The Lake Garda circuit – racing's most beautiful track?

I, too, am aboard a silver German machine as I crane my neck down into the valley, before dropping down into Salo to sample a lap — in post-war anti-clockwise form — of the circuit which remains essentially complete. The town is bustling with tourist traffic, and our Porsche Carrera 4S certainly does not stand out against the hordes of large German cars that have propelled their occupants over the Alps for their annual lakeside jaunt.

Arrival at the main Fossa square, where traditionally the cars were prepared, signals the beginning of the lap. The traffic is now herded up the right side of the tree-lined avenue, whereas at racing speeds then — on a cobbled surface — the cars swept in from the left past the clock tower and onto Garibaldi Street where the start-finish line was located. The key characteristic that grabs your attention is just how quick, and yet so narrow, this initial street section was. From the startline the F3 cars of the 1960s were flat in fifth gear between rows of houses, but only the foolhardy would venture beyond single file as they flicked down to fourth for a sweeping left by the lake and past the drivers’ usual lodging, the Hotel Laurin. Back up to fifth, and the first mile of the lap was over in a flash before the anchors were jammed on for the first-gear left-hand hairpin at the Brolo fork.

From here the course headed straight up the hill to Tormini. Within 300 metres lie the first esses — a staccato right, left, right, left, right sequence of blind, fast corners that required total commitment The drivers then tackled a brace of half-mile, flat-out stretches, linked by a long left-hander. A second sequence of esses, the Gardesana curves, followed before another half-mile uphill straight over a bridge and into Tormini.

This section was the fastest part of the course, and must have been the ultimate white-knuckle ride in a shrill 1-litre F3 car or a screaming Ferrari 166. Indeed, it was considered so perilous by the drivers in the 1920s (they were coming down the hill, remember) that a no-overtaking rule was insisted upon. But with the introduction of massed starts in the later events, drivers had to take their lives in their hands to pass here — there is not a lot of room. It was on this section in 1949 that renowned risk-taker Felice Bonetto, Il Pirata, got tangled passing a backmarker, flew off the road, careered straight through a bar and came to rest in its bowling alley!

A sharp left was negotiated at Tormini before the cars blasted back out into the countryside for the most scenic part of the track, complete with a vista of the valley below. There was then a further sequence of quick bends, partly obscured today by the emergence of a bypass. But we soon pick up the trail again to rejoin a quarter-mile straight before a tree-lined double-right that must have presented the biggest challenge of the whole course. In the final blast down to Villa — a section of road crisscrossed by potentially lethal tramlines — the F3 cars were then flat in fifth, touching 140mph as the road widens before they braked hard once more to negotiate the tight left-hander in Cunettone.

For that October’s Garda race, the Brescia AC assumed full control and moved the startline and grandstand up to Cunettone. The ensuing furore and split with the enraged Sala committee meant the Garda race fizzled out before 1928. It’s a Machiavellian theory, but could it be that Maggi & Co disrupted Garda so that all regional attention was focused on the nascent Mille Miglia?

However, Maggi and Castagneto, enthusiasts to the core, were also key to the rebirth of the Garda race in 1948. It was run in a two-heats-and-a-final format for single-seaters (avoiding a clash with the Mille Miglia’s sportscar formula), and over the next three years Ferrari and Maserati acknowledged Garda ‘s significance by sending works teams. The dominant Alfa Romeos of the day, however, did not come.

Nevertheless, the packed crowds were treated each year to seeing Italy’s best drivers: Giuseppe Farina (Ferrari’s first win), Luigi Villoresi and Alberto Ascari the respective victors, while a young 20-year-old called Moss caused a stir in 1949, humbling bigger cars to take third in his Cooper-JAP. Funds were not overflowing though, and as international racing took off, the prize money required went beyond the means of little Salo, and the race once again disappeared.

From the outset of the final incarnation of the event, the writing was on the wall: the government frowned upon road racing, the Mille Miglia now long gone. Castagneto was again central to persuading Rome to allow the roads to be closed, and the five Junior and F3 races were successful. Jo Siffert, Jo Schlesser, Silvio Moser and Jonathan Williams were among the visitors who conquered the track against the local F3 aces. But it was running on borrowed time. In 1963, the Rome authorities tried an unsuccessful last-minute intervention to stop it, and then in ’67 it all came crashing down. Three weeks before the scheduled running of the event, Lorenzo Bandini suffered his fiery fatal accident at Monaco. Italy was appalled, and the country’s motorsport authority insisted that 1600 metres of crash barriers be constructed in Sala. All knew it was an impossible task — the Garda circuit disappeared forever.

Our Porsche is parked in a lay-by halfway up the Zette hill as we stand on the wall surveying the scene, when a distinctive wail emanates from below. Sure enough, around the corner emerges a Mercedes SSK. The retro version of the Mille Miglia is taking a day out to visit Garda. Watching the stream of vintage and historic cars drive by, it seems appropriate that a celebration of the greatest road race of them all should tip its hat to little Garda, which contributed to the beginnings of the Mille Miglia and then remained in its shadow forever after.