A Giulietta at Goodwood

Story by Jon Dooley

As a teenager in 1961 Jon Dooley sat in the Woodcote stand at Goodwood and watched Karl Foitek in a Giulietta TI come around at the end of the first lap in among the 3.8 Jaguars. But on the next lap Fiotek was nerfed into a spin which effectively ended his race. Ever since then Dooley has dreamt of seeing a TI win at Goodwood. In September of 2107, Dooley finally saw his favorite car triumph. Here is his story….

The Goodwood Revival Meeting sets out to reproduce touring car (saloon) car racing from the fifties and sixties. The rules back then were the less stringent Group 3 based Appendix J and the “Goodwood HRDC” rules seek to reproduce what was historically appropriate.

Increased displacements, carburetion improvements and chassis modifications mean that cars like Austin A40’s can run at the front, as they did do in period. Some latitude has been introduced by organiser Julius Thurgood so as to make some of the modifications a bit easier and to help even up performances. New this year were some minimum weight limits by car, related to actual road test weights rather than homologation, which caused a lot of last minute investment in lead ballast.

Car owner Geoff Gordon selected an Alfa Giulietta TI sedan to fulfill his ambition to have a car to run in the high profile and extremely popular St Mary’s Trophy race at The Revival. The car was initially prepared to a very high standard and run in other Historic Racing Drivers Club races during the 2014 season. The Alfa was invited to the 2014 Revival where Emanuele Pirro produced a stirring performance to second in his race. On a combined basis, with Geoff’s race, the car finished fifth.

This year Geoff’s car was the only Alfa to receive an invitation to run in the St Mary’s event. The prestige of the event has moved up, too, so that often both “owners” and celeb racers are professionals of a high calibre. Geoff had been running the car over the past years with Richard (Dickie) Meaden, the active journalist cum racer, who was proposed as the owner this year to be accompanied by Pirro again. Unfortunately, Emanuele was called away on his Audi work but hugely experienced and successful Steve Soper was drafted in to replace.

The Revival suffered from quite a lot of rain this year, which made suspension set ups difficult as there can be many shades of wet. Steve had the first qualifying session on the Friday but the change made the car unpredictable, leaving him down in 15th. Dickie learned from this and with a more correct set up took pole, still in the wet, later in the day.

Soper did Saturday’s St Mary’s race on a substantially dry track. He was laudably cautious off the start line but this produced a hit from an A35 on his right rear wheel arch exiting Madgwick. Not enough to stop him, but enough to cause a tire rub on occasion. He worked his way up in the end to sixth place, helped by the Jordan A40 stopping with an engine failure and hindered by a yellow flag when lapping back markers. He had the worry of the water temperature gauge going full deflection but concluded it was the gauge as other indications remained ok.

Dickie Meaden was on the pole for Sunday’s race and initially led away before a missed gear left him behind the Mike Jordan A40 and the fast-starting Richard Shaw BMW “700” coupe, itself then delayed by an off at St Mary’s. There then followed the father and mother of dices between the Giulietta and the Jordan A40. (Watch the videos, embedded below.) Last minute set up guesses had made the Giulietta pretty unstable, though traction was improved, and Meaden had a number of heart stopping moments, on the grass and also the save of the meeting after going off at Fordwater. The data logging recorded the car went sideways at 104 mph!

A few laps were lost to the safety car after an A35 hit the barriers hard backwards at Woodcote, causing the field to close up. On the restart, the Giulietta and Jordan continued to swap places and the Alfa displayed all sorts of angles. In the end lapping back markers worked in Meaden’s favour, just, as well as some rapid exits on to the main Lavant Straight. The Giulietta made it over the line with just about the biggest margin of the race, a couple of seconds. Fifty six years later I had finally witnessed the revenge of the Giulietta.

The Alfa placed second overall on a combined basis between Saturday’s and Sunday’s races. It was a tremendous result for Richard Meaden, the Raceworks team and owner Geoff Gordon. A lot of investment of self goes into a winning car at this level. It involves keeping going beyond reason when things do not go so well. A word also needs to be put in for Dave Ashford, of Brunswick Motorsport, who has built an engine that not only gives great power but also is smooth as satin.

