Dirt roads, animals, people wandering freely on the track, and hidden marksmen taking regular pot-shots as you race by… This really was racing by the seat of your pants! The Targa Florio was an open-road endurance race pioneered by Vincenzo Florio and held in the mountains of Sicily. The inaugural race was in 1906, and it was part of the World Sportscar Championship as recently as 1973. From 1973, the event was discontinued for safety reasons – cars got too fast and the Sicilian roads too narrow! Today it is run as a rallying event and forms part of the Italian Rally Championship.