Mille Miglia - the world's great road race

Celebrity chef James Martin will follow in the footsteps of Sir Stirling Moss when he enters his Maserati A6GCS, in this year's Mille Miglia.

Car aficionado Martin, who only acquired his 1948 A6GCS (one of only 15 ever built) a few months ago, will be accompanied by a television crew who will be filming him and his co-driver Sarah Bennett-Baggs.

A total of 10 Maseratis, including Martin's A6GCS featuring race number 161, will be competing in the 2008 edition of the "world's greatest road race".

The Mille Miglia, the dream of Contes Aymo Maggi (which was first run in 1927), starts on Friday evening in Brescia, Italy and heads to Rome before finishing on Saturday evening back in Brescia.

The Brescia-Rome itinerary and the return trip will follow the original Mille Miglia route in a clockwise direction.

It goes through many different parts of the country including Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Marche, Umbria and Lazio, on the outward journey with the addition of Tuscany on the return trip.

Motor racing legend Moss competed on no fewer than six occassions - winning the race in 1995 along with navigator Denis Jenkinson in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR with the now famous car number 722 (which was their start time 7:22am).

Moss, who beat Juan Manuel Fangio in '55, was the only British winner of the event.

However, the race was banned after a fatal crash in 1957 that took the lives of Ferrari driver Alfonso de Portago, his co-driver/navigator, and 11 spectators, at the village of Guidizzolo.

Between 1959 and 1961 the event was known as the Mille Miglia Rally, but it wasn't until 1977 (the 50th anniversary) that the Mille Miglia Storica - for cars pre-1957 - was revived initially taking place in 1982, 1984, 1986 and then taking every year since.

Iconic pictures of Sir Stirling Moss' 1995 win >>