The Athletic

By 9 o'clock, half an hour before the start, the course was closed.

The last straw bales had been pushed into position, piled across junctions to mark the direction of the circuit.

In the villages,

curbstones had been given a final lick of black and white paint. Dogs, sheep, cows,

donkeys and oxen were shut away. Those whose houses abutted the track, settled themselves

by the windows or in the shade of the doorways, ready for a wonderful free show.

Around 200,000 people were said to be in attendance. This was more than twice the town's population,

already swollen by thousands who'd been spending the holiday weekend by the seaside, in Pescara,

or one of its neighbouring resorts.

There was plenty of space for all of them. The circuit, over 25 kilometres in length,

could have absorbed many more spectators as it passed through one major town, three villages,

and half a dozen hamlets. This was a round of the official Formula One World Championship,

but there could be no attempt to restrict admission to paying customers. Pescara represented

a world far away from the turnstiles and paddock passes of Monza or Silverstone.

For one weekend only, Grand Prix racing was returning to the earliest days of its existence

half a century before.

Hello and welcome to and colossally that's history, the podcast that re-appraises motor racing history.

I'm Matt Bishop, and opening the episode with that wonderful passage was my good friend Richard Williams.

Richard, would you care to give us a bit more information about what you were talking about and where the words you read came from?

Certainly. I was reading a passage from my own book, The Last Road Race,

which was first published in 2004, and details one of the most extraordinary races in Formula One history, the 1957 Pescara Grand Prix.

...