Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stats & History

Alfa Romeo Racing History

Nino Farina.

The team won six of the seven races of the 1950 World Championship. As the other race in the calendar, the Indy 500, was scarcely entered by European manufacturers and drivers, the Alfetta (158) won each of the six races it entered in the 1950 F1 season.

Farina won three events and Juan Manuel Fangio won the other three, but Farina took the first-ever World Drivers' Championship at the final race of that season, at Monza.

Italian Luigi Fagioli also entered every European round of the 1950 World Championship and finished third in the standings, behind Farina and Fangio, with five podiums.

In 1951, the Alfa Romeo 159 hit the ground running, with Fangio winning the Swiss Grand Prix on his way to the first of five titles he won in his career.

Fangio and Fagioli shared a drive to win the 1951 French Grand Prix at Reims, which was Fagioli's only Grand Prix win.

Fangio won three of the six European races that year, with Ferrari winning the other three with José Froilán González (the team's first-ever win, at Silverstone) and a couple with Alberto Farina, who won the title in 1952 and 1953.

Nelson Piquet driving the Brabham-Alfa Romeo at Monaco (1979).

After winning the first two World Championship of Drivers, Alfa Romeo left Formula 1, as the budget started to crumble and other brands were starting to challenge the legendary brand at the top.

Engine manufacturers

Between the 1960s and early 1980s, Alfa Romeo developed engines, with some success coming from a partnership with the Brabham team, which took a couple of wins in 1978 with an Alfa Romeo Flat-12, naturally-aspirated engine.

The two races won by Brabham's BT46 car were the 1978 Sweden Grand Prix at Anderstop, with the BT46B "fan car", and the 1978 Italian Grand Prix.

Those two wins were achieved by legendary three-time F1 World Champion Niki Lauda.

Return as a Constructor

Alfa Romeo again competed as a Formula 1 constructor from 1979 to 1985, with Autodelta developing the car.

In that span, the historic brand had little success, as reliability issues and fuel consumption of its turbo engines proved too costly.

RAIKKONEN Kimi (fin), Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C39, action during the Formula 1 Rolex Sakhir Grand Prix 2020, from December 4 to 6, 2020 on the Bahrain International Circuit, in Sakhir, Bahrain - Photo Florent Gooden / DPPI

Between 1979 and 1985, the brand finished on the podium five times and recorded some more Top-5 finishes, but DNFs were the most usual result for the team.

The podiums were achieved by Bruno Giacomelli in Las Vegas in 1981, Andrea De Cesaris in the 1982 Monaco GP, 1983 German GP and South Africa in 1983. Riccardo Patrese recorded Alfa Romeo's most recent F1 podium, in Italy in 1984.

In total, the brand has had 26 podiums in Formula 1.

Return to Formula 1 with Sauber

For the 2019 season, Sauber changed its name to Alfa Romeo Racing just before the launch of their C39 car, but the structure of the team remained the same.

The Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team had a solid 2018 Formula 1 season with a rookie and future Grand Prix-winner Charles Leclerc and Marcus Ericsson, a future winner of the Indy 500.

The team scored 48 points in 2018 and finished eighth in the World Constructors' Championship, it was its best result since 2015 and its best tally of points since 2013. However, with Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi, the team surpassed those marks with 57 points in 2019, now renamed Alfa Romeo.

CIRCUIT DE MONACO, MONACO - MAY 28: Zhou Guanyu, Alfa Romeo C42, leads Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo C42 during the Monaco GP, Monaco. (Photo by Steven Tee / LAT Images)

Giovinazzi and Raikkonen continued in 2020 and 2021, but scored eight and 13 points in those two seasons, respectively.

The 2007 F1 World Champion retired from the series at the end of the 2021 campaign, with Valtteri Bottas joining the team after leaving Mercedes. Rookie Guanyu Zhou replaced Giovinazzi ahead of the 2022 season, and the pair scored 55 points in the 2022 season, with Bottas having an extraordinary year so far, with 49 points.

Alfa Romeo finished sixth in the 2022 World Constructors' Championship, which equaled its best result in F1 history (achieved in 1983) and is the best since the 2019 return (in terms of position in the standings).

The team won the World Drivers' Championship twice in its history (1950 and 1951), but the World Constructors' Championship did not exist back then (its inception came in 1958), which means Alfa Romeo has not won the WCC.

After the season, Team Principal Fred Vasseur stepped down and went to the Scuderia Ferrari. Then, former McLaren Team Principal Andreas Seidl was announced as Alfa Romeo's CEO. On January 26th, 2023, the Sauber group named Alessandro Alunni Bravi as the Team Representative.

The 2023 campaign saw Alfa Romeo finish ninth (out of 10 teams) with 16 points, 10 scored by Bottas and six from Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu.

For the 2024 F1 season, Alfa Romeo left Sauber, and the constructor's name was changed to Kick Sauber. On 5 February 2024, the team introduced the new livery for the C44 car, which will be driven by Bottas and Zhou again in 2024.