Somewhere on the road down from Cortina this week, a 1968 Lamborghini Miura was being driven slowly on purpose. Chassis 3586, the car from the opening sequence of The Italian Job. Fifty-odd years after it went into that tunnel it was back in the Alps, its crew watching a stopwatch rather than the rev counter.

That is the thing to understand about the Louis Vuitton Dolomites Classic Run, which finished today in Milan. It is a regularity race. Nobody wins by being quickest. Crews of two, a driver and a navigator, are given a target speed for short timed sections and judged on how close they get, to the hundredth of a second, measured by a rubber tube laid across the tarmac. Hidden checkpoints catch anyone who cheats the average. The press kit puts it plainly: "Precision beats speed, and every crew should cross the finish line, one way or another."

Vuitton has done this before, though not for a while. The first Classic Run went through the Malaysian jungle in 1993. There was China in 1998, Bohemia in 2006, and the Serenissima Run in 2012, which ended in Venice. This one started there, fourteen years later, almost to the spot.

Twenty-two cars over 600 kilometres in four days. Villa Pisani at Stra on Monday, its newly relit Sala di Bacco open to the public until ten at night. Then up into the Dolomites on Tuesday, with a stop at the Canova museum in Possagno and a picnic before the light went pink on the rock faces above Cortina. Wednesday down to Monza. Today the whole field lapped the Autodromo as the Italian Grand Prix weekend opened, before the trophy was handed over at the Castello Sforzesco.

On Sale Now

Issue 09

Available now

And what a field. A 1931 Bugatti Type 51, the model Varzi drove to beat Nuvolari at Monaco in 1933. A 300 SL Gullwing bought new by Rob Walker that spent twenty years in storage on a Sussex apple farm. The Lancia Aurelia from Il Sorpasso. A 1956 Ferrari 250 GT Zagato that turned up in Michael Mann's Ferrari. The Aston Martin nicknamed The Flying Pea. A Ferrari 275 GTB Competizione in Verde Bosco that raced the Monza 1000 km in 1967 and finished fifteenth.

The trophy is by Sabine Marcelis, made in glass by Venini, and was unveiled at the Palazzo Ducale on Monday evening by Giulia Maenza. It travelled the route in its own Vuitton trunk. The company has built cases for the World Cup, the Ballon d'Or, the America's Cup and, since 2021, the Monaco Grand Prix. "Victory travels in Louis Vuitton" is the line they use. It was making car trunks in 1897, before most of the marques on this run existed.

A slow drive through a beautiful place, in cars that were built to go fast, judged on how well you can hold back. Simply stunning!