The race was created in
1906 by the wealthy pioneer race driver and automobile enthusiast,
Vincenzo Florio, who had started the
Coppa Florio race in
Brescia,
Lombardy in 1900. The Targa also claimed to be a world event not to be missed. Renowned artists, such as
Alexandre Charpentier and
Leonardo Bistolfi, were commissioned to design medals. A magazine was initiated,
Rapiditas, which aimed to enhance, with graphic and photographic reproductions of the race, the myth of the car and the typical character of modern life, speed. One of the toughest competitions in Europe, the first Targa Florio covered 3 laps of a 92-mile (148 km) circuit, totaling , traversing through winding bends and multiple hairpin curves on treacherous mountain roads, with around 2,000 corners per lap and over of elevation change, at heights where severe changes in climate frequently occurred. Alessandro Cagno won the inaugural 1906 race in nine hours, averaging 30 miles per hour (50 km/h). By the early to mid-1920s, the Targa Florio course had been shortened to 67 miles (108 km) and had become one of Europe's most important races, as neither the
24 Hours of Le Mans nor the
Mille Miglia had been established yet.
Grand Prix races were still isolated events, not a series like today's F1. The wins of
Mercedes (not yet merged with
Benz) in the 1920s made a big impression in Germany, especially that of German
Christian Werner in 1924, as he was the first non-Italian winner since 1920.
Rudolf Caracciola repeated a similar upset win at the
Mille Miglia a couple of years later. In 1927,
Eliska Junkova, one of the great female drivers in
Grand Prix motor racing history, became the first woman to ever compete in the race. In addition to the automobile event, a
Targa Florio motociclistica was held from 1920 to 1930.
Ernst Jakob Henne (1904-2005) won in 1928 on a BMW before moving to four wheel BMWs. The 1931 race saw a one-off return to the
Grande course after roads and bridges specifically unique to the
Medio course near
Polizzi Generosa had been destroyed by landslides during severe rainstorms; the 1932 event saw the first use of the
Piccolo course after a road connecting
Caltavuturo and
Collesano was constructed on the direct orders of
Benito Mussolini himself by request of Florio. That road leads down into the valley, crosses the river on a small bridge, and climbs the hillside on the eastern side to join the Polizzi-Collesano road at
Bivio Polizzi. In the 2010s, the western part of the road was interrupted by landslides.
Tazio Nuvolari won this last
classic Targa organized by
Vincenzo Florio. By 1933, 50 year old Florio was ousted by politics and automobile club members, and the race named after him suffered a decline, with fewer participants. The mixture of Grand Prix cars and sportscars at the Targa could not continue for long. For the new kind of single-seat GP racers, the
AIACR European Championship was introduced, dominated by German
Silver Arrows. The
24 Hours of Le Mans race with its fast straights and big supercharged Bentleys defined sportscar endurance racing. Even within Italy, many events became more significant, like the
Mille Miglia, or the
Tripoli Grand Prix in Italian North Africa. Without the international contacts and influence of Florio, the Targa could not uphold an unchallenged slot in the calendars. The 20 May
1934 Moroccan Grand Prix was held on the same day. In 1935, the
Automobile Club di Sicilia tried to erase the name of Florio and call it
Targa Primavera Siciliana, but that failed. It was the last real Targa event in the mountains, won by a
Alfa Romeo P3 "Type B" Grand Prix car, with Grand Prix drivers like
Antonio Brivio or
