La Festa Mille Miglia began in 1997. I first went to watch it at Meiji Shrine in 2016. Three years after that, in 2019, I was able to enter the dream event myself.
The first time I watched the start at Meiji Shrine, honestly it was not the cars that caught my eye but the lovely people in matching, sharp jackets with the 1000 Mille Miglia logo on them. “That’s cool.” I genuinely knew nothing about cars.
Because I’m a woman — starting from the fashion!
For a motorsport rally you are meant to write smartly about the year and history of the car, and the sport itself — but the root of why I rally is
enjoying life.That angle is one I cannot leave out.
This is a golf glove I customised into my own original driving glove.
All I really did was put my name on it, but back then I had not started doing anything mechanical, nor the early-morning jobs I now work towards Peking to Paris, so I still had room to enjoy things like matching my nails to my overalls.
Now it is this (laughs). Getting covered in oil wrestling with a broken-down car has become part of the enjoyment too.
The rainy welcome of my first ever start
Gathering and starting from Meiji Shrine — famous cars lined up somewhere you can never normally get into. I remember feeling excited that this really is Japan’s finest,
La Festa Mille Miglia.
But the rain kept falling. Rain, rain, rain.
I had asked friends to come and cheer, and everyone turned up soaked to the skin to do it.
I don’t have much to say about the car itself, but this is exactly the kind of thing I remember a rally for. With a great many friends cheering, I set off in good spirits.Look at this — smiling happily even in the rain!
The car I entered this time was a 1933 MG J2 — a pre-war car. The driver’s dream of driving something from that era came true, and we set off in good spirits, with no windows, of course.
Following the tulip-diagram route book the navigator reads, we covered 230 km — soaked through with rain.
La Festa’s route book is text only. I wrote in my own notes and made it through with no wrong turns.
That is how the first day started, and from there we drove through four days full of drama.
Continued in La Festa Mille Miglia 2019 — race report, part 2.