Scoop at Balocco

13. Mar 2026

by Pierre Van Vliet

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When I was covering the European Formula 2 Championship for AUTOhebdo , I often collaborated with Bernard Asset, a young photographer from the Rue de Lille. We set off for the Italian tour in the spring of 1978, first to Mugello and then to Vallelunga . On the way, we stopped in the suburbs of Brescia, where the small village of Roncadelle , at the end of a dirt cul-de-sac, housed the modest home of the Giacomelli family .

The father, a staunch communist and retired union member, and the “mamma” who ran the household, which you entered directly through the kitchen. On the refrigerator sat an old Bakelite telephone, used mainly by Bruno, the only son, to manage his career and organize his schedule. This was long before cell phones, the internet and GPS… On the fridge door, a series of “post-it” notes with numbers to call back and the names of British contacts whose spelling was butchered by the mamma secretary telephone operator.

My friendship with Bruno dated back to his early days in Formula 3 in England two years earlier, when he would travel to the Bicester industrial park near Oxford, home to the March Engineering workshops. He drove a factory 763 for March in the BP British F3 Championship, using his personal Citroën 2CV . It took him 14 hours to make the Brescia- Bicester journey, but needs must! By 1978, Bruno’s career had progressed, and he had become a professional driver for March, with BMW Motorsport generously donating a BMW 320i for his team. He had already made his Formula 1 debut with Marlboro McLaren and would soon become a full-time driver for Alfa Romeo, whose return to F1 was on the horizon for 1979.

So, Bernard Asset and I were at Mugello for a Formula 2 race, and we were going to Vallelunga the following week. I was really good friends with Bruno Giacomelli . He told me he was going to sign with Alfa Romeo, that they had produced a Formula 1 car, and that it would actually be running for the first time the next day at Balocco, on the manufacturer’s private track, with Vittorio Brambilla ! Obviously , Bernard and I wanted to try our luck… When we arrived, everything was fenced off. We were about to leave when we heard the sound of the 12-cylinder engine.

There, we searched and found a stream where we waded in to slip under the fencing surrounding the track and began our stakeout, hidden in the tall grass at the edge of the circuit. We heard, then saw the Alfa F1. The car did two laps, stopped for two hours, but Bernard managed to photograph it. It was dark, raw carbon fiber. It was a Monday, deadline day at AUTO Hebdo … We had a major scoop!

We drove fast to Linate Airport in Milan to give the film to a passenger or crew member , as was the custom back then . I called the editor – in-chief, Étienne Moity , to tell him we had something huge . He replied , ” Van Vliet, this isn’t Paris-Match!” “He refused to send a courier to the airport to pick up the film , saying it would have to wait until the following week. Bernard and I were so pissed off that we rushed to Bologna, where the Autosprint editorial team was based , and gave them the remaining film . They came out two days later with the scoop on the cover. What an adventure!”