Doug Nye: Italy's attempt to keep racing in the ghastly circumstances of 1940
“In 1940, motor sport was out of the question, unless you were Italian”. Four months into the Second World War, motor racing continued in Italy with a truncated Mille Miglia course; Tripoli Grand Prix and Targa Florio
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Future enthusiasts will surely recall 2020 as having been a truncated racing season, yet one still jam-packed considering the Covid pandemic, lockdown, world economies tanking, and all the recent – bleeagh… In fact the milestone calendar years – each decade’s ‘noughty’, such as 1900, 1910, 1920 or 1930 – have often featured motor sport surviving adversity.
However, none of these punctuated or restricted seasons has ever been run in quite such ghastly circumstances as that of 1940. When the year began, Europe was already four months into the Second World War, with Great Britain and France locked in a renewed conflict with Germany. Any form of serious motor sport was out of the question, unless – of the leading nations – one was Italian…
Fascist Italy had – just like the Third Reich in Germany – projected national prestige through international motor racing. Alfa Romeos campaigned for years by the Scuderia Ferrari and, since the start of 1938, by the replacement new Alfa Corse in-house factory team, had earned much credit in Grand Prix, subsidiary-class vetturetta and sports car racing. The Maserati marque had weighed-in with its own share of success – especially at vetturetta (effectively Formula 2) level. But then on September 3, 1939, what would become global conflict had erupted. Mussolini’s supposed pact of steel with Hitler’s Germany immediately appeared somewhat more flexible than its most committed supporters might have imagined, as the Italian state wavered over what might really transpire before committing arms to either side – or declaring neutrality. Such a big decision; back a winner or back the losers became Rome’s problem…
