The 24. edizione Mille Miglia (Italian for "One Thousand Miles") was an auto race held on a course totalling , made up entirely of public roads around Italy, mostly on the outer parts of the country on 11âÂÂ12 May 1957. The route was based on a round trip between Brescia and Rome, with start/finish in Brescia. It was the 3rd round of the 1957 World Sportscar Championship season.
As in previous years, the event was a race against the clock, as the cars were released at one-minute intervals. In the Mille Miglia, the smaller displacement, slower cars started first. Each car number related to their allocated start time. For example, Wolfgang von Trips's car had the number 532, he left Brescia at 5:32am, while the first cars had started late in the evening on the previous day. Some drivers went with navigators, others did not; a number of local Italian drivers had knowledge of the routes being used and felt confident enough that they would not need one.
This race was won by Scuderia Ferrari driver Piero Taruffi without the aid of a navigator, the 3rd time in the past 4 years that a driver won the race without a navigator. He completed the 992-mile distance in 10 hours, 27 minutes and 47 seconds- an average speed of 94.841 mph (152.632 km/h). The Italian finished three minutes in front of his second-placed team-mate, the German driver, von Trips. Olivier Gendebien and Jacques Washer were next, ensuring Scuderia Ferrari finished 1-2-3. The race is marked with fatal crashes of drivers Alfonso de Portago and Josef H. Göttgens, the former involving in an accident that claimed the lives of nine spectators near the road.
A total of 391 cars were entered for the event, across 25 classes based on engine sizes, ranging from up to 750cc to over 2.0-litre, for Grand Touring Cars, Touring Cars and Sport Cars. Of these, 310 cars started the event. The limit on the number of starts was reduced from previous years. The Auto Club of Brescia took steps to try to combat the unsportsmanlike tactics by which some competitors sought to negate the procedure of drawing lots for departure times.
Even though the event continued to count towards the World Sportscar Championship, only Ferrari and Maserati entered works teams. Officine Alfieri Maserati was in receivership but still managed to have two 450Ss for Stirling Moss and Jean Behra, a brand new 350S for Hans Herrmann and older 300S for the Italian Giorgio Scarlatti. Meanwhile, Scuderia Ferrari entered four Sports cars, to be driven by Taruffi, von Trips, Peter Collins and Alfonso de Portago. They also entered Olivier Gendebien in a Grand Touring car. Britain was represented by a single semi-works Jaguar D-Type, entered by the Scottish team Ecurie Ecosse for Ron Flockhart.
One of the more unusual entrants was a Kurtis Kraft roadster for Akton Miller, a car constructed in the US, with a powerful 6.4 litre Chrysler engine, mounted on a space-frame single seat chassis, designed for use on American oval circuits.
Soon after the race started, Maserati's hopes vanished. Before the event even started, Behra was out, having crashed his 450S during pre-test. Moss was forced to retire soon after the start, having rather dangerously snapped a brake pedal. Herrmann did not get as far as the Ravenna checkpoint.
In Guidizzolo, less than 40 miles from the finish in Brescia, de Portago's front tyre exploded. He lost control of the car; it hit a telephone pole, jumped over a brook, then hit several spectators. The Ferrari then bounced back on the road, hitting more spectators, slid over the road, spinning, and ended up, wheels down, in a brook at the other side of the road. In addition to de Portago, his American navigator Edmund Gunner Nelson and nine spectators â among them five children â were killed, and a further 20 were injured. De Portago's body was found near the car, severed in half.
Enzo Ferrari was prosecuted on 11 counts of manslaughter. He was acquitted in 1961 after a panel of automobile engineers told the court that the blowout was probably caused by the car striking a "cat's eye" road marker.
Dutchman Josef Göttgens crashed his Triumph TR3 near Florence and later died of his injuries in a Florence hospital.
When Taruffi arrived back in Brescia, he was dueling with von Trips but had a three-minute advantage over him due to a later start time. Gendebien finished third, completing a top three sweep for Ferrari. Maserati experienced a debacle with only Scarlatti arriving in Brescia in fourth place overall, followed 15 minutes later by the Porsche 550 RS of Umberto Maglioli. Taruffi reached Brescia after racing for 10 hours and 27 minutes after he left Brescia at 05:35.
Three days after the race, the Italian government decreed the end of the Mille Miglia and banned all motor racing on the public roads of Italy. Taruffi thus became the last winner of this famous event.
Of the 310 starters, 172 were classified as finishers. Therefore, only a selection of notable racers has been listed below.
Class Winners are in Bold text.