Many of you might know of this. The Alfa Romeo car company has been involved in Motorsports for decades. In the inaugural 1950 Formula 1 race, Alfa Romeo using a model 158 car with a supercharger driven by Nino Farina took the chequred flag. The next year, in 1951, racing legend Juan Manual Fangio won the race using a Alfetta 159 which was an evolution of the Alfa 158 with a two-stages compressor.
The Alfetta’s engines were extremely powerful for their capacity: in 1951 the 159 engine was producing around 420 bhp (310 kW). Surprisingly, Alfa Romeo involvement in racing was made with a very thin budget, using mostly pre-war technology and material during the two seasons. For instance the team won two championships using only nine pre-war built engine blocks.
After a few years, Alfa moved back into Formula 1, but now as an engine supplier. In 1961 when V8 engines were being used in Formula 1, Alfa was supplying engines to a few teams. Then at the end of the 1960s Alfa developed a new V8 engine and it was tested in a F1 Cooper race car, the T86C F1-3-68 by Lucien Bianchi. Then in 1970 and 1971 Alfa returned to Formula 1 with a V8 race car driven by Alfas long time driver, Andrea de Adamich.
In 1976 Alfa returned to Formula 1 as the engine supplier for the Brabham Formula 1 team. This was Alfa’s all new flat-12 engine designed by Carlo Chiti. The engine produced 510bhp. More was to come from Alfa in the coming years of Formula 1.