Louis Chiron. In 1936, the club could not organise a proper Targa. With time running out, on 20 December 1936, they barely managed to have a few amateurs with small touring cars do two laps of the
Piccolo course to put a 1936 Targa Florio entry into history books. From 1937 to 1940, a circuit race in Palermo was held for the
Voiturette racing class, dominated by the
Maserati 6CM. The last two rounds were won by
Luigi Villoresi. In 1941, even the
Floriopolis pit facilities were dismantled. After the war, in 1948, young men like
Antonio Pucci and
Raimondo Lanza di Trabia managed to revive the Targa Florio, once again as a single lap around the island, won by a
Ferrari 166 S of
Clemente Biondetti after 12 hours. The 1949 saw a return of Florio to the organisation, but the race was held in March, in rain, and started at night, ending after over 13 hours. Still no permissions for a mountain road race were given in 1950, thus it was yet another big lap around the island,
10° Giro di Sicilia, over 12 hours. In 1951, Giro and Targa were two separate events, as the 72 kilometer long or short
Piccolo course could finally be used again, for a Targa that lasted only 7+ hours. Italian veteran racer
Franco Cortese won in a British
Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica. While the Targa was re-established, it was mostly a national event by and for Italians. The next three years saw Lancia wins. Distance was set to 8 laps for 576 km in over 6 hours. In 1953, the
FIA World Sportscar Championship was introduced, with the
Mille Miglia held in May being chosen as the Italian round each year. When the
Carrera Panamericana was cancelled after the 1954 event, its mid-October slot in the
1955 World Sportscar Championship was taken over by the
1955 Targa Florio. Sicily was back in the focus of international racing. To fit into the Championship, which typically required races of 1000km or more, 14 laps in about 10 hours would have been necessary, nearly doubling distance and time, but a compromise was reached to do only 13 laps for 936 km. The additional second Italian round gave the Daimler-Benz factory team a late opportunity to beat
Scuderia Ferrari,
Jaguar and
Maserati for the title, and for a third Mercedes Targa win since 1922. After having missed the first two WC rounds, and having pulled out of the fatal
1955 Le Mans 24h race, only two championship race wins had been scored by the
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. In the sixth round, a 1–2 win was needed, to prevent competitors from scoring points for 2nd place. After three weeks of practise, and despite a number of incidents, the 300 SLRs of
Stirling Moss/
Peter Collins and
Juan Manuel Fangio/
Karl Kling finished after 9+ hours only minutes ahead of the best Ferrari and the 3rd SLR, thus securing the title. The
1956 World Sportscar Championship had only five rounds, as Le Mans was excluded for limiting prototype engine capacity to only 2.5 liter rather than 3.0, and the Targa for Count Florio insisting on running 10 laps rather than only 8 as demanded by the CSI officials who were much more concerned now about safety. International entrants took part anyway, and the non-championship 1956 Targa Florio saw the first of many wins for Porsche. Disaster struck at the
1957 Mille Miglia in which 12 people were killed. The Italian government decreed the end of the Mille Miglia and banned all motor racing on the public roads of Italy, which also affected the Targa Florio in that year. The race was cancelled, but in November a regularity contest was held as 1957 Targa Florio. In the
1958 World Sportscar Championship, the Targa again became a round in the Championship, replacing the discontinued Mille Miglia as the Italian round of the Championship, run in May. Championship status was held until the
