Kind of sad that the little Alfa that could will not be around any more. I always enjoyed watching it run in the MPC race at Daytona. The first year that I saw it, I couldn't figure out what kind of car it was!
Photography courtesy KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering
At IMSA’s Daytona opener, 17 different marques will grace the paddock. Alfa Romeo won’t be one of them, though.
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After six seasons of campaigning the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce TCR in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering will move to the latest Honda Civic Type R.
“I didn’t want to do it–I have an emotional love affair with those Alfas,” says Louis Malone, who serves as team principal alongside Kevin Wheeler. They also recognized how the fans feel about their Alfa Romeo Giuletta Veloce. “The fan support we get has just been overwhelming,” Kevin says. “There’s so much love for the brand Alfa Romeo.”
Ultimately, the team felt the Alfa Romeo was outdated when compared to the rest of the TCR field. The smallest engine. The smallest wheelbase. A design originating in the 2010s.
It was time to upgrade, the group concluded, but making the Alfa competitive might have been the most rewarding experience for Louis and Kevin across their 30-year career in professional motorsport.
Perhaps even more so than a Le Mans victory.
Nine wins. A near miss of a championship. No factory support.
They did it just about all on their own.
This is the story of the little Alfa that could and how it reignited the passion for two burned-out racing professionals.
Team principals Louis Malone and Kevin Wheeler. Photo by J.A. Ackley.
If Louis, Kevin and crew come across as simply club racers having fun, you’re right–to a certain degree.
“We work together every day of the week,” Louis says. “Some of us work on the pro side and some of us work on what we call the KMW mothership. The mothership has to survive in order to go racing.”
Don’t think that this team is just a bunch of casual, weekend warrior racers. Far from it.
Louis and Kevin ran their first Rolex 24 At Daytona in 1995 with a homebuilt Porsche 911 RSR. From there, they helped run the efforts that won championships from the late 1990s to the 2000s. You may recognize some of the names.
Hurricane Racing Acura Integra R in Motorola Cup.
Champion Racing Audi S4 and RS4 in World Challenge with drivers Michael Galati (2001-’02) and Randy Pobst (2003).
In 2005, Kevin left competing at the professional level and Louis went on to win Le Mans overall with Champion Racing’s Audi R8 and drivers Tom Kristensen, JJ Lehto and Marco Werner. Then, in 2008, Louis also stepped back.
The two still loved racing, though. They competed in HSR, winning championships there, too.
Success tends to breed success, though–and attention. In 2018, the upper levels came knocking on Louis and Kevin’s proverbial door again. Compass360 Racing invited both of them to run two Audi TCR cars while Compass managed an Audi and a McLaren. The two entities worked together as one team.
“That was the first year for TCR, and it was really fun,” Louis recalls. “We just kind of fell into this Alfa thing. A good friend of mine has imported two of them over. I didn’t have a plan for them. We had a fully functioning team, so we had the Alfas and started running them.”
For Louis, he had another mission. A personal one. He had experienced much success in motorsport, but he lacked one thing: name recognition.
“I never won a single pro race with my name above the door,” Louis says. “I wanted to accomplish that before I retire. I remember when I came home and told [my wife], ‘I want to go pro racing again. All I want to do is win just one pro race that will say KMW TMR won a pro race.’
“We won three races in 2021, and she was like, ‘Okay, so we’re done.’ I’m like, ‘Well, we finished third in the championship. I want to win a championship before I retire.’”
Photo courtesy KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering.
When the initial TCR Alfa Romeos were built, they were intended for sprints, not endurance races. They worked with the builder of the TCR cars in Italy, Romeo Ferraris, to make them better suited to that venue.
“Once Romeo Ferraris realized we were a good team and knew what we were doing, they allowed us to develop the endurance package,” Louis explains. “In Italy, they’d never run ABS. We helped them develop that. Simple things, like you have to do a tire change live in IMSA, they never had to do it. So the studs, the nuts, the centering cones on the wheels were wrong. They allowed us to develop all that stuff, homologate it and make it legal.”
