Star letter

Targa timing

Sir,

While returning from the Australian MotoGP race recently, l had the excellent experience of sitting next to Sandro Munari on the long flight from Melbourne to Europe. One doesn’t like to encroach upon people when on a long flight, but soon we were chatting.

Sandro was In Australia for a Lancia get-together In Melbourne.  Readers may be Interested to know that since retiring in 1979 he is running  a driving school in Italy. He saId how frustrated he is that youngsters treat driving quick cars nowadays with an ‘element of immortality’ since the introduction of the PlayStation and its reset button. You will be glad to know that time has not dimmed his enthusiasm for talking about the one top event that I wish I could go back in time to visit – the 1972 Targa Florio, an event of course that he won.  He dId make me laugh when he saId, while shaking his head with a hand over his brow: “A prototype Ferarri 312 on slicks with no registration, nothing, doing a lap on the Saturday before the event with other cars, sheep, donkeys and Vespas all in the way. I dId 36 min 15 sec. That was not bad compared to the absolute race lap record of Arturo Merzario, who had done 33 mIn 59 sec. Only In Sicily”.   Oh for the mad clrcuits of the past.

HavIng spoken at length to a winner of an event I couldn’t go to, because I wasn’t even born then, maybe this should spark a section in MotorSport  of  ‘Events to go to in the ‘Tardis’?

Toby Moody,

Himbleton

Quite agree.  The slightest excuse to get Billie Piper onto the staff of Motor Sport  would be fine by us – Ed