 1930 race (79.642 km/h)

Piccolo (72 km / 45 mi): 1932–1936 and 1951–1977; roughly 800–900 corners per lap

The start and finish were at Cerda. The counter-clockwise Piccolo lap descended from Caltavuturo and Collesano from altitudes over 600 metres (1,970 ft) to sea level, where cars raced along the Buonfornello straight along the coast — longer than the Mulsanne Straight at the Circuit de la Sarthe. The highest point was 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) at Geraci Siculo.

The course density of 18 to 23 corners per mile made it unlike any other circuit. For comparison, the 13-mile Nürburgring Nordschleife — the longest purpose-built circuit in the world — has about 180 corners. Learning the Piccolo course required at least 60 laps and could only be practised in public traffic. Porsche factory drivers watched onboard films of the circuit in the offseason. Average lap speeds on any Targa variant never exceeded 80 mph (128 km/h), against 150+ mph at Le Mans and 110 mph at the Nürburgring.

Lap records:

Piccolo course: Leo Kinnunen, 1970, in a Porsche 908/3 — 33 min 36 sec flat, 128.571 km/h (79.890 mph)

Piccolo course: Helmut Marko, 1972, in an Alfa Romeo 33TT3 — 33 min 41 sec, 128.253 km/h (79.693 mph) during a charge in which he recovered 2 minutes on Arturo Merzario and his Ferrari 312PB

Grande circuit: Achille Varzi in a Bugatti Type 51 at the 1931 race — 2 hr 3 min 54.8 sec, 70.7 km/h

Island tour fastest completion: Giovanni "Ernesto" Ceirano in a SCAT at the 1914 race — 16 hr 51 min 31.6 sec

In the late 1960s and early 1970s cars with up to 600 hp raced through small mountain villages with spectators standing directly beside the road. Porsche chose not to race its powerful 917K at the Targa, instead developing the nimbler 908 into the shorter 908/03 Spyder derived from hillclimbing cars.

During the 1971 race, Brian Redman crashed his Porsche 908/03 20 miles into the first lap when the steering broke; the car hit a stone wall and caught fire. Redman sustained second-degree burns across his body, and it took 45 minutes for medical help to reach him — he was found 12 hours later by teammates Pedro Rodriguez and Richard Attwood in a local clinic in Cefalu. In the same race, Alain de Cadenet in a Lola was knocked unconscious on the Buonfornello straight when bodywork flew from another car and struck him; the Lola went off road and caught fire. He was rescued by an active Italian military serviceman watching the race and taken to the same clinic as Redman, badly burned and having lost the use of his left eye.

Helmut Marko described the race as "totally insane." The 1973 Targa Florio, the last as a World Sportscar Championship round, saw an unusually high number of accidents during the event, two fatal: privateer Charles Blyth crashed his Lancia Fulvia HF into a trailer at the end of the Buonfornello straight; an Italian driver crashed his Alpine-Renault into a group of spectators, killing one. Seven further spectators were injured in practice accidents. The event was won by a Porsche 911 Carrera RS prototype, as the leading Alfa Romeo and Ferrari prototypes — some driven by F1 pilots including Jacky Ickx and Clay Regazzoni with little Targa experience — suffered crashes or mechanical failures.

The FIA mandated safety walls on all circuits from 1974; the 72 km public-road course made compliance financially and practically impossible. The race continued as a national event until 1977, when hillclimbing specialist Gabriele Ciuti went off the road and crashed at the fast curves at the end of the Buonfornello straight after bodywork flew off his BMW-powered Osella prototype. Two spectators were killed and five others — including Ciuti, who went into a coma but survived — were seriously injured. Local police forcibly took over and stopped the race on the fourth lap. Two other drivers had serious accidents in the same event.

Over its 71-year, 61-race history across six circuit configurations, only 9 people including spectators died at the Targa Florio — fewer than the 56 killed at the Mille Miglia over 30 years and 24 races, and the 25 killed at the Carrera Panamericana over 5 years. The low death toll is attributed to the circuit's extreme twistiness keeping average speeds below 80 mph even on the long coastal straight.

Porsche named the hardtop convertible version of the 911 the Targa, after the race. The Leyland P76 produced a "Targa Florio" special version to commemorate journalist-rallyist Evan Green's performance on the Targa course at a special stage of the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally.

Since 1992 the event has inspired modern recreations: Targa Tasmania in Australia (since 1992), Targa New Zealand (since 1995), Targa Newfoundland (since 2002), and Targa Great Barrier Reef (since 2018) in Queensland. The Targa Florio Australian Tribute is a regularity event for classic cars built between 1906 and 1976.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.