Targa Florio
The Targa Florio was a public road endurance race held in the mountains of Sicily near the island’s capital of Palermo — the oldest sports car racing event in the world, founded in 1906 by Vincenzo Florio, a wealthy Sicilian aristocrat and automobile enthusiast who had earlier created the Coppa Florio at Brescia. From its inception through 1977, the Targa represented one of motorsport’s ultimate challenges: narrow mountain roads, 800–900 corners per lap, no circuit infrastructure, and enormous distances from team depots. Lap speeds never exceeded 80 mph (128 km/h) — not from lack of power, but from the relentless severity of the Sicilian terrain. The circuit evolved over its 71-year history through several configurations; the final form — the 72 km Piccolo Circuito delle Madonie — was used from 1951 until the race’s end, with drivers completing it repeatedly: in the 1970s typically 11 laps totalling 792 km. The race was part of the World Sportscar Championship from 1955 to 1973, and Helmut Marko set the all-time lap record in 1972 in an Alfa Romeo 33TT3 at 33 minutes 41 seconds (128 km/h average).
Alfa Romeo is the Targa Florio’s most successful marque, with 11 overall victories — more than any other manufacturer. The relationship between Alfa and the Targa was forged at the very moment the Quadrifoglio Verde was born: in 1923, Ugo Sivocci painted a green four-leaf clover on his Alfa Romeo RL TF for luck before the race and won. Antonio Ascari had been leading the race before Sivocci passed him — two Alfa men fighting for the same prize. The clover was immediately adopted by Alfa Romeo for all its racing cars thereafter; when Sivocci was killed testing the P1 at Monza that September, the grieving team left the P1 undecorated — the only Alfa racing car without the Quadrifoglio Verde. Sivocci’s 1923 win thus carries a double weight: it started a dynasty and a symbol simultaneously.
Alfa’s dominance of the Targa reached its peak across the 1930s. Achille Varzi won in 1930 in the Alfa Romeo P2 — already an aging but still formidable design — beating the contemporary Maseratis and Bugattis of the period. Then the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 era produced the race’s most celebrated winning streak: Tazio Nuvolari won back-to-back in 1931 and 1932 in the 8C 2300 Monza spider, a car specifically suited to the Targa’s punishing demands of torque and agility over outright power. Antonio Brivio won in 1933, and Varzi returned to win in 1934 in the Alfa Romeo P3, followed by Brivio again in 1935 — making it six consecutive Alfa victories from 1930 to 1935. Between 1930 and 1937, Alfa Romeo won the Targa Florio every year but one. No other manufacturer has matched that consistency on the Madonie roads.
Alfa Romeo’s Targa campaigns in the 1930s were inseparable from the work of Touring Superleggera. The 8C 2300 Spider bodies that Nuvolari drove to victory in 1931 and 1932, and the 8C 2900B cars entered by Alfa Corse from 1936 onward, wore coachwork from Carrozzeria Touring — the Milanese coachbuilder that invented the Superleggera construction method in 1936 and applied it to Alfa’s most competitive chassis. The circuit’s demands were absolute: with 800–900 corners per lap and rough Sicilian tarmac, every car competed under extreme mechanical stress. Brakes — dependent on friction between pad and drum — were worn down through constant use; tyres abraded against stone-scattered mountain roads; gearboxes cycled through thousands of changes per lap. The race separated cars by their ability to survive, not merely to accelerate. Alfa Romeo’s ability to build machinery that could sustain 70-km Sicilian laps with Touring-bodied lightness and mechanical integrity was the technical foundation of the six-year winning streak.
That streak ended abruptly. The final season of Alfa’s dominance — 1937 — coincided with Vittorio Jano’s departure from the company and the subsequent period of institutional friction when Enzo Ferrari was absorbed into Alfa Corse and the Spanish engineer Wilfredo Ricart was imposed as design chief over Ferrari’s objections. By the 1939 Targa Florio — held at the Parco della Favorita circuit in Palermo on 14 May — the once-dominant Alfa Romeo programme had faltered: Luigi Villoresi won in a Maserati Tipo 6CM, and Alfa did not take the overall victory. The institutional upheaval that produced the Ferrari–Ricart conflict at Portello appears to have registered on the Targa scorecards. The race Alfa Romeo had made its own through six consecutive wins was lost in the year Ferrari was dismissed.
The Autodelta era renewed the Alfa-Targa connection four decades later. The Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 programme — run by Carlo Chiti’s Autodelta operation — delivered victories in 1971 (Nino Vaccarella partnering with a local hero’s home win) and again in 1975, when Arturo Merzario and Toine Hezemans won in the 33TT12 as part of the World Championship for Makes campaign. The Targa Florio was discontinued after 1977, when hillclimbing specialist Gabriele Ciuti’s car left the road and killed two spectators, injuring five more. The FIA had since 1974 mandated safety barriers on all sanctioned circuits; retrofitting them onto 72 km of open Sicilian mountain road was impossible, and the race that had helped define Alfa Romeo’s identity could not continue in its traditional form.
Connections
- Alfa Romeo — record 11 victories; most successful marque in Targa Florio history, source: wikipedia.org
- Ugo Sivocci — won 1923 (RL TF); painted Quadrifoglio Verde before race, source: afra.it
- Antonio Ascari — led 1923 before Sivocci passed; competed multiple editions, source: wikipedia.org
- Achille Varzi — won 1930 (P2) and 1934 (P3), source: wikipedia.org
- Tazio Nuvolari — won 1931, 1932 (8C 2300 Monza), source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo P2 — 1930 winning car (Varzi), source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 — 1931, 1932 winning car (Nuvolari), source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo P3 — 1934, 1935 winning car (Varzi, Brivio), source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 — won 1971, 1975 (Autodelta era), source: wikipedia.org
- Quadrifoglio Verde — symbol born at 1923 Targa Florio, source: afra.it
- Touring Superleggera — built Superleggera coachwork for 8C 2300 and 8C 2900 Targa entrants in 1930s, source: touringsuperleggera.eu
- Enzo Ferrari — institutional friction with Ricart at Alfa Corse (1938–39) coincided with end of Alfa’s Targa winning streak, source: wikipedia.org
- Wilfredo Ricart — design chief whose appointment triggered Ferrari-Alfa conflict during 1938–39 Targa period, source: wikipedia.org
Alfa Romeo [relates] Targa Florio Touring Superleggera [relates] Targa Florio Enzo Ferrari [relates] Targa Florio Alfa Romeo [precedes] Enzo Ferrari