1973 World Sportscar Championship.
Course variants Several versions of the track were used. It started with a single lap of a circuit from 1906 to 1911 and 1931. From 1912 to 1914 a tour around the perimeter of Sicily was used, with a single lap of , lengthened to from 1948 to 1950. The 146 km "Grande" circuit was then shortened twice, the first time to , the version used from 1919 to 1930, and then to the circuit used from 1932 to 1936 and 1951 to 1977. From 1951 to 1958, the long coastal island tour variant was used for a separate event called the Giro di Sicilia (
Lap of Sicily). The start and finish took place at
Cerda. The counter-clockwise lap lead from
Caltavuturo and
Collesano from an altitude over down to
sea level, where the cars raced from
Campofelice di Roccella on the
Buonfornello straight along the coast, a straight that was even longer than the
Mulsanne Straight at the
Circuit de la Sarthe in
Le Mans. The longest version of the circuit went south through Caltavuturo (whereas the shortest version of the open-road circuit went east just before entry into Caltavuturo, through a mountainous section directly to Collesano) through an extended route through elevation changes, and climbed uphill through the nearby towns of Castellana, Sottana, Madonnuzza and Miranti, twisting around mountains up to the highest point- at Geraci Siculo, dropping down into Castelbuono, twisting around more mountains and passing through Isnello and the village of Mongerrati and then rejoined the most recent version of the track at Collesano. The second version of the track also went south through Caltavuturo and took a shortcut starting right before Castellana to Collesano via the town of
Polizzi Generosa. A closed circuit called Favorita Park in the Sicilian capital of
Palermo was used from 1937 to 1940. Most of the roads used for all the variations of the circuits are still in use and can be driven on today, but some are affected by landslides and potholes. The Buonfornello straight was not upgraded to a motorway as the
Autostrade motorway was built nearby. The challenge of the Targa was unprecedented in its difficulty and the driving experience of any of the course variants was unlike any other circuit in the world other than perhaps that of the Nürburgring in Germany and (for motorcycles) and the much faster but similar
Snaefell Mountain Course on the
Isle of Man. All of the variants had 18 to 23 corners per mile (11 to 14 corners per kilometer)- the original
Grande circuit had in the realm of 2,000 corners per lap, the
Medio had about 1,300-1,400 corners per lap and the final iteration of the course, the
Piccolo circuit had about 800-900 corners per lap. To put that into perspective, most purpose-built circuits have between 12 and 18 corners, and the longest purpose-built circuit in the world, the 13-mile Nürburgring Nordschleife, has about 180 corners. So learning any of the Targa Florio courses was extremely difficult and required, like most long circuits, at least 60 laps to learn the course- and unlike the purpose-built Nürburgring, the course had to be learned properly in public traffic, and one lap of even the
Piccolo course would take over an hour to do in a road car- if there was little to no traffic. To even finish this punishing race required a very reliable car- and it being a slow, twisty circuit it was very hard on the gearbox, brakes and the suspension of a car. Some manufacturers and entrants, particularly non-Italian ones would sometimes outright skip the Targa because of the difficulty of learning the layout and were unsure if their cars could stand the brutal pace there. Some teams, like Mercedes and Porsche, arrived weeks in advance for preparation. Porsche factory drivers even had to watch films of the circuit in the offseason.
Lap speeds Like a rally event (and events like the
Isle of Man TT and the
Mille Miglia), the race cars were started one by one every 15 seconds for a time trial, as a start from a full grid was not possible on the tight and twisty roads. Racing for positions made few sense as a car that caught up to another was already ahead in the classification. Although the public road circuit used for the Targa was extremely challenging- it was a very different kind of circuit and race from any other race on the sportscar calendar. All of the circuit variations of the Targa had so many corners that lap speeds at the Targa never went higher than 80 mph (128 km/h), as opposed to Le Mans in France, where cars would average 150+ mph (240+ km/h) or the Nürburgring, where cars would average 110 mph (176 km/h).
Helmut Marko set the lap record in 1972 in an
Alfa Romeo 33TT3 at 33 min 41 s at an average of during an epic charge where he made up 2 minutes on
Arturo Merzario and his
Ferrari 312PB. The fastest ever was
Leo Kinnunen in 1970, lapping in the
Porsche 908/3 at or 33 min 36 seconds flat. Due to the track's length, drivers practised in the week before the race in public traffic, often with their race cars fitted with license plates. Porsche factory drivers even had to watch onboard videos, a sickening experience for some. The lap record for the 146 km "Grande" circuit was 2 hours 3 min 54.8 seconds set by
Achille Varzi in a Bugatti Type 51 at the 1931 race at an average speed of . The lap record for the 108 km "Medio" circuit was 1 hour 21 min 21.6 seconds set by Varzi in an Alfa Romeo P2 at an average speed of at the 1930 race. The fastest completion around the short version of the island tour was done by
Giovanni "Ernesto" Ceirano in a SCAT at the 1914 race, completed in 16 hours, 51 minutes and 31.6 seconds from May 24–25, 1914. The fastest completion of the long version of the island tour was by Mario and Franco Bornigia in an
Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Competizione, completed in 12 hours, 26 minutes and 33 seconds flat at the 1950 race at an average speed of .
