Alfa Romeo 179

History

Alfa Romeo hired Frenchman Patrick Depailler for the 1980 season; Depailler had a good reputation as a testing and development driver, and this proved invaluable for the 179's competitiveness. The car was far from competitive at the first races of the season in Argentina and Brazil; Depailler and his teammate Bruno Giacomelli qualified at the back of the grid for both races even though the former finished 5th in Argentina. But a month later in South Africa the car had become far better and Depailler qualified 6th on the grid, and another 4 weeks later at Long Beach the Alfa had improved even further and Depailler qualified the car an amazing 3rd on the grid, whilst Giacomelli qualified 6th. Although Alfa Romeo did not win a race that season largely due to horrendous unreliability, they were often up there with the front runners, although the team's season was marred by the death of Depailler at a testing session at Hockenheim in Germany when he crashed due to a suspension failure which pitched his car into the Armco barrier at the high-speed Ostkurve, inflicting fatal head injuries as the vehicle overturned and skidded along the top of the guard rail for several hundred feet prior to flipping onto its top and into the trees. Giacomelli bravely raced at Hockenheim a week later, finishing 5th. But the team ended the season on a positive note, with Depallier's testing not having gone in vain when Giacomelli stuck his Alfa on pole at the last race of the season at Watkins Glen; he led most of the race until electrical failure put him out of the race.

The 179's best achievements were Bruno Giacomelli's pole position at the 1980 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and 3rd place at the 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix. The car scored 14 points from 61 races.

Variants

At the beginning of the season, the 179s were fitted with adjustable dampers and denoted as 179C. A lower 179D was the next evolution and the final version which raced. A fully carbon-fibre 179F was present at the 1982 South African Grand Prix but was never raced.

There was also a V8-engined test mule of this car, the 179T in 1982, which was used to test the new 1.5 L turbocharged engine.

Technical information

Non-Championship races

Following the season, Alfa entered one of their 179s, with Giacomelli doing the driving, in the non-championship 1980 Australian Grand Prix at the Calder Park Raceway in Melbourne. The race that year was open to Formula One, Formula 5000 and Formula Pacific cars with the Alfa, along with the Williams-Ford of 1980 World Champion, Australian Alan Jones, being the only F1 cars in the race. Calder circuit owner and race promoter Bob Jane invited the factory Alfa team in the hopes of attracting spectators from Melbourne's large Italian community (a ploy that, along with the presence of Jones, saw a good, but far from capacity crowd on race day). Giacomelli qualified second behind Jones (and easily faster than the F5000 cars) and after showing surprising speed and taking the lead from Jones part-way through the race, eventually finished a lap behind the Williams in second place.

Variants:

Complete Formula One results

(key) (results in bold indicate pole position)

Notes

References

1. "museoauto". museoauto.it.
2. "Committed to life". forix.com.
3. "Alfa Romeo 179". ultimatecarpage.com.
4. (9 July 2017). "Alfa Romeo 179C car-by-car histories".
5. "Alfa Romeo 179F". oldracingcars.com.
6. "Alfa Romeo 179T". statsf1.com.
7. (1986). "The Official 50-race history of the Australian Grand Prix". R & T Publishing.