The Circuito delle Madonie was a road racing course made up of public roads, situated on the Italian island of Sicily, near the capital of Palermo, which hosted the famous Targa Florio event, between 1906 and 1977. The original public roads are still used today for the Targa Florio Rally successor event, which has been held since 1978. The course was made up of three different circuit length variations; the Piccolo short/small circuit, the slightly larger Medio medium circuit, and the full Grande circuit.
Track
Course variants
Several versions of the track were used. It started with a single lap of a circuit from 1906–1911 and 1931. From 1912 to 1914 a tour around the perimeter of Sicily was used, with a single lap of , lengthened to from 1948 to 1950. The "Grande" circuit was then shortened twice, the first time to , the version used from 1919–1930, and then to the circuit used from 1932 to 1936 and 1951 to 1977. From 1951–1958, the long coastal island tour variant was used for a separate event called the Giro di Sicilia (Lap of Sicily).
The start and finish took place at Cerda. The counter-clockwise lap lead from Caltavuturo and Collesano from an altitude over down to sea level, where the cars raced from Campofelice di Roccella on the Buonfornello straight along the coast, a straight that was even longer than the Mulsanne Straight at the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans. The longest version of the circuit went south through Caltavuturo (whereas the shortest version of the open-road circuit went east just before entry into Caltavuturo, through a mountainous section directly to Collesano) through an extended route through elevation changes, and climbed uphill through the nearby towns of Castellana, Sottana, Madonnuzza and Miranti, twisting around mountains up to the highest point- at Geraci Siculo, dropping down into Castelbuono, twisting around more mountains and passing through Isnello and the village of Mongerrati and then rejoined the most recent version of the track at Collesano. The second version of the track also went south through Caltavuturo and took a shortcut starting right before Castellana to Collesano via the town of Polizzi Generosa. There was a closed circuit called Favorita Park in the Sicilian capital of Palermo used from 1937-1940. All the roads used for all the variations of the circuits are still in use today. Originally a narrow 2-lane country road, the Buonfornello straight became a lot wider in the late 1960's thanks to the development of the Autostrade motorways all over Italy.
The challenge of the Targa was unprecedented in its difficulty and the driving experience of any of the course variants was unlike any other circuit in the world other than perhaps that of the Nurburgring in Germany and (for motorcycles) the much faster but similar Snaefell Mountain Course on the Isle of Man. All of the variants had 18 to 23 corners per mile (11 to 14 corners per kilometer)- the original Grande circuit had in the realm of 2,000 corners per lap, the Medio had about 1,300-1,400 corners per lap and the final iteration of the course, the Piccolo circuit had about 800-900 corners per lap. To put that into perspective, most purpose-built circuits have between 12 and 18 corners, and the longest purpose-built circuit in the world, the 13-mile Nurburgring, has about 180 corners. So learning any of the Targa Florio courses was extremely difficult and required, like most long circuits, at least 60 laps to learn the course- and unlike the purpose-built Nurburgring, the course had to be learned properly in public traffic, and one lap of even the Piccolo course would take about an hour to do in a road car- if there was little to no traffic. To even finish this punishing race required a very reliable car- and it being a slow, twisty circuit it was very hard on the gearbox, brakes and the suspension of a car. Some manufacturers and entrants, particularly non-Italian ones would sometimes outright skip the Targa because of the difficulty of learning the layout and were unsure if their cars could stand the brutal pace there.
Lap speeds
Like a rally event (and events like the Isle of Man TT and the Mille Miglia), the race cars were started one by one every 15 seconds for a time trial, as a start from a full grid was not possible on the tight and twisty roads.