The story, known previously to only a handful, of an Alfa Romeo test driver and racer who walked away from the sport directly after winning the Italian and European titles in one of the most prestigious car championships.
Words by Mario Simoni. Photos by Centro Documentazione Alfa Romeo, Foto Alquati Milano, Quattroruote, Leone Pelachin Archive, Mario Simoni Archive.
From 1976 to 1983, hundreds of skilled drivers participated in the Alfa Romeo Promotional Trophy – a series of races held on circuits across half of Europe.
In those championships, two young drivers who later rose to Formula 1 fame took part, the Spaniard Luis Perez Sala and the even more famous Gerhard Berger.
Monza, Imola, Zeltweg, Nürburgring, Paul Ricard, Zandvoort, and Hockenheim were just some of the racetracks. In front of hundreds of thousands of Formula 1 spectators, real battles took place in the pursuit of the Alfasud and Alfa Sprint Continental Titles.
Of those drivers duking it out, Leone Pelachin – in his Alfa Romeo – always stood out for his sportsmanship and gentlemanliness.
These were the years in which Alfa Romeo regained its prestige in the world of racing thanks to the skill of a great technician like engineer Chiti and the capabilities of a racing team like Autodelta.
In 1975, it had just won the World Championship for Makes with the 33TT12 and entered Formula 1, supplying its 12-cylinder engine to Brabham from '76 to '79. Also in 1979, Alfa returned to the World Championship as a constructor, where it remained as a team until 1983.
The awareness that competitions were the best business card to win over sports clientele led, in those years, to focusing on a racing version of the best-selling and most popular Alfa Romeo sedan, the Alfasud.
Thus, in 1976, the Alfasud Trophy was born, reserved for the racing version of the coupé birthed in ‘72 by Rudolf Hruschka – one of the most skilled technicians in automotive history who had started his career at Porsche and Cisitalia. In Hruschka’s Alfasud project, a sporting soul was imbued in the compact two-volume sedan, equipped with an excellent front-wheel-drive chassis (the first in Quadrifoglio's history) and a 4-cylinder boxer engine capable of optimizing weight distribution, but above all with great potential for sporting use.
For the engineers at Autodelta, tasked with developing the kit that would transform the comfortable Alfasud into a real racing car, the task was not the most challenging.
There are few drivers who, without a "father" or a sponsor behind them, have managed to reach Formula 1. Among them, it's worth mentioning Consalvo Sanesi and the great Lorenzo Bandini, who went from being a simple mechanic to an unlucky Ferrari driver.
The real major hindrance to Leone Pelachin's career, besides his family, was the handicap of starting racing at the age of thirty, when the careers of many drivers are already on the decline.
Not so much for physical or skill reasons, as demonstrated by the successes of "grandfathers" like Alonso at 42 and Hamilton at 39, but also the incredible career of Nuvolari, who at over fifty risked winning the Mille Miglia twice.
But Leone Pelachin had all the strength and desire to continue racing and winning at 35, and that farewell at the peak of his career and the dream of a lifetime must have been the most difficult moment after years of success.
MS: Leone, did you never think about starting racing until you were thirty?
LP: I'd always had a passion for cars and racing, but I never thought I would have the chance to race on the track. In reality, I wanted to be a tester.
Racing was a dream that came true when I realized I was really good at driving, but before reaching that point, I had to cover tens of thousands of kilometers, first on the roads and then on the Balocco track with Alfa Romeo models under development.
It was at Balocco that I truly learned to drive: hundreds of accelerations from a standstill, top speeds, recoveries, special tests with all the prototypes of Alfa production cars, always collaborating with the designers from Arese, including engineer Felisa, who later became CEO and Managing Director of Ferrari and Aston Martin. But before becoming ‘good’, how many mistakes, how many breakdowns, how many accidents... Fortunately, never with any consequences.
MS: How did you go from being a simple mechanic to a tester for Alfa Romeo?
LP: At 14, I started as a mechanic in a workshop in Rho, just a stone's throw away from Arese, but my dream was to work at Alfa Romeo. So, in 1969, after my military service, I applied and was hired as an engine/carburettor technician. I was already capable of dismantling and reassembling an engine by myself, and I enjoyed that work.
