The ferocious Alfa Romeo Tipo 33

Alfa Romeo withdrew from top-class international racing at the end of the 1953 season, when its team of sports-racing coupés was led by Juan-Manuel Fangio. A period of relative inactivity followed, but in 1964 Alfa established Autodelta, an autonomous competitions department under the direction of Ing. Carlo Chiti. At first Autodelta ran modified production cars and special editions which were based on production components. Then, for 1967, Alfa Romeo and Autodelta jointly produced a bespoke sports-racer, the Tipo 33, keeping that designation even though it ran through a wide variety of engines and methods of chassis construction over the course of the succeeding decade.

The Tipo 33 began with a 2.0-litre V8 in a tubular chassis, progressing via a 3.0-litre V8 in a monocoque, before ending its career with a 3.0-litre flat-twelve in another spaceframe. The T33/2's debut season was notably inauspicious: of the three endurance classics entered, Sebring 12 Hours, Targa Florio and Nürburgring 1,000km, only one resulted in a finish, Roberto Businello and Teodoro Zeccoli bringing their Tipo 33 home in 5th place in the latter event. Happily, 1968 would turn out to be an entirely different story. Its reliability problems sorted, the T33B-2 scored a resounding 1, 2, 3 finish in the 2-litre Prototype class at Daytona, which was followed up by further class wins in the Targa Florio, Nürburgring 1,000km and at Le Mans.

While the 2.0-litre T33/2 was competitive in its class, it was seldom able to challenge for outright victory, a shortcoming Alfa addressed with the 3.0-litre T33/3. The T33/3 proved similarly unreliable at first, though by the end of the 1970 season its promise was beginning to be fulfilled. 1971 would bring the T33/3 its first outright victories: in the BOAC 1,000km at Brands Hatch and the Targa Florio, but on most tracks the superior power of the 5.0-litre Porsche 917 held sway and the World Championship went to the German manufacturer.

The change to a 3.0-litre formula for sports prototypes for 1972 should have seen the T33/3 ideally placed to secure its first World Championship, but Ferrari came up with the 312PB and Alfa once again had to settle for 2nd place. Retiring, temporarily, to lick its wounds, Alfa Romeo returned in 1974 with the flat-twelve-engined Tipo 33 TT 12. The season began at Monza where Mario Andretti, partnered by Arturo Merzario, led an Alfa Romeo 1, 2, 3. Matra took the World Championship that year, but Alfa Romeo were close behind and the following season their effort was masterminded by Willi Kauhsen's team. The Tipo 33 TT 12 took wins at Dijon, Monza, Spa, Watkins Glen, the Osterreichring, the Nürburgring and the Targa Florio, winning the 1975 World Championship to crown a nine-year racing career.

The Tipo 33 TT 12-cylinder was the most successful variant of the Tipo 33, and ahead of that FIA World Championship for Alfa Romeo that year, the car's potential was evident when they debuted the updated series for the 1974 Season.

The car featured here was a key part of that uniquely successful team, it carries an uncompromised and simple chain of ownership ex-Works and retains a high degree of originality and remarkably for a race car a strong element of patina to its aesthetics endorsing that authenticity.

The car debuted at the 1000kms of Monza on April 25, 1974, where it was driven by Jacky Ickx and Rolf Stommelen, in a race dominated by the revised 12-cylinder cars, Arturo Merzario and Mario Andretti won, with Ickx and Stommelen in this car coming home second, ahead of Carlo Facetti and Andrea de Adamich for a true 1-2-3.

A month later on May 19, the three cars competed at the 1000kms of the Nürburgring, this time the car repeating its 2nd placing, on this occasion driven by Stommelen and Reutemann but leading the results, ahead of Facetti and de Adamich in 3rd, and Merzario now partnered by Brian Redman who placed 9th. Two weeks later and back on home soil again at Imola, it was up Stommelen and Reutemann again in this car to lead the positions with when the car placed 2nd. Autodelta would not field an entry at the Le Mans 24 hours that year, but were active again at the Osterreichring on June 30, but there their luck would run out when Stommelen and Reutemann they failed to finish, and it was Facetti and de Adamich's turn to wave the 2nd place banner, with Ickx returning to the cockpit with Merzario and Vittorio Brambilla to take 5th.

A pair of cars were flown to Watkins Glen, where they were expected to run the 6 hours and Can Am race on the weekend of July 13/14, this being one of those. As it turned out, a crash in practice prohibited this, with Merzario being the only car fielded in the Can Am race, bringing that car home in 8th. For the 1975 season, the car's career was more of a supporting act, only running in the Targa Florio with Casoni and Dini in July but failing to finish for Autodelta.

This 1974 Alfa Romeo TIPO 33 TT 12 will feature as part of Bonhams Quail Auction held on the 19th August 2022 in Camel, California. Photos © Bonhams.