That’s right, this small team helped develop the Alfa Romeo with the builder in Italy. To be fair, Romeo Ferraris is about the same size as KMW, says Louis.
In 2021, a new version of the Giuletta got homologated, the Veloce. The team got a brand-new one.
“It was so much higher evolved,” Louis says. “It was simple things. They moved the engine in the chassis a little bit for better weight distribution. They moved the driver to the right some. [They changed] some kinematics in the suspension, moved some subframes up. They put their finger on every single part and said, ‘What can we do to make it better?’”
Sebring 2023. Photo courtesy KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering.
In the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR paddock, the well-resourced efforts of Hyundai, Honda and Audi encompassed most of the space. Then there was the sole Alfa Romeo.
The closest that Louis and Kevin had for factory backing was sponsorship from the local Alfa Romeo dealers. All that Stellantis did was sign off that they could run the Giuletta. Surprisingly, they did, considering the car was never sold in the U.S.
Romeo Ferraris in Italy served as the primary source for parts and support for the Alfa Romeo. While across an ocean, the group satisfied the team’s needs.
“Italy’s been amazing for parts,” Louis says. “We have a great package with FedEx. If I needed a front bumper and a splitter, I could have it in three days. One thing we have done is we keep a good inventory. I have one of every single part on the car. We have two or three of the things that are common to replace on the truck.
“You wouldn’t think it from the outside looking in, but we have some of the best support in the paddock, even though there’s no one here from Italy,” Louis continues. “I have an engine engineer that is on call for us 24 hours a day when we’re at the race track. I send them data every afternoon. They analyze it. Then they tell us what to do.”
Regardless of the team’s size and the challenges that come along with it, the Alfa Romeo won. In 40 races, it emerged victorious nine times.
“It’s a very predictable car, a very friendly car,” says driver William Talley. “It’s not got any evil characteristics.”
When veteran driver Tim Lewis was approached about racing the Alfa Romeo, he was hesitant at first.
“I always heard front-wheel-drive cars were terrible to drive, no fun,” Tim says. “I was pleasantly surprised. It does a lot of things right. We are faster in most corners than GT4 cars. It’s like a baby GT3 car–it has a lot of similar handling characteristics. Even though it is a front-wheel-drive car, with the size of the tires we run, the power it makes for a four-cylinder turbo, the enormous brakes [and] aero help, it makes it fun to drive.”
They also came oh so close to a team championship. During the final race at Road Atlanta, two GT4 cars got together in the hairpin, and the Alfa Romeo got caught up in it, ending their day early.
“We cried a lot that night,” admits Louis.
Admittedly, they got some satisfaction at the banquet when they were sandwiched between two Bryan Herta Autosport Hyundai teams. Bryan and Louis privately shared a moment on stage.
“Bryan Herta shakes my hand,” recalls Louis. “He said, ‘You really had us nervous this year. That was too close.’ I said, ‘It’s only a matter of time–we’re coming for you.’ It was a nice moment.”
Out-moneyed? Absolutely. Outraced? Hardly.
Photo by J.A. Ackley.
Many people joke about the perceived unreliability of Italian cars, and that reputation surrounded the Alfa Romeo TCR car. The truth is that perception didn’t align with reality, Louis says.
The 2024 season finale at Road Atlanta was the 18th race on the engine. It had never been freshened or touched during that time. That’s with the same 1750cc turbocharged four-cylinder you’d find here in the U.S.-spec Alfa Romeo 4C.
Fielding just one car, and an obscure one at that, unfairly magnified any issues they did have, claims Louis. At Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, they DNFed after an issue with wiring led the fuel pressure sensor to malfunction.
“It was a pin that broke off inside the harness and was intermittently making contact–it was probably five seasons old,” Louis says. “When that happens, everybody in the paddock is like, ‘Oh, the Alfa Romeo breaks again.’ But when there’s a herd of six Hyundais and Taylor Hagler’s car can blow a motor, send a rod out into orbit, in a fiery oil slick, it’s no problem because there are five other Hyundais.”
