Alfa Romeo Tipo 33: The Racers’ Reunion

Wonderful video.

I was fortunate enough to witness the #30 Alfa T33-3 win, outright, at the Watkins Glen 6 hours Endurance Race in July of 1971. The “little” three-liter Alfa whipped the large bore (5L) Porsches and Ferraris in the rain — winning by two, repeat, two laps. The rooster tails behind the cars on the main straight seemed to shoot up twenty feet, leaving a completely opaque cloud of spray for a hundred feet.

The victorious drivers were Andrea de Adamich and Ronnie Peterson.

My most lasting memory is the bravery of the drivers in keeping up a desperately fast pace in a driving (no pun) rain. The race was especially dangerous as the production cars in the circuit were vastly slower — thus, there were a dozen or so “moving chicanes” on the track while the rain poured down. If my 71 year-old memory serves, the top speeds dropped only 5-7 mph from dry racing conditions. It was a sight to behold; the likes of which I will never see again.

It was a happy coincidence that I had a chance to see the race in person. That summer of ’71 my friend, Ted, and I were on an 8 week drive around America from Arcadia CA to South Florida to Quebec to Idaho (Sun Valley) and finally back to So Cal. The road trip was the first real chance I had to “unwind”, having been discharged from the Army a year earlier; what a fantastic journey it was.