[alfa] 158 Alfetta

["Ed & Marsha Prytherch" <mred2u@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Fielding wrote:
>The Germans had a grudge against the Alfa Romeo team for good reason.  The
1939 Tripoli
GP, the last GP before Italy entered the war, was run to a 1.5 litre
formula.  Mercedes
Benz, at great expense, had developed a special 1.5 litre version of its
racing car with
the strict purpose of beating the Italians to prove superior engineering.
In the event
the Alfetta's gave the germans a hiding and this did not go down well with
the german high
ranking politicians, particularly Adolph Hitler<

This is at odds with the race story in "First Among Champions" by David
Venables. Here it is related that 5 of the 6 Alfettas retired with
overheating problems and Luigi Villoresi, who was fastest in practice in his
Maserati, retired with gearbox problems. The finishing order was (1)  Lang -
Mercedes, (2) Carraciola - Mercedes, (3) Emilio Villoresi - Alfa Romeo.
Brock Yates also tells it that way in "Enzo Ferrari, The Man and the
Machine". The time interval between Lang and Villoresi was 8 minutes - about
2 laps.

Ed Prytherch, Columbia SC
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