What did hurt the Alfa Romeos, though, was the fact that its design dates back to the 2010s. When the Alfa debuted, it competed against vehicles such as the Hyundai Veloster, Audi RS 3 (2017 version) and Civic FK8. All those manufacturers have released new versions, and with that a key change.
“Everything now, they’re all 6 to 8 inches longer in the wheelbase than the Alfa,” says Louis. “Forget everything else. [The wheelbase] changes the high-speed cornering characteristics to a place where there’s nothing we can do about that. I can’t cut the car in half and make it longer.”
Louis cited several examples of where they struggled.
“Turns 17 and 1 at Sebring, we get our asses kicked,” Louis says. “We’re great everywhere else. But we’re 6 to 8 mph off minimum speed through Turn 1 from the average Hyundai. But we’re 5 mph up through the hairpin.”
Places with an abundance of high-speed turns required William and Tim to really hustle the car to keep up and make sure they minimized any mistakes. Looking to eliminate a variable that’s possibly holding back the team, they reluctantly decided to change course, switching to a Honda Civic Type R for 2025.
Photo courtesy KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering.
“I’m most proud that we developed a team and developed a car,” says Louis. “[With the Honda,] I had to check about a hundred boxes from a standard car to [make it] an endurance car on the order list. With the Alfas … I never expected it to go as far as it did. We were responsible for all the endurance stuff. Look at who we were going against–they weren’t small players. It is a big deal to get second in the championship. I have that trophy proudly displayed in my cabinet.”
The goals for KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering this season are to figure out the Honda and win a championship by 2026. Then, Louis will retire to a farm, possibly somewhere in Tennessee, with his wife. Maybe. That story’s been floated around before, hasn’t it?
So what will happen to the team’s Alfas? Will they be stored away, never to be seen again? Absolutely not. You can find them competing in HSR competition, where they can continue exceeding the expectations of the masses and give the fervent Alfa fans something to cheer for.
Photo courtesy KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering.
Kind of sad that the little Alfa that could will not be around any more. I always enjoyed watching it run in the MPC race at Daytona. The first year that I saw it, I couldn't figure out what kind of car it was!
I recall seeing the car and thinking it was neat to see an Alfa–especially one not sold here in the U.S.–racing.
Sadly, I didn't know the truly awesome story behind the effort.
RacerBoy75 said:Kind of sad that the little Alfa that could will not be around any more. I always enjoyed watching it run in the MPC race at Daytona. The first year that I saw it, I couldn't figure out what kind of car it was!
Yeah, first time I saw the Alfa in the paddock I was like, Um, did we teleport to Europe?
Cool to see the underdog out there, but totally understand that technology marches on.
So there was apparently no rule that the car be sold in the US to be eligible to race with IMSA? Does the shorter wheelbase just make the car less stable in high speed corners?
dannyp84 said:So there was apparently no rule that the car be sold in the US to be eligible to race with IMSA? Does the shorter wheelbase just make the car less stable in high speed corners?
If there is a rule about being sold in the U.S., it's not enforced. The Cupra TCR that debuts at Daytona is not sold in the U.S. The brand isn't even sold here, although there are plans for that.
And, yes, the shorter wheelbase makes the car less stable in high-speed corners. Longer wheelbase cars are more stable at higher speeds.
Interestingly enough, Louis cited the Kink at Road America as another good example. Sure, they won there four time straight, but Louis went on to say that the abundance of 90-degree turns and the long length of the track helped them overcome that shortcoming. A track like Lime Rock is also another difficult track for the Alfa, because Louis said it's mostly high-speed corners there and a short overall track length.
The raison d'être (reason to be) of TCR is an international formula for touring cars that effectively creates an international market for the cars. TCR eliminates the need for domestic sales of the base vehicle and allows cars to race anywhere with a known rule set.
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