We test drive the new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio at Le Mans

Alfa Romeo’s throaty new Giulia Quadrifoglio brings a moment of movie star and motor-racing fantasy to life.

Stephen Ottley

The Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio.

4 min read

12:00AMAugust 04, 2023.

Updated 5:54AMSeptember 05, 2023

Wish

The speedo needle is a blur but the digital readout tells me I’m doing more than 215km/h as I try to thread my way through traffic on this busy French country road. Ahead of me is a gaggle of classic cars, some enjoying a relaxed Sunday morning drive, while others are pushing their cars – and themselves – to the limit.

Before you get alarmed, or report me to the gendarmerie, this is no ordinary road. It is in fact the Circuit de la Sarthe, the home of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the three crown-jewel motor races in the world (the Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 being the other two).

I was supposed to be taking part in a “parade lap” ahead of the 2023 Le Mans Classic, a biennial event that assembles a breathtaking collection of former racing cars to celebrate the history of the race, but somewhere along the way this parade turned competitive.

Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio at Le Mans

There are more than 100 cars on this vast track (one lap is 13.6 kilometres long), mostly older models in the spirit of the event, but fortunately for me, I’m at the wheel of the brand-new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, the brand’s most potent car, packing a Ferrari-derived 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 engine that gives me a distinct mechanical advantage compared with the many museum pieces around me.

Which is precisely what’s needed at Le Mans, because while the event may have begun in 1923 as a test of endurance for human and machine, these days it’s a sprint race from the drop of the French tricolour to the wave of the chequered flag 24 hours later. Teams of three take turns driving as fast as they can to outrun and outlast their rivals.

There are multiple classes, with professionals and amateurs sharing the circuit across different types of cars. The all-professional teams race state-of-art prototypes that are basically Formula One cars with more bodywork, while the amateurs tend to be in production-based sports cars, based on supercars such as the Ferrari 488 and Porsche 911.

Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio at Le Mans

This pro-am nature is integral to the race, as wealthy amateurs were the first racing stars and have helped keep the grid healthy as the big-name manufacturers come and go. It also adds a level of complexity to the racing that the all-pro F1 doesn’t have to deal with.

This mix of cars and driving ability means you end up with a high-speed traffic jam, like the one in which I find myself. In this situation attack becomes the best form of defence, hesitation can allow your opponent to pounce and take the advantage or see you find yourself going for the same piece of road as a slower car.

I’m not wanting to bend Alfa Romeo’s nice, shiny new Giulia so I keep the throttle pinned and unleash all the horsepower it can manage. It gives me a taste of what it must be like for drivers including Australia’s own Mark Webber, David Brabham and, more recently, Matt Campbell, to take on this remarkable circuit. The current layout (it has evolved over the course of a century) combines a purpose-built section with a variety of public roads.

Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio at Le Mans

These include the famous Mulsanne Straight, which makes up almost half the circuit. While at one stage it measured an uninterrupted six kilometres, it is now split into thirds by a pair of chicanes after cars began to hit more than 400km/h. These days in the race the cars max out at only 340km/h, but thankfully we didn’t quite reach those speeds in our road-legal Alfa Romeo.

Weaving through the slower cars as we rocketed down the Mulsanne, even at 200km/h, or passing them through the high-speed Porsche Curves was helping me to get a visceral sense of appreciation for this race. Le Mans is an evocative event, attracting both the greatest racing drivers – from Mario Andretti to Fernando Alonso – but also Hollywood.

Steve McQueen is best remembered for The Great Escape, but his passion project was 1971’s Le Mans. It’s no cinematic classic, with limited dialogue and an almost documentary-type focus on the race, but it does capture the essence of the event as the characters simultaneously fight the track, the conditions and their rivals.

Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio

More recently Matt Damon and Christian Bale starred in the dramatic and scripted Ford v Ferrari, a re-telling of the famous duel between the two carmakers in the 1960s. Paul Newman didn’t make a film about Le Mans, but he did collect a trophy. In 1979 the American shared a Porsche with professional racers Dick Barbour and Rolf Stommelen and finished second. Not bad for an actor.

These days it’s Michael Fassbender chasing glory, revisting his childhood dreams of being a racing driver (via his series Michael Fassbender: Road to Le Mans), before becoming a successful actor got in the way. I may never be as talented as Mark Webber or as movie-star attractive as Paul Newman, but living out both my racing and movie star fantasies at the epicentre of French motorsport was something truly special.

I was only on the track for about 24 minutes, rather than hours, but even that tiny taste was enough to garner a greater appreciation for the drama, majesty and thrill that everyone who has taken on the Circuit de la Sarthe in the past 100 years has experienced.