The Pescara Circuit was a 16.032 miles (25.8 km) road race course near Pescara, Italy.
The track boasted two long straights between villages, as well as demanding corners in the seaside town. The roads were both narrow and bumpy, and the staggering 16-mile (26 km) length was the longest of any open-wheel championship event. Like many long circuits (such as the original Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps circuits) Pescara was extremely dangerous. Many racing historians consider Pescara to be the most dangerous racing circuit ever devised.
The first race took place in 1924 and non-Championship Formula One races followed in the early 1950s, before the circuit was eventually included in the official Formula One World Championship in 1957. The Pescara Grand Prix drew in excess of 200,000 spectators, and remains the longest circuit in terms of lap distance ever to stage a Formula One Grand Prix.
It was the first F1 circuit with an artificial chicane, built in 1934 on the start-finish straight to reduce speed in the pits.
The track's last race was a four hour World Sportscar Championship race in 1961, won by Lorenzo Bandini and Giorgio Scarlatti. After that race the circuit was permanently retired as a racing venue as it was impossible for the organizers to guarantee the safety of drivers and spectators.
Famous quotes containing the word circuit:
“Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)