MILLE MIGLIA

The beautiful hills of Italy become a nightmare of turns for race drivers in this week's classic

The hills of Italy are now out from under the miserable winter that buried Europe. This week along the winding Italian roads from Brescia to Pescara, through the Apennines to Rome and north again to Brescia, varicolored sports cars thunder through a blur of spring-green country, in and out of the slower, everyday traffic. The championship cars, some slower and some this year even faster than the tomato-red Ferrari driven by Umberto Maglioli on the opposite page, are being readied for the race of the year, the Mille Miglia. On this 992-mile course over home ground, the Ferraris are favored this year and, as reported further on page 21, every rival driver will have a double job—trying to keep up with Juan Fangio and the Ferraris that have dominated competition this year and trying to hold onto the 2,987 tricky Mille Miglia turns.

SNAKING PAST SPECTATORS AND AN IMPOSING APENNINE BACKDROP, A TINY 750-CC SIATA, FENOCCHIO AND PERRON ABOARD, CLIMBS THE SOUTHERN SLOPES OF RADICOFANI

BESIDE AN OLD BRIGAND'S CASTLE A MODERN PANHARD RIPS THROUGH THE BAD CURVES OF RADICOFANI

THREE PHOTOS

LUIGI ONELLI AND DAVID LEES