1975 World Sportscar Championship, A SPECTACULAR SEASON

Words Arturo Merzario

Photography Centro Documentazione Alfa Romeo

The cowboy racing driver goes back in time half a century, telling the story of the glorious World Championship when Carlo Chiti's Alfa Romeo won with him at the wheel of the 33TT12. A story triggered a couple of years earlier by an incredible series of events that took place in Maranello

In 1969, I had signed a four-year contract with Ferrari to work both on the Formula 1 and on the Prototypes. Mauro Forghieri was technical director. An excellent engineer and designer, but in late 1972 we were testing a Formula 1 single-seater with loads of problems. The 312 B3 was nick-named “Spazzaneve” – the snow plough – due to the specially shaped front that resembled one… It was instantly clear that it would never have been competitive, and the first to pay the consequences of this was Forghieri himself, who found himself relegated to a dusty office in the old headquarters in Via Trento e Trieste, Modena. The Fiat management demanded that a new technical team took over in Maranello, captained by Sandro Colombo.

Colombo decided to abandon the classic Ferrari steel trellis chassis structure, adopting a more modern monocoque made in England by John Thompson's TC Prototypes. It was all fine on paper, but not in practice. After the first three GPs with the 312 B2 from the previous season with some parts updated, they went to Spain with just one available B3 “Monocoque”. It was assigned to my team mate, the Belgian Jacky Ickx, who came in last, six laps behind Emerson Fittipaldi in a Lotus. Mine was ready for Montecarlo, but both Jacky and I were forced to withdraw. An absolute disaster that continued into the following races, and indeed in the Netherlands and in Germany the decision was taken to not participate in the race.

Moral of the story, I convinced him to give Forghieri a chance to work on a new single-seater. In early August, Mauro, a couple of mechanics and I set off for Zeltweg in a Fiat 124 Estate, towing the B3 behind us. We did endless tests and made a few changes. The result was that in the next Austria Grand Prix I clocked the sixth fastest time, a second behind Fittipaldi, and crossed the finishing line in seventh place. We had taken a step forward, but at the next race in Monza I announced that at the end of the season I would stop racing with Ferrari.

In fact, I think that I actually made the decision that the “Commendatore” would have taken only slightly later, considering that my contract was expiring and that the Italian Grand Prix was usually the time when drivers and teams switched around ahead of the new year. Ickx was also let go by Ferrari. Taking our places were Clay Regazzoni, a Maranello veteran, and the very young Niki Lauda, and they found themselves driving an even better honed version of the B3 that Forghieri and I had finally made competitive. But that’s another story. Less than an hour after the news broke of my separation from Ferrari, the home phone in Modena where I lived at the time wouldn’t stop ringing. For the Formula 1 races, I made contact with BRM, as that was where both Regazzoni and Lauda had come from and so there were two free places. It would have been another great story to tell, but the team manager, Tim Parnell, was very honest with me and told me that in all probability BRM wouldn’t have had the means to complete the next year’s championship. So I signed up with Frank Williams, who at the time managed the Team ISO.

Having solved the Formula 1 issue, I still had to find a gig for the Prototypes. I was contacted by Roberto Bussinello from Autodelta, who offered me a place racing with Alfa Romeo, and I accepted, but on condition that I was involved in the car development. And that’s how it went.

The car was brand new, it had a tubular chassis and had abandoned the old V8 for a 12-cylinder boxer that was very similar to what was already used at Ferrari. I then convinced Carlo Chiti, head of Autodelta, to continue testing in Vallelunga, where I was much more at ease. And besides, in the middle of winter it was a far better solution to be just outside Rome than up in the typical cold and rainy weather of Northern Italy.

The car was immediately competitive. At its début at the 1974 Monza 1000 km, Mario Andretti and I came in first place. But that year we didn’t take part in all the races, as we preferred to fine-tune the car, focusing on doing even better the following season.

The whole team shared the very same goal: to win the world championship. At the start of the season, in Mugello, I was paired with Ickx: we started in the lead, but during the race we had a technical problem with the brakes. The pads couldn’t cope with the stress of the race. After a few laps I had to stop in the pits to quickly mount a new set of brake pads, losing first place to Jabouille and Larrousse's Alpine Renault. But I reassured Chiti that the rest of the car was competitive. And having solved that problem, at the next race in Dijon there was no contest.

There was me, Henri Pescarolo, Derek Bell, Jacques Laffite, Jackie Ickx, Jochen Mass, Mario Andretti, Vittorio Brambilla… There was also Nino Vaccarella, who took part in the Targa Florio, but that year the race didn’t count for the world championship. In the end we won all the races apart from one, and were World Champions. Not even Porsche and Alpine Renault could keep up with us.

What we managed to do was not only a technical and sporting victory, but also a historical event, as for the first time we brought a World win back to Alfa Romeo, after the Formula 1 wins by Nino Farina and Juan Manuel Fangio in 1950 and 1951. But there’s more. The following year, the 33TT12 was replaced by the 33SC12, the same 12-cylinder boxer engine but with a boxed chassis. 1976 was another preparatory year, and in 1977 we won the World title again.

I often think of how lucky I was to be a racing driver during one of the greatest car racing periods, working with people of the calibre of Mauro Forghieri and Carlo Chiti. Surly and hot-tempered sure, but genuinely unique men. Absolute geniuses.