With this year’s Belgian Grand Prix at the magnificent Spa circuit as our inspiration, we’re turning back the clock to the very first race at the track, when Alfa Romeo served up its most thrilling victory, humiliating its rivals in the most decisive fashion

The two blood-red rockets emerge from the La Source hairpin and accelerate rapidly toward the bottom of Eau Rouge, shaking the road as they exhale that addictive scent of gasoline from their exhausts.

This fragrance mingles with the resins, tree trunks, and damp foliage, perfuming the air of the beautiful Ardennes forest with the sacred incense of speed. It is a reconciliation between human passion and the eternal silence of the trees, where the engine does not desecrate, but confesses.

Continuing their journey through this natural amphitheater of speed—where once only the jingling of sheep bells and the rustling of trees could be heard—the two Alfa Romeo rockets, which seem to dominate Grand Prix races just as the two “parrots” McLaren are vying for victory in every race this year—are hurtling down toward the terrifying Burnenville, an old turn on the track that makes today’s Eau Rouge look, by comparison, like a playground slide.

It doesn’t take long for them to reach the endless Masta straight, thus arriving at the farthest point of this new Belgium’s “mammoth”—14 kilometers long—which passes through three picturesque villages: Francorchamps, Malmedy, and Stavelot, creating a “triangle of terror.” A triangle that the drivers will have to complete 54 times this afternoon, covering a total of 810 kilometers.

Although they are nearly five kilometers apart—roughly halfway through the Masta stage—the sound of the eight-cylinder engines of the two magnificent Alfa Romeo P2s, which are approaching 200 km/h, is still clear and sharp as a knife slicing through the air above the pits. So far ahead of the rest of the racing cars are the two brave men piloting them (the great Antonio Ascari and the explosive Giuseppe Campari, an opera singer and a master behind the wheel)—that the crowd on the grandstand across from the pits, feeling as though the show has been stolen from them, begins to boo the Italian team.

Vittorio Jano, Alfa Romeo’s chief designer and creator of every mechanical marvel bearing the four-leaf clover emblem (the Newey of his era), is naturally present at Spa. His genius seems to hover over everything, like an invisible alloy that binds the engine to victory.

When a colleague once asked him how he achieved that terrifying power and almost supernatural durability in his engines, Jano didn’t get into technical details. He simply asked the Alfa engineers to lift the crankshaft into the air, placed a brick on the accelerator pedal, and before calmly walking away for his lunch, he whispered, “When we get back, you’ll understand.”

Now, however, listening to the protests in the stands, the Alfa team leader—with a Hungarian soul forged in the fire of mechanics—fixes his gaze on the crowd with an icy, almost dangerous silence. There is not a trace of apology in his eyes—only bewilderment and rage, as if he cannot fathom how the audacity of mediocrity dares to question the purity of genius. He twirls his mustache slowly, almost ritually, and without saying a word, disappears into the back of the garage.

Not for lunch. This time, he’s going to cook something else.

With only a few laps remaining, the two Alfas—alerted by the team’s mechanics on Jano’s orders—pull into the pits. No one seems to be in a hurry, nor are they breaking a sweat. The mechanics neither refuel their tanks nor change the tires. They pull out the dust cloths and sponges for one last wipe-down before victory—a cleaning ritual, almost ironic.

The crowd is in an uproar; some burst into scattered applause and laughter, while others boo loudly. The more level-headed simply remain silent, watching the scenes as if they can’t believe what they’re seeing is real. And as the red single-seaters glisten in the sun, the salt slowly and agonizingly seeps into the wounds of the opposing teams. Not because they were defeated, but because there was never any doubt that they would be defeated.

But the collapse and the stripping bare don’t end there…

Jano returns from the garage, carrying a large table, which he ostentatiously sets up in the pit lane, right before everyone’s eyes. After settling into a chair, he ties a white towel around his neck, like a nobleman in a Tuscan courtyard, and invites his two drivers to join him. In a matter of seconds, the plates are filled with steaming al dente pasta, sprinkled with plenty of Parmigiano Reggiano and drizzled with olive oil from the slopes of Liguria!

And while the team’s mechanics continue unperturbed to polish the two Alfas, the true heroes of the day—Jano, Ascari, and the burly, food-loving Campari, with his huge bites and grunts of pleasure—dine in front of the whole crowd.

After wiping their lips, the two drivers return to their race cars to bring the show to a close, having turned the race’s finale into a clear display of power, luxury, and absolute supremacy, the likes of which the racing world has never experienced in these past hundred years—and may never experience again.

Editor’s note: All of this took place on June 28, 1925, at the first Grand Prix hosted by the magnificent and now beloved Spa circuit. 

Read more in my book *Ode to Speed*—Dimitris Giokkas