Correction, mea culpa

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Yesterday I wrote "Porsche had been responsible for the two-liter front
engined Mercedes GP cars built by Daimler at the same time, one of which took
the Targa Florio in 1924. (Alfa didn't win the Targa Florio until 1930; the
intervening years had been all-Bugatti.)" First part correct, second part very
wrong.

Must have been a late night. I was using data from Laurence Pomeroy's "The
Grand Prix Car", one of the classic grand old books of motor racing literature
but one with some gaps, having been written largely during the Blitz, which
undoubtedly complicated Pomeroy's research. "Appendix A" in Volume 1 is
"Results of the 200 most important races 1906-1939", including winning speeds,
best lap speeds, driver, car, and circuit, and the Targa Florio list therein
has Peugeot in 1919, Mercedes in 1924, Bugatti in 1925, '26, '27, '28, and
'29, and Alfa in 1930, '31, '32, and '33, but skips the other years.

A separate table of statistics on p.112 covers the Targa Florio 1920-1927 and
1934-'35, and preceding text adds a few other years, but again there are some
discrepancies between the text and the tables. Alfa did, of course, win the
event in 1923 with the RL, driven by Ugo Sivocci, which famously was the first
Alfa to wear the Quadrifoglio. There is no good excuse for my lapse.

I do not have a history of the Targa Florio per se, but piecing together
scraps from several sources, in 1919 the Targa Florio had been won by a 2.5
liter Peugeot, followed by an Itala, Diato, Fiat, and Nazzaro. In 1920 a
Nazzaro took first, followed by an Alfa ES driven by Enzo Ferrari, then 22
years old. In 1921 it was won by a late prewar Fiat GP car, with second place
taken by a blown Mercedes which also won the Coppa Florio for best-placed
production car, followed by two ES Alfas driven by Campari and Sivocci. In
1922 Mercedes was first, Ascari in an Alfa fourth and first-in class, and
Sivocci second in class behind one of two other Mercedes which were first in
their respective classes, thus apparently seventh overall; two of Dr.
Porsche's Austro-Daimlers are said to have distinguished themselves, but I
didn't find specifics.

1923 was Alfa's big year, with first, second, and fourth overall. In the same
year Ferdinand Porsche moved from Austro-Daimler to become chief engineer at
Mercedes where he did extensive detail development work on an existing blown
two-liter twin cam four cylinder car which then took first, tenth, and
fifteenth in the 1924 Targa Florio while taking 1-2-3 in the two liter class,
also taking the team prize.

The next five years were apparently a Bugatti romp, taking 1-2-3 in 1926 and
1928, 1-2 ahead of Peugeot in 1927, first ahead of two Peugeots in 1925, and
1-3 split by an Alfa in 1929. From there on Alfa regularly did quite well.

Such numbers never tell the whole story, of course; teams and nations make
decisions about where to make their efforts, and how to counter others;
critics and commentators chose what to consider noteworthy. Luck, politics and
economics can bend the possibilities. Did Alfa, Mercedes, and Bugatti all
enter every year? Undoubtedly not.

This subthread started with the not-very-Alfa question whether Porsche was or
was not "much of an automobile engineer." Each of us can rank him in his own
mind, but Porsche was good enough, or lucky enough, to design the
front-engined two-liter four which took the Targa Florio in 1924, the
front-engined seven-liter six which took the Mille Miglia in 1931, and the
rear-engined sixteens which took the Italian Grand Prix at Monza three years
against Mercedes' two from 1935 through 1939. I doubt that Alfa's engineers
ever thought him "not much".

Cheers

John H.

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