John Simister: Taming a furious Alfa 33 TT 12 at FOS 2016

So here I was, a Brit at a very British event, about to drive something extremely Italian which was being lovingly administered to by some very baffled Italians. This was embarrassing, but at least I was able to distance myself from the result and help celebrate our common, pan-European love of wonderful old racing machinery. Let's hope this, at least, can continue.

So, the Alfa 33 TT 12, low and wide, slab-of-side and very fierce. The 2995cc flat-12 in its tail later powered those delicious-looking Brabham-Alfa Formula 1 cars and possesses enough torque to cause the telaio tubolare, or tubular chassis for which the car is named, to twist. So it isn't the friendliest of cars on the very ragged edge. Still, the drivers who helped it to win the 1975 World Championship of Makes were good enough to cope, usually. And I was hoping I wouldn't find that particular part out for myself.

Among those drivers were the pairing of Arturo Merzario and Jacques Laffite, who won the Dijon round at the start of the championship and whose car this particular TT 12 is thought by Alfa Romeo's Centro Storico to be. It has Merzario's signature on the tiny steering wheel, anyway.

Exactly a third of a century later, a significantly less talented driver threaded his way into the TT 12. I had already pored over the design and engineering details, the tiny front wheels with the oval-hole design that became an Alfa Romeo signature, the polished strip of metal that superimposed an Alfa scudetto outline on the front air intake, the rubber doughnut couplings in the driveshafts just like those in my tiny Sunbeam Stiletto, except they are at least four times the size.

Now strapped in, I lay seemingly near-horizontal in the seat, surrounded by chassis tubes, Alfa bodywork stretching worryingly widely to either side. The engine started easily once the fuel pressure had built up, and I stalled it only twice as I manoeuvred out of the paddock bay. Delicacy was duly learned with the short-travel, surprisingly light, very definite clutch. En route to the bottom of the hill, I found all four dog-clutch gears. Looping round to point back up the hill, I discovered just how vast is the turning circle.

Driving it at low speed, thus far, showed that the engine couldn't take big throttle openings unless the the revs were well up, as you might expect when a red line is set at 11,500rpm. How close to that heady speed would I dare to go? One of the Centro Storico mechanics had counselled caution: 'You might want to limit yourself to 5,000rpm,' he said, 'because it suddenly gets fierce after that.'

Maybe I could experience that ferocity in an exploratory practice start, just so I knew what to expect, but no. A car was marooned on the right side of the track, just before the start line, so I would get just one stab at a decent launch. What was behind I had no idea, because motor racing's tallest-ever rear view mirror was pointing up at the trees. I was in my own bubble, despite the marshals and spectators all around. Then the flag dropped. This was it.

Lots of revs, judged by sound and some guesswork, clutch up hard. Kapow! The engine note stayed approximately constant, suggesting I'd hit about the optimum blend of torque and traction, and with a hard-edged, crackling shriek the Alfa rocketed off the line, tyres combusting. The traction turned to a searing slither to the right, so I eased off a little, accelerated again with a touch more finesse, and found second gear with a clunk of dog-teeth.

On cold tyres, the front felt a bit slippery as I turned into the first corner, and I didn't want to be the one to ruin Alfa Romeo's weekend. But once the track was straighter I could let the Alfa howl past the house, fluffing the next upshift but getting it sorted out in time for that tricky Molecomb corner. I once had a very anxious moment there in a modern Shelby Mustang (grass, tail-slither, presumed intervention of deities as straw bales remained untouched), and I was not about to do that again.

And so on up the hill, engine happily howling and hauling with far more energy on offer than I could dare unleash after such a short courtship. How many revs? Just past 8000rpm, I think, enough to feel the ferocity and what so much power can do with so little weight.

In the holding area at the top of the Hill, I pulled up behind a McLaren F1 GTR. Its driver asked me how I got on with the Alfa, before revealing that he crashed a similar 33 spectacularly at Buenos Aires. 'Front gone, rear gone, engine and gearbox gone. Just the central chassis and me. It's a very strong chassis.' And that's how I met Emerson Fittipaldi.

This Friday, if all goes according to plan I'll be driving an earlier 33 up the hill at this year's Festival. It's a Le Mans version, and the anticipation is killing me.

Photography courtesy of LAT Images