ALFA ROMEO-FERRARI-AUTODELTA The RED sign of Italian Motoring The Alfa Romeo factory has raced from almost the beginning, winning its first World Championship in 1925 with Vittorio Janos P2. (Winning its first: Fiat was the champion in 1923-24, which is where Vittorio Jano came from) While in a period of great racing success, one of the most successful drivers (he was also a wealthy Alfa dealer), a young Enzo Ferrari, retired to form Scuderia Ferrari, a well financed privately funded corporation for sales, service and racing of automobiles. (Because of hard financial times and government pressure, ALFA used Scuderia Ferrari as its unofficial racing department. ( In 1931, Alfa was absorbed by IRI, and the prospect of a government-funded racing organization was not an especially good PR step) turning over to it all the factory cars, including the 2.3 and 2.6 Monzas and the incredible P3s. Over the next 9 years, Scuderia Ferrari raced the cars, developed and maintained them, even fabricating new designs, with well-known success. Ferrari s claims to authorship of a design are sometimes overblown, but his organization is clearly responsible for much development work on the cars. Understand that Colombo was sent to help, along with a couple of other factory engineers as well.) When ALFA wanted to return the racing organization to the factory in 1938, (a year later) Enzo Ferrari returned to Modena. (Why did Alfa return the activities in-house? In part, because it became politically palatable, I think. Mussolini was a great admirer of Alfas. Further, Jano s luck had run out against the Germans and there was a high level of frustration at Alfa over not being able to beat them. In part, Ferrari s leaving was a fallout of the German domination). After the war, he began manufacturing machine tools and eventually cars, and , oh well, you know the rest.After the war, ALFA was not healthy financially, but it was able to resurrect the Tipo 158 Alfetta and win the first Grand Prix championship after the war in 1950 and again in 1951). At the end of 51 it announced that it was turning its attention to sports car racing and the development of cars such as the 6C3000 CM Disco. There had been a couple of prototype sport racers built before (C50 and C52), as well as some truly odd grand prix designs (161). Alfa decided to get out of GP racing while it was still dominant: Ferrari was catching up fast, and was the 52 champion. But financial realities of starting up the new, lower cost Giulietta line led to a retreat from factory racing, leaving most of the racing from the mid 50s up to the customers. (Actually, the Marshall plan put Alfa back on its feet in 1950 and the 1900 was a runaway best seller, so you can t make Alfa too poor during this era.) The emergence of the Giulietta, especially with the lightweight models produced by Zagato and the expertise of tuners like Virgilio Conrero allowed ALFA to continue to bask in the glory of racing victories while rebuilding itself financially. By 1961, ALFA was ready to return to factory racing but again preferred to have the work done by outside contractors. It turned to a small company in Udine called Delta Auto, run by two racing enthusiasts and technical geniuses, Ludovico Chizzola, who had started the organization with Carlo Chiti, ex-Ferrari and ATS. Chizzola and Chiti had as their first task to build the 100 ALFA TZs needed for homologation. Autodelta, as it was renamed, was highly successful with the TZ and grew to support the racing activities. In 1964, ALFA required their transfer to Milano to be nearer the factory, in a facility in Settimo Milanese. Shortly thereafter, ALFA convinced the partners to sell, but Chizzola preferred to return to his home in Udine, leaving Chiti to run Autodelta. For the next 20 years, Chiti ran Autodelta. His projects included the GTA series, the Tipo 33 series which replaced the TZ(2) in 1967 and the reentry of ALFA into Formula One, first as a engine supplier and then as a full entrant. (The Type 33 was a Satta design) In 1985, Autodelta was officially renamed ALFA Corse, but remained in its same location. With the acquisition of ALFA by FIAT, there was some rationalization for the racing activities. Ferrari continued in F1 and some sportscar racing. Lancia was the rally team. ALFA continues to support sedan racing like the German touring car championship with its ultra high tech silhouette formula as well as the more stock British touring car championship. ALFA also supports several other racing series, including T-Spark F3 engines and several Italian formula classes using near stock ALFA engines.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 09:48:59 +0000
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