TWO racing fans beat two-time F1 champion Mika Hakkinen when they got behind the wheel of a £500,000 vintage car for one of Europe’s most notorious races.

Freelance journalist and former Northern Echo reporter Simon deBurton, 47, and brother Julian Pigg, 63, drove the 1955 Mercedes Benz 300SL W198-I around Italy’s roads in the Mille Miglia this month.

The brothers, from Bishop Auckland, were one of 375 teams to take part in the three-day, 1,000- mile race, competing with former F1 champion Mika Hakkinen.

The race began with a staggered start at 7pm, with Mr de- Burton and Mr Pigg, who were one of the later teams to start, arriving at 1.30am.

The next day, the cars set off from 8am, with temperatures peaking at 28C, arriving in Rome at 12.30am. On the final day, crews left from 6.30am returning to Brescia for 1am.

They finished 261st out of 291 teams to finish, with Hakkinen coming 277th.

Mr Pigg, who lives in Darlington and publishes the popular free magazine What’s On Round Darlington, said: “We finished a creditable three-quarters of the way down the field. We were firsttime entrants, on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, driving much of it at night, and having never seen the route before.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we enjoyed every minute.”

The race was launched in 1927 by four members of the Brescia Motor Club to allow car manufacturers to show off their latest models.

Initially an outright speed race, the Mille Miglia took place 24 times from 1927 to 1957, with 13 events before the war, and 11 after 1947.

It was banned in 1957 after aristocrat Marquis Alfonso de Portago suffered a tyre blowout, killing himself, co-driver Edmund Nelson and ten spectators. A second crash in Brescia killed driver Joseph Gottgens.

The race was resumed as a rallying round trip at legal speeds from 1958 to 1961, but that was discontinued, before the race was reintroduced in 1982 as a time reliability trial. Sir Stirling Moss holds the race’s all-time record, after completing 870 miles in 1955 at an average speed of 98mph.

Now dubbed the world’s most beautiful road race, the Mille Miglia attracts the rich and famous, who flock to Brescia every year to see the spectacle of hundreds of rare classic cars parading on Italy’s roads.