After not even a year in the experimental department at Arese, my dream increasingly became to become a tester. The desire was so strong that I asked my workshop head every day to be transferred to that department, and after being told "no" a hundred times, he finally said, "Okay, if you really want to, try it..."
The test went well, and so, after covering almost 100,000 km in less than a year on the roads of Lombardy, along the Apennines, and over the Alpine passes to test the new Alfa models, the big day arrived. The chief tester called me and said, "Pelachin is doing well, from Monday he goes to Balocco track." I'll never forget that day. It was as if the gates of Heaven had opened. I could have cried tears of happiness!
MS: And how did you find Balocco? What cars did you drive?
LP: I drove all the production models from that period, from the Alfa 6 to the Montreal to the Alfasud. But my main task was to develop and verify tires for the new models before putting them into production. We conducted endless tests, especially at night, to avoid being photographed by "prototype hunters," and of course, we drove a lot on wet surfaces. That's how I became a true expert in driving in the rain, as seen in the wet races of the Trophy.
Among the testers, there was also a sort of time challenge on the Balocco lap, and after a while, I was the fastest of all, both on dry and wet tracks.
At first, no one believed it, until I had to compete for a series of tests – first with my chief tester Bruno Bonini, whom I "defeated" driving an Alfetta prototype, then with the head of all the Balocco testers, Guido Moroni, who at the end of the tests with a GTV 2000 declared, "It's right that the apprentice goes faster than the master."
There was also a tester from Autodelta, as well as a driver in the World Championship for Makes, who once, invited to a challenge with me by the head of the Balocco timekeepers, preferred to turn down the invite. Who knows, afraid of being beaten maybe?
MS: In the many tests you conducted, is there one you'll never forget?
LP: The most incredible of all was driving the Montreal: a "speed test" from Reggio Calabria to Lubeck.
From the extreme south to the extreme north of Europe in just 20 hours with the Montreal. It was a report published by the magazine Quattroruote with the title "See you tonight in Lubeck".
It was 1972 and there were no speed limits then, and the traffic was a whole different story, but there were still customs checks, and some sections of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria and Brenner motorways were missing.
What we did with two Montreals, myself and the tester Francesco Brignoli in one, and the journalist Bruno Bonetto and the chief tester Bruno Bonini in the other Montreal, is truly incredible and unrepeatable. It's almost 2,600 km, so we maintained an average speed of over 130 km/h! Today, no one, with any car in the world, could beat that record. All thanks to the Montreal which, with the 200 hp of its V8, exceeded 220 km/h and, in addition to demonstrating great road qualities, never had any problems throughout the entire journey.
MS: In the early Seventies, the development of the Alfasud was in full swing. How was it going? What was its development like?
LP: From the first tests, when we drove with the entire body camouflaged, almost like a van, the Alfasud performed very well, and we never had major problems. When the Golf came out, which was considered the most direct competitor, we compared it extensively at Balocco with ours. We were superior in everything, especially in road behavior and steering functionality, not to mention the engine and performance: our 1200 boxer engine clearly outperformed Volkswagen's 1100 and 1300.
There was also an Alfasud that no one ever saw and that was on the verge of going into production, but even after our tests, it was rejected.
MS: What model was it, and what happened? Were there other Alfas that you tested but never made it into production?
LP: It was the Sprint Spider, designed by Giugiaro alongside the sedan and coupe, which in some ways resembled the Fiat X1/9, with the large roll bar and removable roof. It was intended for the American market, but due to the investment required and the design that didn't convince, it remained on standby. The final blow came from our tests at Balocco on the cobbles: it was found that the chassis couldn't withstand the stress, it tended to flex and therefore needed to be modified and strengthened. That was the verdict that definitively ended the project.
Among the engines we tested but never made it into production was the 2-liter, 16-valve, 4-cylinder engine of the Alfetta GTV. It was an excellent engine, Alfa Romeo's first production engine with 4 valves per cylinder. It generated over 150 hp and was responsive, but for some reason, it was decided not to continue its development. Another engine we tested in our cars was the Wankel, also being developed by NSU and Mazda at the time: I don't remember if that was one of the rotary prototypes produced at Arese or if it was of Mazda origin. The engine was powerful, but we immediately saw that in terms of noise, fuel consumption, and reliability, it was a step backward rather than forward. Moreover, it had another serious flaw, the lack of engine braking, which put a strain on the braking system and did not provide confidence when driving at the limit.
