Flat out in the Alfa 33 TT12 at 11,500rpm | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

Until he told me it was sharing the podium at Le Mans thirty years ago this year with his son Justin, having come third in a race bad luck alone meant they had not won. I felt like a twit. What father would not have such a moment up there among the highlights of even a career as stellar as his? Until...

...until he said with that irrepressible Derek twinkle in his eye, ‘but I didn’t think the Alfa at Spa was too bad either…’

Dear reader, I had to ask. Alfa? Spa? What was he talking about? He was talking about a round of the 1975 World Sports Car Championship where the Alfa 33 TT12 of himself and Henri Pescarolo outqualified and then in changeable conditions outraced the sister car of Jacky Ickx and Arturo Merzario. Beating Jacky Ickx in the wet on the latter’s home turf in an identical car? No wonder the memory still stands out. But to me the car itself had receded into the mists of my mind. The original, gorgeous Alfa 33 racer I remembered, not least because my size meant I had once failed to get into and therefore drive the gorgeous Stradale version, but what was all this TT12 business? And then, a few years later, I got to find out. First hand.

The 33 project kicked off fully 11 years before Derek’s great victory, when Alfa tasked Autodelta with creating a new 2-litre sports car. It finally made its debut in 1967, coming second at the Targa Florio, but it would not be until 1971 when, completely redesigned and with a 3-litre engine it won outright at Brands Hatch, the Targa Florio and Watkins Glen, not bad when the opposition included the Porsche 917 and Ferrari 312PB…

But then Ferrari won every round of the 1972 championship save Le Mans which it didn’t enter, after which Matra emerged as the new front runner, sharing the spoils with Ferrari in 1973, after which Autodelta redesigned the 33 one last time to incorporate new flat-12 3-litre engine designed both for it and Formula 1. The start of the 1974 season looked good with a win at Monza, but Matra won every other race in the season. It was only in 1975 and the withdrawal of Matra and its replacement by Renault that the Alfa, finally, finally had a chance to shine. Excluding Daytona where prototypes didn’t race, there were eight rounds in the championship and Alfa won seven of them. It had taken more than a decade but finally the 33 had come good.

Driving it is not an experience you forget. It was on the same Balocco test track upon which the car was developed in period and, as usual with Alfa museum cars, they gave me no rules at all. Despite the fact no one could remember any journalist ever driving it, I was told how fire it up and then just allowed to get on with it. I remember seeing the red-line on the rev-counter set at 11,500rpm and gulping a bit.

I was also only capable of driving it once they’d agreed to remove a seat designed for the tiny Merzario and I still looked ridiculous, not that I cared in the least.

The engine is essentially the same motor used in the Brabham BT45 the following season and develops 500bhp from its 3-litre capacity, an impressive output for the era, even by the F1 standards of the day and it starts with a bit of a bang to put it mildly. The car is of old-fashioned spaceframe design and you sit so far forward it’s impossible not to be reminded that the most substantial crumple zone in front of you is that connecting your ankles to your knees.

We set off and it was all surprisingly easy. The steering is fingertip light, the five speed dog ‘box a simple delight. I was careful about heating the vast Avon slicks but once they were up to temperature and I could commit to an apex properly, my memories are of how quickly yet accurately it changed direction, and how smooth and forgiving is that engine. You can flatten the throttle at 4000rpm and it won’t complain, but pulls steadily until it really comes alive around 6500rpm. From there to nearly 10,000rpm it’s pure Formula 1 and I spent my time wondering what it would be like if I used the full 11,500rpm indicated on the rev-counter. But the car was a decades-old museum piece and I had no idea even if, let alone when, the engine had last been rebuilt. So I couldn’t go there. Could I?

Well just once. On the very last lap when car and driver were as dialled in as they were going to be I used every last rev on the clock, and witnessed yet another transformation as the engine went completely feral, seemingly flicking me through several postcodes at the twitch of a toe. On a narrow and unfamiliar track it was enough, and I gave it back pleased, more than anything, that it was in one piece. When I told Derek about the experience he simply drawled: ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Pesca and I would rev it to 11,500rpm everywhere but Art was using 13,000rpm and I’m sure not always bothering with the clutch. It would start to smoke and break valve springs but you couldn’t stop it, it just kept going…’ Rather like the car itself.