Alfa Romeo came up with a blinder of a challenge to celebrate its new Giulia sports saloon arriving in showrooms – a lap record at Silverstone in the flagship Quadrifoglio but with blacked-out windows.
It marked 65 years since Italian F1 World Champion Nino Farina registered a lap record at Silverstone while driving the legendary Alfa Romeo 159 which was adorned with the iconic Quadrifoglio badge.
The latest record-breaking accomplishment saw the Giulia complete a lap on the National Circuit in one minute, 44.3 seconds, matching the one minute 44 seconds set by Farina in 1951.
Despite the car windows being covered entirely in a black vinyl, the 510hp, Bi-Turbo V6 petrol saloon, navigated the seven-turn, 1.64-mile course and reached more than 100mph.
With the Quadrifoglio driven by Ed Morris – the youngest ever British driver to compete at Le Mans 24 hour – and David Brise directing from a second Quadrifoglio behind, the drivers spent two days getting to grips with the challenge, first practising on the smaller Stowe Circuit, before moving on to the iconic National Circuit.
To make this achievement possible required more than just driver determination and memory power, the Alfa Romeo Giulia is packed full of high-performance technologies that allowed the driver to be truly at one with the car.
The Giulia is equipped with the Alfa chassis domain control system, a sector first, distributing the power evenly through the torque vectoring and active suspension systems to ensure maximum drive through the rear wheels. The 'brain' is dedicated to vehicle dynamics – combined with the front active aero splitter and rear air diffuser which helped keep the rear-wheel drive Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio 'glued' to the track, while the on-board Alfa connect infotainment system allowed the driver to stay in touch with the support team.
In addition, and working almost as a sixth sense for the driver, the active safety systems such as forward collision warning, autonomous emergency brake with pedestrian recognition and lane departure warning, allowed the driver to have complete confidence in the task at hand.
Professional driver Morris said: 'I've driven hundreds of cars but never one with all the windows blacked out. As a racing driver it's in your nature to push yourself and the car to its limits and knowing the Alfa Romeo Giulia is packed with so many high-performance technologies really allowed us to have complete trust in it and focus on setting a record.'
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