Word: monza
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...sound, smell and danger of high-speed engines. Before he was five, he learned how to handle the wheel from his racing-driver father. Perched on papa's knee, little Alberto navigated the back roads of Milan, Italy, and the graceful curves of the old race track at Monza. By the time Alberto was seven, the elder Ascari was dead, killed in a crash at Montlhéry in the French Grand Prix. But the youngster was already determined to devote his life to racing autos...
...Germany's Nürburgring, where half a million crowd the 174 crackling curves, France's narrow Rheims course, where a quarter-of-a-million fans congregate, and England's Silverstone and Goodwood courses, where the crowds reach 125,000. Italy has its closed course at Monza and the wide-open public road race of the Mille Miglia, the thousand-miler up and over the Apennines from Brescia to Rome and back, which is watched every July by a million cheering fans...
Twice in a Row. It was typical of Ascari that he would push his car to the ragged edge trying to win Italy's classic Monza. Most men in his position would have played it safe. Streaking around tracks from Argentina to France, Ascari had already clinched the 1953 world championship by winning five of the ten Grand Prix races that count toward the point total. At Bern, Switzerland, he whipped his four-cylinder (180 h.p.) Ferrari around 1,300 curves in three hours to average 97.48 m.p.h.; in Belgium he was clocked at 112 m.p.h., in England...
Jewels & Squeaks. For the past four years, Ascari has been driving for Motor-maker Enzo Ferrari, whose jewel-like ($10,000 and up) speedsters have given him his greatest triumphs and narrowest squeaks. Until last week's Monza, Ascari's closest brush with death was 1949's Netherlands Grand Prix. Ascari was leading by three laps. "I was doing 120 m.p.h. on the straightaway," he recalls, "when all of a sudden the left rear wheel flew off and rolled into a meadow." Somehow, Ascari managed to keep his Ferrari balanced on three wheels, gradually let it slow...
After last week's Monza, Ascari would ordinarily be ready for a full fall and winter season, including the Mexican road race this November. But so far, he has no plans. A month ago, Builder Ferrari announced that he is giving up racing cars, and Ascari is under contract to race for no one else. Most Italians took the news with a grain of salt. They don't think Enzo Ferrari will really give up his beloved racers, and they can't believe that anything will keep Alberto Ascari off the tracks for long...