‘And did you at any point think about just giving up?’ Even with rally headphones and mic, I feared my co-pilot might not hear my loaded question, because only the constant involuntary chattering of my teeth was stopping my jaw from locking up. He did. ‘Not for a second,’ he said, as he gripped the wheel with added zeal and ploughed on through near-zero visibility, falling trees and icy rain as a once-in-a-generation storm battered Italy’s Apennine mountains.
My question was prompted by ex-airline pilot Robert Blakemore’s shivered comment that he had only once driven through such extreme adverse conditions, on the Mille Miglia. Yet this was in mid-September on the 32nd Gran Premio Nuvolari, though we were in the same Aston Martin 2 Litre Speed with aeroscreens and no weather gear or undertrays, so our drenching and hypothermia could be a ‘fully immersive’ experience. At the lunch stop our sodden legs and bodies didn’t work anymore and we hobbled to the food like a pair of Albert Steptoes; after we’d eaten we left actual puddles rather than mere damp patches on our chairs.
It would be churlish to dwell on just a couple of hours of this sensational three days, though. The adventure had started when I visited pre-war Aston specialist Ecurie Bertelli, owned and run by Robert, and whinged that we never get as much time as we would like with the cars
