Tutte le news

18/11/2016
With the newspaper seller we could talk with our gestures, I raised my chin, he just shook his head: The magazine "Elaborare Classic" did not arrive yet. I knew that Alberto Bergamaschi (Continental communications, great fanatic of cars, true pilot with the VW Maggiolino) made a nice comparison between two old Giulias after Beijing-Paris: the one, almost standard, we drove and the one  very elaborate drove by Schön. But when I finally got it up in my hands ( "Elaborare is just arrived!" said the man of the newsstand) I realized that Alberto did a job out of the ordinary. Minute details of processing and cost, live tests with both Giulia on track and off-road. He tried both cars just returned from Paris, with their worn tires, dust of Mongolia, the boxes full of spares. The results are surprising, for sure the two Giulias - regardless of the final results that saw excel the one prepared by the Scuderia del Portello - come out with honors. Then, there are also excerpts of our respective logbooks (we wrote every day on the Gazzetta dello Sport, Schön on Corriere Motori), with all the suffering, the exaltations, the disappointments and satisfactions. In short, twelve pages of motoring pleasure, amazing photos, the feeling staff that will be difficult for us "rally drivers by chance" forget about this other, last adventure.
17/09/2016

"Vito and Dina" is the restaurant downstairs, virtually a family annexe. In the afternoon, Vito rings the doorbell, "Come down; I'll show you a car that you will like ...". In front of the tavern, parked on the blue lines, in Via degli Scipioni 50, I saw an "Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio Verde," in a flaming red livery, temporary plate. Big curiosity, the old mechanic, that repairs scooters, wanted to see the engine. I brought my I-Pad, and I took some pictures. Then, proudly, I showed photos of our Giulia, the one that raced Beijing-Paris and that, months ago, had the privilege of being escorted by these special nieces to the Alfa museum in Arese and Lombardy Region. All people who stopped to admire had words of enthusiasm and hope. "The Alfa should get back to racing," was the hope expressed by the younger passersby. Will they ever be heard?

15/09/2016

Here it is, 1,500,000 people clicked on our website. We never thought to reach a similar number of visits, but obviously, this site can attract a lot more people than we could imagine or hope. People, mostly unknown, attracted probably - more than by current news - by the continuity of individual stories covering so hard raids. And if someone, by chance, arrives in in www.girodelmondo, then he goes back to read what it's like going to end that one time in the Gobi Desert, in Ushuaia, in Hanoi or Anchorage. We competed with vintage cars on four continents. We lack Oceania. It is true: who knows if sooner ... Meanwhile, we must thank our loyal readers and apologize if, after the Beijing-Paris, we took two-month "sabbatical" summer from the site. But after we packed it every night, for 40 days, at the end of days as particularly strenuous (was undoubtedly the most hard rally we've ever raced), led us to switch off for a while. But now a million and a half clicks are recalling us to duty.

26/07/2016

 

Un bel servizio di Rai News sulla Pechino-Parigi, a cura di Annalisa Fantilli. La troupe ci ha seguito nella tappa italiana, belle immagini, interviste, spezzoni storici con le foto scattate nel 1907 da Luigi Barzini e con i filmati del nipote Andrea durante la rievocazione del 1989. Sei minuti e passa di goduria per noi che a San Martino di Castrozza eravamo già convinti che ce l'avremmo fatta. E una scoperta: uno degli intervistati, Arno Schenck, che credevamo svizzero, dice invece di essere italiano. Quindi la nostra classifica "nazionale" va corretta: siamo arrivati primi su otto equipaggi italiani (e non sette, come credevamo). Cliccare qui per vedere tutto il servizio.

06/06/2016

Milan Kundera writes: "And there is nothing more beautiful than the instant before the trip, the moment when the horizon of tomorrow comes visit us and tell us about his promises." Excellent words, right? But if we have to be fair this "horizon of tomorrow" till now has only told us a mountain of hassle. Obtaining visas is a commercial procession: the Chinese embassy demands a ticket with return already paid; Russians want only photographs made and paid in their office; Belarusians want insurance policy that only they can release; Mongols, like everyone else, ask that visitors exhibit the invitation of a local tourist organization. If you go with a car that is not yours, you need the owner authorization with notarial certification and translation of everything, including the registration document.
In this maze, we were lucky enough to find the thread of Ariadne in the person of Mrs. Mita in the Rome office of Air China, the flag carrier of the People's Republic, the first carrier to connect with direct flights Italy to the country of the Celestial Empire. To celebrate thirty years of this direct air route, They will make us travel in business. So: Greetings Air China!

01/06/2016

On pechinoparigi.gazzetta.it there is our first article in the sixth edition of the rally which will start on June 12 from the Great Wall. It is a page that the direction of the most important and sold sports newspaper in Europe entrusted to us and that we will manage in total autonomy, inserting texts, photos and short videos. Thanks, then, to Andrea Monti Director, for the confidence gave us; and to his deputy Umberto Zapelloni, a colleague of sports and engines who really knows everything about and that wanted to bet on the success of this initiative. We will try to tell step by step this latest adventure and do it daily, at the end of days that often will be very tough, is a challenging task. You will give us the stimulus, you - friends, family, fans - showing the attachment to this site and to "all the pink of life" that the Gazzetta always radiates profusely.

