Alfa Romeo entered motorsport almost from the company's founding, with A.L.F.A. drivers competing in the Targa Florio as early as 1911. The manufacturer's early racing programme gained momentum after engineer Vittorio Jano transferred from FIAT to Alfa Romeo in 1923, designing a series of engines that would underpin the company's racing success into the late 1930s. In 1925, Alfa Romeo claimed victory at the first Automobile World Championship, winning the European Grand Prix at Spa and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
In 1929, Alfa Romeo entrusted management of its racing operations to Enzo Ferrari and his Scuderia Ferrari organisation, which ran the factory cars until 1938. During this period, the Alfa Romeo P3, designed by Jano and introduced in 1932, became one of the most successful racing cars of its era. Tazio Nuvolari drove the P3 to victory at the 1932 Italian Grand Prix and five further Grands Prix that year, and Nuvolari later delivered one of the car's most celebrated victories at the 1935 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, defeating the technologically superior German Silver Arrows.
From 1934 onward, the works teams of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union — heavily funded by the Nazi state — began to eclipse Alfa Romeo with far more powerful machinery. Despite receiving state-funding support through the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, Alfa Romeo struggled to match the pace of the German constructors for much of the late 1930s, often finding the P3 and later cars outclassed on the most demanding circuits.
After Alfa Corse — the reorganised in-house racing department — retrieved control of operations from Ferrari in 1938, the team developed the Alfa Romeo 158, also known as the Alfetta, for the 1938 season. The 158 was a 1.5-litre supercharged voiturette that competed in the class below the top Grand Prix formula, and accumulated an undefeated record across multiple seasons in that category.
The 158 was shelved during World War II. When Grand Prix racing resumed in 1946, Alfa Romeo returned the Alfetta to competition. The car, progressively developed and known in its ultimate form as the 159, dominated the European racing scene from 1946 to 1948. In 1949, the team withdrew from racing following the deaths of key drivers Jean-Pierre Wimille, Achille Varzi, and Carlo Felice Trossi.
Alfa Romeo returned for the inaugural season of the Formula One World Championship in 1950, fielding a team of 158 and 159 Alfettas. Giuseppe Farina won the first-ever World Drivers' Championship that year, followed by Juan Manuel Fangio in 1951 driving an Alfa Romeo 159. The 159's engine was extraordinarily powerful for its displacement, producing around 420 bhp in 1951, but at the cost of fuel consumption between 125 and 175 litres per 100 kilometres. The team relied on only nine engine blocks built before the war throughout both championship campaigns.
Facing escalating competition from Ferrari and confronted by the Italian government's refusal to fund development of a successor to the aging Alfetta, Alfa Romeo withdrew from Formula One after the 1951 season. The company returned as a constructor in 1979 through its competition department Autodelta, but the second period in the sport was considerably less successful than the first, and Alfa Romeo left the championship as a constructor at the end of 1985.
Scuderia Alfa Romeo's pre-war and immediate post-war record remains one of the most celebrated in Grand Prix history. The team produced or fielded several of the era's greatest drivers, including Tazio Nuvolari, Giuseppe Farina, and Juan Manuel Fangio, and the Alfetta's two consecutive championship titles in 1950 and 1951 stand as the foundation of Formula One's opening chapter.