MS: So we come to the end of 1977, when you decided to start racing. What happened? Who helped you, who gave you the car?
LP: Actually, I had already done a few races in '75 and '76, but in rallycross with the 2 CV. The first year had few races and many breakdowns, but by the end of the second year, I was in contention until the last race to win the Italian championship, but I came second.
Almost everyone at Balocco knew about my desire to race, including Giorgio Francia who in '77, in addition to competing in the World Championship for Makes with the 33 TT/12, had been hired as a tester for Autodelta.
We often met during breaks at Balocco. That's how he said to me, almost jokingly, "But didn't you want to be a driver?" Without hesitation, I replied, "Where? With whom? With what?" He told me that the SPECAR dealership in La Spezia had a car for the Trophy but wasn't satisfied with its driver and was looking for a new one. So if I wanted to try...
MS: Speaking of Autodelta, the Alfa Romeo cars prepared for racing, including the F.1 and the 33 for the World Championship for Makes designed by engineer Chiti, were often tested at Balocco. Did you ever manage to try them?
LP: I would have liked to, indeed! But, for some reason, I was never in the good graces of Teodoro Zeccoli, the head of Autodelta's testers, and I never managed to get close to those cars. In fact, once, in 1980, Zeccoli, acting as a technical commissioner at the Imola track, did me a disservice by disqualifying me for a minor irregularity, which seemed deliberately done to diminish my championship victory. But that's another story..
Actually, once, in the absence of Zeccoli and Chiti, who would never have given permission despite my successes with the Alfasud, I managed to convince Manfredini, the head mechanic at Autodelta, to let me try the F.1.
It was Giacomelli's Alfa 179 race car, and a few days later, there was the French Grand Prix at Le Castellet. They let me do three laps, but... if I had broken something, I wouldn't have been able to set foot in Balocco or Alfa Romeo again! It was a mix of joy and fear! At 160 mph on the straight, if you accelerated a bit too much, you felt all 500 hp of the naturally aspirated V12 unloading onto the rear, causing it to hint at slipping, while in the corners, it felt like being on a rail, but only up to the limit I had set for myself to reach. After that, it's better not to know.
MS: So you made it to Formula 1, congratulations! Even if it was just for three laps! But let's go back to the beginning of your career when you had your first test with the Alfasud Trophy.
LP: The pivotal moment of my career was at the Varano racetrack, where the dealer Piero Simoncini had decided to assess my skills, given that I had never been on a track and had never driven a race car. I didn't know Varano or the Trofeo, but despite that, I wasn't worried at all; I was truly confident in my driving abilities!
MS: And how did it go?
LP: Simoncini and his workshop manager were satisfied with the performance and said to me, "Okay, let's go, if you agree." I replied, "For me, that's fine, as long as I don't have to incur any expenses because I really wouldn't know how to manage."
For this reason, we didn't have any other winter tests until the beginning of the Trophy, and we had to skip some races during the season, including the first one at Mugello. So, here we were at Monza, on April 23, 1978, for the debut, and it was a debut with a "bang"... in every sense of the word!
MS: What happened?
LP: We arrived at Monza with all the top teams who had already tested extensively on that track, which I didn't know, and at the end of the official practices, I was in the top five, just 17 hundredths off the pole position.
Some of the more established drivers started wondering, "Who's that guy, never heard of him, and he comes in and goes faster than us who have been racing in the Trophy for two years!" Meanwhile, Autosprint’s headline the following Monday read, "An Alfa Tester Unleashed."
On race day, my first impression, at the start, was, "are these guys all crazy?" I didn't know where to look; I was in the middle of a real "battle," with cars touching, pushing, and banging doors.
When we got to the first chicane, I said to myself, "well, if that's how it is, I'll play the fool too," and I threw myself into the mix: and so began my racing career.
In the heat, after starting on the front row, I was leading the race in the penultimate lap when I was overtaken by two other Alfasuds. They collided at Ascari and spun right in front of me: I couldn't do anything but hit them, and so, after turning the nose of my Trofeo into a "wedge," I had to retire.
Fortunately, the dealer understood that it wasn't my fault, and since I also set the fastest overall lap time among the Alfasuds, he said to me, "It's not a problem, let's continue!"