06/05/2016

Conrad Birch organizes international rallies. With him, we have raced the "Tiger Rally" and "Classic India". The next event will be "Alpaca Rally" in South America. Then in October, he will bring a dozen riders from Istanbul to Dubai. But in November it decided to hang car keys: for five months he will walk “slowwwwly" for 2500 km, from the far south of India to Calcutta. But the great thing about this trip all along the east coast will be walking every day for about twenty kilometers together with three donkeys, Zappa, Ziggy and Nina. Conrad will hold its diary online, and it seems that there are already thousands of animal activists ready to share - in virtual reality - this old flavor adventure. For a character who has traveled the globe in the car, this return to the four legs is impressive. For millennia, the donkey was one of the most popular means of transport but was supplanted by the combustion engine. The donkey is not a breed in danger of extinction, but the number is decreasing, there are barely 60 million. On conradbirch.me it is possible even now to follow the whole story.

22/02/2016

We tested our Alfa Giulia and the ground for the experiment was the "secret" bumpy track of Balocco where they torture future SUVs and cars with wheel drive. Even choosing to skip all the "hard" traits, the evidence is found to be very challenging: mud and dirt of all levels, and stone embankments, slopes up to 36 percent, lethal bumps and deep holes. Of course, we chose to drive without straining too much the car, but the important thing was to calibrate the dampers and see the reactions of the car with a full tank of fuel and 75 pounds of cement bags. Souvenir photo out of the plant (at the entrance they "blinded" any instrument that can photograph. A shame was not being able to do some movies overcoming a ford) and then long struggle to synchronize the Terratrip on the highway. Did we do it? We are not yet perfect, but we're pretty advantaged. If we had a manual in Italian, it would be much easier.

09/02/2016

It's exciting the image that Scuderia del Portello can give to Alfa Romeo. There were to reward the drivers who last year excelled.  And there were to present the racing season 2016. First of all were projected images of the Beijing-Paris, and then a movie on the races and the protagonists of the Scuderia in all tracks in the world. President Marco Cajani illustrated Palmares achieved by the Portello members on five continents. The governor of Lombardy, Roberto Maroni, and the vice president of the Region Fabrizio Sala handed the trophies that reproduced in a bronze plaque of the next edition of the Beijing-Paris rally for vintage cars which the Scuderia del Portello officially participate with two Alfa Giulia. Just those deployed in the square of the Arese Museum, next to the new Giulia Quadrifoglio. Arturo Merzario, honorary president of the Scuderia, stressed the strong need to see the Alfa again on racetracks around the world. Fabrizio Curdi, responsible for Asia of the company, has confirmed its commitment to promoting the sporty appearance because "there can not be a future unless you have a glorious past."

05/02/2016

Philip Young died a year ago and on 9 March the ceremony to remember him will take place in Brooklands, the temple of English engine. The track - the first in the world created to be permanent for racing - was built in 1907, in the same year of the epic Peking-Paris. And the name of Young will remain forever linked to this event that he was able to reproduce for the first time in 1997, convincing the Chinese authorities to let one hundred old Western cars to cross its territory. For these cars, they opened for the first time the border withTibet, and it was the occasion to restore, through the Gate of Freedom, the access to Nepal, barred for twenty years. Successes that reflected his extraordinary diplomatic skills, together with that of organizer formidable (gruff, authoritarian, even cynical, but good and it is testimony by at least 70 rallies in all continents). He trivially died falling from a motorcycle to the Burmese border: he was going back and forth between the various buildings of the border with Thailand, to facilitate customs procedures for the first rally in history that would come into Myanmar. Philip was just like that: he liked the daring challenges. How to launch the centenary edition of the Beijing-Paris, which would cross for a week in the nothing of Mongolia, with a subtitle enlightening: "Driving the impossible." We started in 130, and he appreciated our choose of an Alfa Romeo Giulietta first series, the smaller displacement at the start. He, moreover, had attended the first London-Sydney with a Morris Minor ... and was able to knock down 24-hours a record all-British, Cape Town -London: he left in the winter of 2013, and arrived ten days and a half after. Taking turns with co-driver every three hours, an average of a thousand miles a day. You know what car he used? An old Fiat Panda Twin air of 875 ccs an Italian car. As the pre-war Lancia Aprilia with whom he came to win his category at the Liege-Rome. "Hey, Philip - we told him on arrival - how come when you face a difficult challenge you always choose an Italian car?". He smiled: "Because us British know how to drive them".

P.s.: Invitation only, if you would like to attend, please email nikki@endurorally.com and she will post you an invitation.

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