1970s, safety and demise of
Nino Vaccarella/
Ignazio Giunti navigates a tight corner in the town of
Collesano. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, race cars with up to 600 hp (450 kW) such as
Nino Vaccarella's
Ferrari 512S raced through small mountain villages while spectators sat or stood right next to, or even on, the road. Porsche, on the other hand, did not race its big and powerful
917K, but evolved rather the nimbler
Porsche 908 into a shortened 908/03 Spyder derived from the hillclimbing cars. Due to safety concerns, especially by
Helmut Marko, who called the race "totally insane", the last proper Targa Florio was as part of the FIA
1973 World Sportscar Championship. Before and during this
1973 Targa Florio event, there were an unusually high number of accidents, two of which were fatal; one which privateer Charles Blyth crashed his
Lancia Fulvia HF into a trailer at the end of the Buonfornello straight and was killed; and another where an Italian driver crashed his
Alpine-Renault into a group of spectators, killing one. There were several other accidents during practice in which a total of seven spectators sustained injuries. The event was won by a
Porsche 911 Carrera RS prototype as the proper prototype-sportcars of Alfa and Ferrari suffered crashes or other troubles, some being driven by F1-pilots like
Jacky Ickx and
Clay Regazzoni with hardly any Targa experience. The Targa's international demise was compounded by widespread concern about the organizers' inability to properly maintain the race on such a massive circuit which was both race track and access road for spectators, and also regular living space of the local population. There were not enough marshals, most spectators sat too close to the roads, and also the international automotive governing body, the FIA, mandated safety walls on all circuits that hold FIA-mandated events from 1974 onwards. The length of combined public roads made this impracticable, especially from a financial standpoint. The sport's growing professionalism was something the Targa's organizers simply could not keep up with. One example of this concern was when Briton
Brian Redman crashed his Porsche 908/03 during the 1971 event 20 miles into the first lap. The steering on his car broke, and it hit a stone wall and caught fire. Redman had second-degree burns all over his body and it took 45 minutes for any medical help to reach Redman (while he was attended to by spectators who were trying to keep him cool by waving objects). The Porsche team did not know where he was for 12 hours until teammates
Pedro Rodriguez and
Richard Attwood found him in a local clinic in
Cefalu. Also during this race
Alain de Cadenet in a Lola was going down the Buonfornello straight and a piece of bodywork flew off a car in front of him and hit him on the head. He was knocked out cold; the Lola went off the road, crashed into a nearby wall, and caught fire. His life was saved not by marshals, but by an active Italian military serviceman who was watching the race from a location close to de Cadenet's crash and pulled him out of the wreck. De Cadenet was taken to the same clinic in Cefalu where Redman was, where he was badly burned and had lost the use of his left eye. The Targa was continued as a national event for four years, before a crash in 1977 where hillclimbing specialist Gabriele Ciuti went off the road and crashed at the fast curves at the end of the Buonfornello straight after some of the bodywork flew off his BMW-powered Osella prototype. This accident killed two spectators and seriously injured five others (including Ciuti, who went into a coma, but survived), and effectively sealed the race's fate. After this accident the race was forcibly taken over by local police and was stopped on the 4th lap, and it also saw two other drivers having serious accidents; one of them was critically injured, but survived. Although the Targa Florio was a rally-type race that took place on closed-off public mountain roads with (aside from straw bales and weak guardrails at some of the turns, the latter were installed by the island's government) practically no safety features, only 9 people – including spectators – died at the event over the 71 year and 61 race history using a total of 6 circuit configurations. This number is relatively small compared to other open road races like the
Mille Miglia, where over a period of 30 years and 24 races 56 people lost their lives, and the
Carrera Panamericana, where over a period of 5 years and 5 races 25 people were killed. This is probably due to the fact that the very twisty nature of the mountain roads used kept average lap speeds very low, never going above , even with the very long straight at the northernmost end of the track. In comparison, most road circuits had average speeds anywhere between and . == Legacy ==