MS: And did it go better at the second race? LP: Not entirely. We were at Varano in May, and there too, I was among the best in practice. I started on pole in my heat, but on the first lap, I was pushed from behind, sending me into a spin: I hit a couple of Alfasuds, and so I found myself off the track, stopped in the middle of the grass. I unbuckled my seat belts and tried to get out to see the damage to the car, but the door wouldn't open. So, I buckled up again and... I restarted like a madman! I set the fastest lap time, and at the end of the heat, I was fourth, qualifying for the final!
In the final, I then achieved my best result of the debut season, finishing fifth.
MS: So the rest of the season didn't go as you hoped?
LP: Actually, we only planned to compete in five or six races, and even though I didn't achieve any other results, I managed to gain some satisfaction. In the second race at Varano in June, I won my heat, setting the fastest lap time. At Misano, I secured pole position in the official practices, while in the only race of the Trofeo Europa that I participated in at Le Castellet, I qualified sixth and finished the race in fifteenth place.
MS: Not bad for a rookie. So, were you able to get an Alfasud Trofeo for the 1979 championship?
LP: Yes, SPECAR dealership confirmed me, and finally, the first victory came at Monza in my seasonal debut, in the third race of the Trophy! It was a head-to-head battle with Sigala which finished in a sprint finish – a win by just a few centimeters! During the championship, I won my heat at Varano, Misano, and Mugello, but due to several retirements and skipping some races, I didn't go beyond fourteenth place in the Trophy standings.
However, the tuner Bigazzi, who assisted my car and Bertolini's, managed to win the preparers' cup.
MS: So, we come to 1980, the year of the championship victory. Was it all easy?
LP: Almost, although there were some problems and mishaps. The car, always prepared by Bigazzi, was perfect at the beginning of the championship, so much so that I won the first four races of the championship. But at Mugello, it didn't seem the same anymore, while my teammate Bertolini's car was flying.
We had this feeling or impression that the tuner favored him, so the owner of the SPECAR dealership for which I raced decided to leave Bigazzi and switch to another team, Luicar. Immediately, things returned to normal. With two more victories at Magione and Misano: the Trofeo Alfasud was mine!
But at Magione, a couple of incidents made me think that someone wanted to prevent me from winning: leaving the car in a workshop the night before the race, we found it with a loosened cylinder head cap, as if they had tried to make the engine run out of water during the race. Fortunately, we noticed the ‘sabotage’, and in the final, after winning the heat, I found myself with a significant lead in the last lap. It seemed done, but a backmarker cut me off and gave me a push that almost sent me spinning. I managed to keep the car in control somehow and finished the race more than 5 seconds ahead of Calamai. Was it the backmarker's mistake or a deliberate maneuver? I'm still wondering.
MS: In 1981, the national championships gave way to the Trofeo Europa, which was even more thrilling with 10 races, half of which were concurrent with the Formula 1 Grand Prix. How did it go?
LP: Well, I can tell you that I finished ahead of Gerhard Berger in the championship that year, as he began his leap into Formula 1 and Ferrari. I, always racing for Luicar, won at Imola, and he won at Zeltweg, but the season's dominant driver was Rinaldo Drovandi. We only finished sixth and seventh.
Ahead of us was also a young man from Ferrara, Renato Croce, who could have really made it to Formula 1. But instead...
At Monza, in the final race, he won, racing alongside Drovandi with the Alfasud prepared by Bigazzi for Autolodi.
The owners of the Lodi dealership called me at the end of the season to offer me a car for the 1982 Trophy, which would no longer be contested with the Alfasud but with the Alfa Sprint. However, there was a big problem: my departure from the Bigazzi team in 1980. It hadn't gone down well with the Tuscan tuner, and he immediately demanded my apologies for doubting his integrity.
MS: So, did you "apologize" and manage to join the strongest team in the Trophy?
LP: Needless to say, I apologized to Bigazzi for ‘thinking badly’, but in reality, some doubts always remained…
His team was indeed the strongest. Besides me and Croce for Autolodi, the Bigazzi team fielded three Alfa Sprints for the Spaniards Villamil, Emilio Zapico, and Luis Perez Sala, another guy who managed to make it to Formula 1.
It was an exciting Trophy: just over halfway through the season, Croce and I were leading with two victories each, but despite this and the many battles we had on the track, there was a good relationship – respect in the race and friendship in life, even though he often said to me, "You're not Leone, you're a Volpone."
