The Day Alfa Romeo Was Faster Than Ferrari

The final race of the 1980 F1 season was a Sliding Doors moment for one of F1’s most prestigious marques.

The 1980 Formula 1 World Championship had already been decided by the time the circus arrived at Watkins Glen, yet there was still one more story to tell. The cars and their teams arrived battered and beaten after Montreal and were hoping for a quiet weekend in New York. Unfortunately for them, it was more like the one Kevin McCallister had in Home Alone 2.

Williams, who had already won the Constructors’ Title and helped Alan Jones to the Drivers’ Title, were once again expected to be favourites, having taken a 1-2 last time out in Canada (after a 1-minute penalty for Pironi’s jump start). Brabham were looking strong too, hoping to end the season in style after Piquet had won at Zandvoort and Monza, only to be denied the chance to take the title fight to the final round after crashing out of the first start in Canada and having to take the spare car doomed with an unreliable qualifying engine.

The circuit itself was also hoping for a quiet race, still being sore from its asphalt surgery which ironed out some of the bumps. In fact, the only people who weren’t hoping for a quiet one were the organisers, worried about the steady decline in spectators over the past few years, and the spectators, worried about the steady decline in spectacle over the past few years.

Friday’s running saw a lot of casualties – Mike Thackwell’s Tyrrell tried to become pedal-powered; Geo Lees sent his RAM-entered Williams to the wall; Andretti had his Lotus’ engine lock the rear wheels and stop millimetres from the barriers; and Laffite got whiplash from the catch fencing at the end of the back straight. Jacques felt so dizzy after the accident that he did not return to the circuit on Saturday, appearing next in the Sunday warmup session.

Four teams had won a Grand Prix at this point in the season: Ligier, Renault, Brabham, and Williams. On the French side, the Ligiers finished Friday 11th and 8th, with Jacques’ time set before his accident still enough to hold o his countryman, while Renault running a single car as Jabouille had broken his legs last time out in Canada – lined up 3rd with Arnoux. The British teams had fared better, with the Williams’ being split by Arnoux, the newly crowned champion ahead of his Argentinian rival, while Piquet finished seven tenths down on Jones to put himself 5th, with Rebaque barely worth noting in 12th. The big four weren’t worried about not having topped the session yet, though, as Jones was only twelve thousandths o top spot.

Saturday saw no rain and a slightly warmer track, so times started to tumble. Of the big teams, only the two French drivers didn’t improve: Laffite in his hotel room and Arnoux simply not finding any time. Jones found three tenths, Reutemann eight, while Rebaque found .9 of a second. Pironi and Rebaque both found a second, but it only put them 7th and 8th respectively. Piquet was a big mover, having found 1.2 seconds – in the spare Brabham!

Yet that still wasn’t enough for pole position, for the driver who’d topped Friday had gone even quicker. Bruno Giacomelli., a man with 24 Grand Prix starts (and seven Grand Prix finishes) to his name, a best result of fifth place, and whose season highlight thus far had been scoring points the weekend after his teammate, Patrick Depailler’s, tragic death in a testing accident, had just taken pole position for the 1980 United States Grand Prix by

0.789 seconds, enough to break the previous lap record by 2.3 seconds.

It was a beautiful lap. The Alfa Romeo 179’s main weakness was its softness in the corners, although its V12 let it take advantage of a much greater ground effect tunnel due to the shallow, long engine layout. Luckily for them, Watkins Glen’s layout suited a car with a soft setup and its long, fast corners needed as much ground effect as possible. The car was so fast through the long corners that Goodyear’s qualifying tyres did not last a whole lap, so Bruno actually qualified on race tyres – and still smoked everyone by over three quarters of a second. They were fast down the straights too, as the Alfa mechanics had set the rear wing up negative (with the trailing edge pointing downwards).

Looking back on Giacomelli’s career, however, this pole position should’ve been of no surprise to the F1 fraternity. He’d won the Formula Italia and British F3 titles in successive years before moving to European F2 in 1977. The rst 4 rounds of that season with the ailing Euroracing team netted him only two points, before the team’s collapse forced the works March BMW team to take him on. From there on out, he won his rst race with the team from pole, as well as two more, to rise to 5th in the standings by season’s end. The year after, however, was the year that should have left the F1 circus with no doubts as to his ability over one lap. Of the 12 races in 1978, Giacomelli took 8 poles, 10 podiums, and 8 wins; records that still stand today in percentages and pure numbers.

Furthermore, Alfa’s pace in 1980 hadn’t been as bad as the race classifications made it seem. For example, Giacomelli had started the Italian Grand Prix from 3rd – and assures me to this day that he would have been on pole if he’d had half a cup more fuel in the car.

But he hadn’t led a racing lap since the last race in the 1978 Formula 2 season, and he’d seemed to crack under pressure at key moments in other races this year, so Piquet went to sleep dreaming of an easy win. Meanwhile, over at the Alfa garage, they were still hard at work trying to get everything out of the car for Sunday. One of the mechanics, in an effort to find more performance, suggested to the team’s lead designer, Carlo Chiti, that they move the ignition coil onto the rear wing mounting – a move which Chiti agreed with. I am bringing this up for no reason whatsoever, everything is going to be ne.

