The Alfa Romeo 4T f1 engine

[kurtiejjj]

I read about the alfa romeo inline 4 turbo F1 engine on some site a while back but I can't find it anymore, seems to have been a big failure.

Anyone has more information, pictures?

[davyboy]

Did they have an in-line 4 turbo ? I thought Alfa went the unconventional route of a 1500cc V8 for their turbo power back in the early 1980s. I used to have some fabulous posters on my bedroom wall of the Benetton-Alfas of Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Cheever... Benetton had them in most of their stores and I asked an assistant for one at the time. Beautiful livery... but not so effective. Riccardo Patrese had a spectacular crash on the front 'straight' at Monaco in one though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAvszw3L4Nw

[benjabulle]

I have photos of the first tests at the Paul Ricard, in the Ligier JS29 :

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/ligieralfa.jpg

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/ligieralfa1.jpg

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/ligieralfa2.jpg

[kurtiejjj]

Great! I knew I had seen the pictures on your site before! I still don't understand it really why it was such a failure, I mean it's not like alfa didn't know what they were doing they had build a V8 turbo as well. Arnoux drove the ligier didn't he? And he slammed it, maybe he was just a bit frustrated that day .

[benjabulle]

First Alfa didn't want to be in F1 anymore, and when Arnoux opened his mouth about the lack of reliabilty of the engine they were more than happy to cancel the project. Even if they didn't, the engine wouldn't have been competitive, it was a 4T and V6 were needed at that time to find power with rpm because boost was limited (4 bar). The Alfa was an interesting 2 turbos engine, with Bosh Motronic. I remember that they tried smaller turbos without a real improvement, better response but less power. It was more compact and less heavy than the BMW, G.Piola in his drawings showed that very well. Talking about power, Arnoux praised the power of the Megatron fitted to replace the Alfa....