So we arrived at the last two races with almost the same points. At Monza, I won, after risking going off the track several times.
Meanwhile, Croce, after colliding with Drovandi, driving the third car fielded by Autolodi, damaged his Alfa Sprint and lost many positions. Then he went off the track trying to get back to the front of the race. That incident, which I believe was entirely unintentional however, marked Renato Croce's fate. He felt like a victim of a plot and suffered dramatically from the so-called ‘injustice’ he’d been dealt.
There was still one race to go, and everything was still to be decided. Croce and I were the favorites, but the Spaniard Emilio Zapico was right behind us. And we were racing in Spain, where a real bullfight awaited us.
A bullfight indeed. It began right away, with Renato Croce getting involved in the starting melee and finding himself at the back of the pack. He launched an incredible comeback, gaining fifteen positions, but he couldn't do better than eighth place. I, as Croce would have said, like a true "fox," focused mainly on securing the result, I didn't attempt any heart-stopping overtakes and settled for third place. But the victory in the Trofeo Europa was mine!
MS: For the winner of the Trophy, the Alfetta GTV 6 2.5 was at stake, which was worth almost 30 million lire. Didn't you think about racing in F.3 with the winnings?
LP: Actually, the GTV went to Autolodi and the team. I was left with just a ‘tip’! The agreement was that I wouldn't have any expenses, but all the prizes went to the team, except for some ‘pocket money’ for me. I didn't have the economic means to move up to a formula car, while the Trophy I was asked to leave unless I wanted to lose the chance to continue working in Alfa Romeo's sports activities. The desire to race was still strong, but I had to let reason win over passion.
MS: So, did you hang up your helmet for good? And what happened to Croce, your great rival that year?
LP: Yes, I hung up the helmet, but not forever. Ten years passed, and at 45 I returned to the track with the Alfa 33 Group A, immediately winning the first race at Misano. From '92 to 2000, I competed in many touring car races in Group A and N championships and returned to win several times. But if I won the lottery today, I'd return to the track immediately, and I'm sure many wouldn't be ahead of me.
Renato Croce, on the other hand, in the winter of '82 tried the Alfa Romeo-powered F.3, but he also decided to return to racing with the Sprint in 1983. He arrived at Imola for the trials of the first Trophy race, which was won by Calamai ahead of Sala. But something had changed in him. Partly due to the disappointment of the previous year, but above all it was because of a parasite that had begun growing in him – drugs. Unfortunately, he didn't even start the race at Imola, and a few months later he lost his most important race – the one for life.
Cars, racing, and journalism have always been among my passions. I am among the few fortunate ones to have turned my passions into a lifelong career. And all this almost by chance, through a series of fortunate circumstances that have led me to write these pages about the life of a driver and tester like Leone Pelachin. I also began my career as a driver, but at 23, competing for two seasons in the Renault 5 Cup. However, while my financial resources were similar to those of the "Champion Without a Suitcase", my driving abilities were evidently different. Thus, after a couple of spectacular accidents and no significant results, I hung up my helmet... but not forever. It was Alfa Romeo itself that called me back to the track, at Imola in 1982, to compete in a race of the Alfa Sprint Trophy, the one won by Pelachin in a photo finish against Renato Croce. In reality, I had been called not so much as a driver but as a journalist, to recount to Autosprint readers the thrills, emotions, and driving sensations behind the wheel of the Sprint Trophy. But let's take a step back: at the end of the seventies, I began my career as a journalist in the automotive sector for a minor magazine, until in 1981 I started collaborating with Autosprint, writing among other things about promotional championships, such as the Alfasud Trophy. An undeniable passion for Alfa also led me to propose a competition in Autosprint to entrust a young driver with a Sprint Trophy for the '82 season: and the main selector in the final test at the Balocco track naturally had to be Leone Pelachin. In those two unforgettable seasons with the Sprint, I admired and recounted all the duels and battles on European tracks, becoming friends with almost all the protagonists of the Trophy. My career then continued, leaving racing to move on to production cars in the editorial staff of the monthly magazine Auto, where for almost thirty years I tested every type of car and authored investigations, tests, travel stories, and scoops on upcoming releases from automotive manufacturers. In the meantime, I also wrote a book about Alfa Romeo spiders and two about another of my life's passions, Cisitalia.