A Grand Prix Named for a Neighbor

San Marino lent its name to 26 Grands Prix run at Imola in Italy, and its food shares a table with the Italian regions around it.

San Marino is one of the few countries to lend its name to a World Championship race without ever hosting one at home. Our records count 26 San Marino Grands Prix, held every year from 1981 to 2006, and every one of them ran at Imola in Italy, a circuit known in those years first as the Autodromo Dino Ferrari and then as the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari. Italy kept its own Grand Prix at Monza throughout, so for a quarter of a century the country effectively hosted two rounds a season, one of them under a neighbor's name.

No driver or team from San Marino appears in our records, so the country's Formula 1 story is the story of that borrowed race, which always fell in April or May.

San Marino is a microstate entirely surrounded by Italy, and its cooking is close kin to that of neighboring Emilia Romagna and Marche. Cheese, wine and livestock are its main farm products, and cheesemaking matters to the local economy. Home cooking leans on beans, chickpeas, pasta and rabbit, scented with garlic, rosemary and fennel, and in Borgo Maggiore people fill a flatbread called piada.

Desserts carry a strong sense of place. Torta Tre Monti takes its shape from the republic's Three Towers, Torta Titano honors Monte Titano, and at Christmas families bake bustrengo, rich with dried fruit, nuts and honey. A small country, it turns out, can put a great deal of its landscape on a plate. For a race weekend in spring, when Imola traditionally ran, start with a soup and end with cherries stewed in red wine.

A taste of San Marino

• Piada, Griddled flatbread with ham, cheese and arugula
• Nidi di rondine, Baked pasta spirals with ham and cheese
• Crescione, Folded flatbread stuffed with greens and cheese
• Fritto misto dell'Adriatico, Crisp fried Adriatic seafood in a cone
• Garganelli al ragù, Ridged egg pasta with Romagna meat sauce
• Pasta e ceci, Chickpea and noodle soup with rosemary
• Acqua e amarena, Sour cherry syrup with cold sparkling water
• Caffè corretto al mistrà, Espresso with a splash of anise liqueur
• Bustrengo, Cornmeal, bread and dried fruit cake

Circuits

• Imola Circuit

Drivers