Described by Enzo as “the most beautiful race in the world”, it was a crowning moment for many champions and their navigators, including Alberto Ascari and Stirling Moss who sat beside Motor Sport’s very own Denis Jenkinson in 1955.
The original route saw drivers race from Brescia to Rome and back again, in a figure of eight across Italy. Later versions took the form of a clockwise lap around the country, with Brescia still hosting the start and finish.
The event drew more than five million spectators over its two-day running, adding to the risk of the perilously dangerous race. Over its 30-year history, more than 50 people died in crashes related to the Mille Miglia —often on the fastest early sections between Brescia and Ravenna — a 200-mile stretch of road that challenged even the very best drivers.
After the banning of the race in 1957, the Mille Miglia returned as a rally for three years, before it ceased altogether. It was finally revived in 1977 as an historic regularity rally to bring the spectacle of the historic event back, while reducing the danger.
Ferrari film reviews
Although there are still more than two months to go before its release in cinemas, the first Ferrari reviews are in. You’ll also be able to read Motor Sport’s verdict shortly.
Its current score on Rotten Tomatoes is 65%, which places the film in the average band of releases, but there is almost universal praise for the high-paced, powerful and detailed racing sequences, in particular the scenes of monumental crashes.
The Daily Telegraph awarded it four stars out of five, praising the racing scenes for being “as electrifyingly, wind-whippingly real as anything in the genre’s history”, and describing Driver as slipping “naturally into hand-clasping patrician mode”.
Rolling Stone is also wowed by the “spectacular” racing. “With sports car after sports car revving across fields, around mountains, and down city streets lined with onlookers, you’ll wonder how they pulled it off,” it says, also describing a crash that was so “extraordinarily visceral and violent” that it left the theatre in stunned silence. It’s most lavish praise, however, was reserved for Penelope Cruz as Enzo’s downtrodden wife Laura. “An Oscar nod is all but guaranteed,” it says.
Cruz and the crash scenes are favoured by The Guardian, but it only awards three stars out of five, saying: “The film itself does not find a way to absorb the pointless culpable horror of it all, relapsing into a stolid, almost joyless determination.”
It’s a similar verdict from The Times, only with just a two out of five star rating. after criticising the slow plot: “Enzo and co are left treading water, or spinning their wheels, as Laura and Lina vie for their man’s affections… Driver is unable to bring anything unexpected or challenging to this template.”
