GREEN ENERGY

We’ve experienced the GTAM on the road, now it’s time to put it to the test where its harnesses and half-cage make sense – on a race circuit, specifically on the challenging turns and elevation changes of Anglesey. Can it match the lap time of Jaguar’s XE Project 8 supersaloon? Place your bets now

‘THE GENTLY RISING FIZZ OF ADRENALINE FLOODING THROUGH YOUR BLOODSTREAM’

BIG FOUR-DOOR SALOONS DON’T BELONG on track. There, I’ve said it. Hardly a contentious statement, but it still feels a bit mean-spirited when the GTAM goes to such efforts to seem at home in a pitlane.

It certainly looks the part, with those prominent Sauber-sculpted aero parts, the squat ride height, centre-lock rims and impressively athletic stance lending it the same purposeful look perfected by Ferrari with the 488 Pista or Porsche with any number of its GT 911s. The GTAM’S aura is everpresent, but a circuit environment definitely throws it into sharp relief.

With a helmet strapped on your bonce and the gently rising fizz of adrenaline flooding through your bloodstream, the silly seats and fiddly harness straps suddenly make more sense. The incongruity of being in a two-seat four-door with scaffolding and a fire extinguisher where the back seats should be remains strong, but with the focus of track driving comes a kind of sensory tunnel vision that centres on how the GTAM goes, stops, grips and gets through corners.

With a fresh set of boots on the 20-inch rims the GTAM has real bite once the compounds begin to wake up. The freeness, grip and precision that shine so brightly on the road feel amplified on smooth racetrack asphalt. Likewise the steering’s sweetly judged rate of response, which feels well aligned with the front end’s willingness to hunt out an apex. As on the road, it’s an intuitive car to guide as soon as you exit the pitlane.

Some of this comes from being able to work the Michelin Pilot Cup 2s harder and longer from the moment you make your steering input, but the adjustable aero kit also plays its part. We start with the front splitter at full extension with the rear wing remaining in its regular street setting (one up from low drag), then complete a second run of three timed fliers with the wing cranked into its most aggressive angle. The difference is tangible in terms of feel – and measurable against the clock.

In the former setting the nose feels nicely nailed unless you’re asking way too much from it, but the rear end is working harder to keep itself in check. Ultimately in this configuration you find yourself wanting a little bit more in the way of traction through the lowerand medium-speed corners, though it’s fine through the quick stuff.

Cranking more angle into the rear wing brings the desired increase in traction, but in finding more purchase it places greater demand on the front end, which now relinquishes its grasp first when you try and carry more speed. It’s not clumsy understeer – more a subtle shift from a neutral-to-oversteer balance to a neutralto-understeer condition from turn-in to exit. It’s easier to make fine steering and throttle adjustments when you’re leaning on the front tyres rather than trying to balance traction and oversteer, so the lap is both quicker (by 3/10ths) and cleaner with this mild bit of push.

So, what was the lap time? 1min 16.3sec. For context, that’s 992 Carrera pace, so hardly hanging about, yet because the GTAM makes such an emphatic statement of intent and feels so good on the road, it’s impossible not to expect more – perhaps too much – from a 1580kg supersaloon. Not least because the only car that could be seen to be a direct rival for the GTAM – Jaguar’s equally loopy Project 8 – laps Anglesey’s Coastal Circuit a whole second quicker.

Then again, not only does the Jag have a 59bhp and 72lb ft advantage, but it also puts that potency into the tarmac through all four wheels – a combination that’s more than enough to offset its portly 1745kg kerb weight.

Subjectively the GTAM has many strengths and qualities that combined to make it not only very impressive but also entertaining, but there are one or two caveats. We’ve discussed the chassis, which is a real highlight, as are the brakes and gearbox – the former possessing a really satisfying blend of raw stopping power and precise, progressive response. On a dry track the ABS is almost entirely untroubled, even when you’ve very definitely outbraked yourself, and during our timed runs there was not a hint of fade – impressive given the nature of the Anglesey circuit.

The gearbox is equally undaunted by track work, snapping home upshifts and punching in downshifts without hesitation, and the long paddles are always within reach of a fingertip, so you can even grab a cheeky shift while fully committed on the way into or out of a corner.

The V6 has only been lightly breathed upon, so there’s little in the way of extra fireworks compared with a regular Giulia Quadrifoglio, though admittedly that is a quick car in its own right. It’s perhaps most accurate to say the engine – smooth, gutsy and sonorous though it is – is a strong supporting act, but not the main event. Once again, it’s worth remembering it displaces just 2.9 litres and has six cylinders, especially when recalling the raw grunt of the Project 8’s supercharged 5-litre V8.

Our only reservation once again centres upon the Giulia’s electronic torque- vectoring rear differential. A true torque-vectoring system and not one effected by independently braking individual rear wheels, it’s a proper piece of hardware, yet there’s a lack of consistency in the way it behaves in Race mode (which disables the stability control) and it also has a propensity for overheating when driven in extremis.

The inconsistency is actually the bigger issue, because it means the way the GTAM finds and maintains traction is tricky to read. Sometimes it digs deep for traction but then breaks it abruptly before trying to catch itself again. Other times – quite possibly the next corner – it slides more progressively.

The overheating issue only really becomes a problem if you’re repeatedly holding longer drifts, the diff wilting and eventually allowing the inside rear wheel to spin like a Catherine wheel. Admittedly, drifting is something you only tend to do when someone is pointing a camera at you and another person is paying for the tyres, but given that the vast majority of cars we test handle such treatment without throwing warning messages or needing a lie-down in a dark pit garage, it does suggest that Alfa’s diff is uncomfortably close to its operating limit.

It’s not a deal-breaker for this otherwise dazzling machine, but it is disappointing considering the rest of the car is so well resolved and its objectives are so rooted in absolute performance.