Published by Giunti–Giorgio Nada Editore, La congiura degli innocenti was the natural successor to Ferrari Rex. This time, however, I deliberately stepped away from Maranello to tell a story that had remained largely overlooked: Alfa Romeo’s return to Formula One during one of the sport’s greatest eras, when Bernie Ecclestone, Colin Chapman, Niki Lauda and James Hunt dominated the headlines, and Ferrari cast an almost impossible shadow over everyone else.
Rather than writing separate histories of Autodelta and Brabham, I chose to focus on the remarkable five-year partnership that united them. On one side stood Bernie Ecclestone, determined to turn Brabham into a World Championship-winning team with Alfa Romeo power. On the other was Alfa Romeo itself, quietly pursuing an entirely different ambition: developing its own Formula One car in secret while continuing to supply engines to its British partner.
The narrative begins in December 1974, when Ecclestone secured the agreement that brought Alfa Romeo engines to Brabham, and reaches its dramatic conclusion at the 1979 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. There, Bruno Giacomelli’s Alfa-Alfa came within moments of overtaking the Brabham-Alfa of two-time World Champion Niki Lauda before crashing out — an almost symbolic ending to a partnership that had become increasingly impossible to sustain.
At the heart of the book stand two unforgettable personalities: Bernie Ecclestone and the brilliant engineer Carlo Chiti. The research was made possible by unprecedented access to the Alfa Romeo Historical Archive in Arese, including private correspondence, confidential reports and internal memoranda that had never previously been examined for a book, complemented by exclusive interviews with Bernie Ecclestone and Brabham’s legendary designer, Gordon Murray.
A limited edition of 179 signed copies was also produced, its number chosen in honour of the Alfa Romeo 179 that Bruno Giacomelli debuted at Monza in 1979. The title pays tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, reflecting the atmosphere that runs through the book: a world in which alliances were fragile, ambitions collided, and almost everyone seemed to be conspiring against someone else—while insisting they were doing nothing of the sort.
“This is a wonderful period in the history of Formula One which, I’m sorry to say, far too few people really know about.” Bernie Ecclestone