Sunday was another overcast day, about 12 degrees Celsius, and the number of spectators reflected that. Despite the disappointing crowd sizes, and in spite of the various journalists questioning his abilities, Giacomelli was determined to make this count. He’d had a bigger pole margin than this four times in his career (0.9 at the Nürburgring, 0.92 at Mugello, and 1.08 at Rouen in ’78 as well as 1.02 seconds at Donington in ’77) but this was the race that could really put him on the map – and in the history books. Not only would a win put him on the same list as Alberto Ascari, Giuseppe Farina, and Juan Manuel Fangio as drivers to win for Alfa Romeo, as well as Clark, Stewart, and Maldonado (plus Chris Amon in my heart) as a Grand Prix winner, but there was also an offer of a seat in one of Frank Williams’ cars for 1981 and, to put it mildly, they’d definitely finished a lot more races than Alfa Romeo this year.

He was determined to make it count, and make it count he did! Nobody got a better start than Bruno when the lights went out. He was easily a car length ahead after the first 100 metres, two clear by the first braking zone, nobody was close to the Italian at the first corner. Jones, down in 5th, decided to try and win it at turn one by braking later than everyone else. Unfortunately for him, everyone else had braked as late as possible, and he soon found himself in the grass on the outside of turn 1. He had company, though, in the form of de Cesaris’ other Alfa Romeo; the Italian kicking up dust into Arnoux’s face as the trio floundered on the grass. Jones re-joined 12th with the other two at the back.

Piquet got close enough to make Giacomelli defend his lead at the end of the main straight, but never got alongside, and from there the Alfa Romeo just took off. The other Alfa Romeo was taking o too – taking o it’s front wing as it clouted the back of Daly’s Tyrrell and took them both out of the race at the start of lap 3. In only his second race, where did Andrea get his reputation from?

By lap 10 Jones had worked his way up to 7th, as Rebaque pitted for engine troubles, and within a lap had dispatched Watson to make his way back into the points. All the while Giacomelli was around 3 seconds ahead of Piquet. Giacomelli, Jones, and Piquet were the three fastest drivers on track, but other drivers weren’t faring as well on the newly resurfaced sections of the circuit – as proven by Patrese spinning o on lap 16.

Frighteningly, Ricardo was then trapped in the catch-fencing, and had to be cut out by a marshal, but thankfully there were no res and Patrese wasn’t strangled by the mesh.

Jones passed de Angelis on lap 22, and was setting after Pironi, Reutemann, and Piquet – the four of them now all in one camera shot – when the Brazilian spun out! He’d been pushing too hard to defend his 2nd place from Reutemann, understeered at turn one, got wide, and spun out on the wet grass. With the Brabham now out of the picture, Williams were now 2nd and 4th, with Reutemann about 5 seconds behind Giacomelli.

Jones wasn’t going to let go of this win yet – he dispatched Pironi in three laps and kept within touching distance of his teammate at the same time. There would be no intra-team battling at Williams though – that would be next year – as Jones was past within another two laps. But Giacomelli wasn’t bothered, he was now 10 seconds out in front.

That gap was soon twelve seconds on lap 31, just over half distance. Bruno was having an absolute dream of a race: led from lap one, over ten seconds out in front, and with 500 revs in hand – he wasn’t even pushing! Jones wasn’t catching him either; this win was in the bag. But then Giacomelli slowed. Slow enough for even Scheckter to unlap himself. The roar of his V12 silenced by a €0.50 wiring coil. The very one that had been moved to the rear wing mounting the night before. Fuck.

In reality, was moving the ignition coil the sole reason for Giacomelli’s DNF? No, the ignition coil had failed many, many times over the course of the season and nothing the team tried had fixed it, so it may well have failed either way. But if it hadn’t failed, would Jones have caught him? It’s impossible to know for sure, and the common belief is that he would, but I believe Giacomelli would still have beaten him. You see, Jones had been pushing hard to make his way back up the order, and as such was burning through his tyres a lot faster than Giacomelli, who had been slowly increasing his gap up front while looking after his tyres. Not to mention the extra 500 revs Bruno had in hand – and the Alfa was already a lot more powerful than the Williams without them.

Would a win for Giacomelli have changed much in the grand scheme of F1? Probably not, Bruno would most likely still have chosen Alfa Romeo over Williams – the money was better, there was the draw of the Quadrifoglio and the national pride that came with it, and the 1981 car was an absolute monster. A win wouldn’t have changed FISA’s decision to ban skirts either, which completely demolished Alfa’s advantages for 1981 – that was pretty much decided after Depailler’s death. Nor would it have changed how late into the o -season the changes were finalised, or how long it took Alfa to react to them.

It would’ve changed small things, though. The odd Wikipedia page, the occasional pub quiz stat, the name of Alfa Romeo’s last F1 winner. It would have given Bruno more status in the paddock – from “The Panda” to a grizzly bear – perhaps he would even have been offered one of the Ferrari seats in the closing stages of 1982. He was a close friend of Gilles’, after all. To see the project that Depailler was so committed to earning its reward would have been nice too; it would have given every Alfa mechanic a reason to smile after such a loss. But good things don’t always happen in F1 – and definitely not to good people – so the Italian was left emulating his childhood hero, Chris Amon.

He has no regrets over his racing career – despite always being saddled with unreliable or uncompetitive cars. The one chance he did get in a competitive car he set records that stand to this day, so it’d be di     cult to say he didn’t prove himself. And for the son of a farmer – who did an entire Formula Italia season on one set of tyres, hand-cutting fresh groves into them when the clerk of the course didn’t let him race on them – to come so far and so close to the big prize was spectacular.