You are in category: Hot Vehicles >> Articles >> Sport cars
Mille Miglia 2009: Meeting Jaguar legend Norman Dewis
Went to a pre-Mille Jaguar dinner last night and to both surprise and delight, the guest of honour was Jaguar legend Norman Dewis. Dewis, now 88, was the former Jaguar test-development driver and played a massive role in creating the D-Type that I will be supporting in this year’s race.
He also raced a Jaguar C-Type in the 1952 Mille Miglia with Stirling Moss, driving the works car all the way down from Coventry and over the Alps (there wasn’t the Mont Blanc tunnel back in’52).“We didn’t have support crews then,” Dewis quipped.“We’d just developed the disc brake and needed an event to test them, before Le Mans. We didn’t even have road maps, the only instructions we were given was to drive between the people, and sure enough, there was a line of people for 1000-miles.”
It’s stories like this that makes the Mille so special for racing fans. And it also confirms to me that the only place a race like this could ever exist would be in Italy. The fans here are on another level.
You are watching category Mille Miglia 2009: Meeting Jaguar legend Norman Dewis, where you can find lot of intresting information.