The Targa master

On learning that 88-year-old Nino Vaccarella died on September 23, I smiled quietly to myself. No, I’m not callous. I smiled because I was instantly transported back to that March day in early 1992 when Nino and I drove the Targa Florio course.

If there has been a better day as a motoring journalist, I don’t remember it. Of course I smiled.

‘I have driven the course a thousand times,’ Nino told me. ‘I know every corner. Every tree, every stone tells me whether a corner is narrow or wide, if it goes up or goes down. Every centimetre I know.

‘How many corners? Five, six hundred…the Targa Florio is all corners,’ he laughed.