For his efforts Dickie Meaden was awarded the Will Hoy Memorial Trophy, for the outstanding drive of the meeting in a closed cockpit car. He also got a lot of coverage on UK TV channels and in the papers. As a measure of the achievement, the car runs lap times only three seconds a lap or so off those done by front-running Alfa GTA’s and Lotus Cortinas in the later period, which carry about 100 kgs less in weight. Currently it looks like the most famous Giulietta in the world.

A WORD WITH THE OWNER – GEOFF GORDON

Geoff, you must be over the moon with this result.

Absolutely over the moon Jon. We had high hopes following our good showing at the 2014 Revival, when the Ti was fresh built and still in development. But once the 2017 grid was announced I had the butterflies in the pit of my stomach. There were so many professional/semi professional drivers in cars that have also moved on 3 years of development. This was not a foregone conclusion. The race favourites, Andrew and Mike Jordan in their very fast A40 had spent countless days in testing at Goodwood through the summer.

We had managed a very wet Goodwood test day the week prior with Steve (Soper) and Dickie. I can’t say that we were entirely pleased with our wet set-up, but at least we had something! Steve struggled through with the wet setting to qualify 15th for Saturday’s race. We had to do something drastic and just removed the rear anti sway bar altogether. Dickie followed, qualifying well for the Sunday race, just pipping Mike Jordan for pole. A great sigh of relief.

On the Saturday race day Steve brought the TI from 15th to a creditable 6th. Looking better. Sunday gave us a drying track and Dickie went out on an intermediate set-up. You probably noticed the Ti lifting a front wheel due to the removal of the rear bar but she was clearly more forgiving and Dickie just would not let Mike Jordan get away. A fantastic race that earned Dickie the Will Hoy Memorial Trophy for closed car driver of the day.

Why did you choose an Alfa? You did and do have an A40 shell ready to go.

We wanted something a bit different from the norm. Our specific target was the two Goodwood Revival St Mary’s races in 2014. With the St Mary’s being so popular with both current and retired professionals, together with stage and screen personalities, we had to have something visually different to offer to get half a chance of an entry. Yes, it was a fun build and some might say, a classy choice. But from an historic race car development prospective, not an easy one. Its tall, narrow and relatively heavy. Of course we wouldn’t change anything, we are very proud of the Giulietta, but there has been a lot of development to get her to run at this pace and as engineers we’ve relished it. The A40 shell is seam welded and in primer, maybe for another day. But it doesn’t have the glamour, does it?

You have been working with the TI for a long time now. What have been the major issues?

Well an inherent handling issue has been the major problem. There is a tendency to oversteer. Lift off oversteer can be scary in traffic. The narrow track is something we are stuck with and try as we might we cannot get any more rubber on the ground without reconfiguring the bodywork and we are not prepared to change her look. She is great fun to drive to the edge, go beyond the edge and she can bite. She is an Italian woman after all.

Power we have in abundance. The twin cam Alfa unit is a jewel, particularly when you consider when it was designed. Although we are allowed within the HRDC/Goodwood rules a +25% capacity increase to 1600cc we can only run the single plug engines. They are GTA in every other respect. We possibly have as much power as the ‘average’ GTA race engine.

What are your future plans for the TI and otherwise?

Although the TI is currently not to her FIA homologation papers, and could not be to compete at this level in the HRDC series and at Goodwood, we would like very much to do the odd ‘Scuderia del Portello’ all Alfa events in Italy, perhaps on a friendly invitation basis, just to show her off. She ran at Monza in her previous life and it would be great to take her back.

When we built the car we opted for the odd’s and ends within the loom that would make her road legal. There is evidence that TI’s ran in the Targa Florio in the early ‘60’s and we wouldn’t mind having a crack at the historic Targa re-run.

Word is that you are building another historic Alfa Romeo race car.

Ah yes, we are re-building a Group 2 Alfa Sud Sprint to run in the Peter Auto HTC historic saloon series, which will take us to events throughout Europe. The original Sprint Veloce 1.5 shell left the production line in February 1979 to go to Autodelta for build. Her first race was at the Nurburgring in June ’79. This has been another great exercise in research as, although there are Group 2 homologation papers, there is not a lot of history easily available. We are hoping our first event will be at Paul Ricard in October.