Blyton Park is by no means the most beautiful track in the UK and, tucked away in a remote part of Lincolnshire, nor is it the easiest to access. But I would have driven a lot farther just to see this Alfa Romeo Tipo B P3, let alone drive it. And that brings me to the best thing about Blyton Park: anything goes.

Come to Blyton and no one is going to say you can’t go there or you can’t do that. Want to run an unsilenced Grand Prix car the wrong way around the track and then park right in the middle of it? That’ll be no problem, sir.

What is a problem is that the Alfa won’t start. It’s not done much these last few years, the temperature is hovering just above freezing and while its Jim Stokes-built 3.2-litre straight eight motor is new, today it simply doesn’t want to get out of bed. In proper Grand Prix tradition, the P3 doesn’t have a starter motor so you can either push it or, rather more profitably, tow it behind a Transit, which is exactly what the fine fellows from preparation specialist Hall & Hall – who have brought it here – are doing. Every so often, the gentle rattle of the Transit’s diesel motor is briefly replaced by a deafening shot of straight eight, but it never lasts. It’s as if the P3 is simply opening an eye, looking around, not much liking what it sees and going back to sleep.

But not even a dormant P3 can ignore such constant prodding forever. Eventually it awakes with an angry blast and settles down to a rambunctious idle, daring someone to approach. That someone is me and I’m not going near it yet.

So we wait for needles to jolt off their stops, showing heat to be percolating through both the oil and water systems. And listen. Because nobody makes them any more, people forget that the straight-eight sound is more distinctive than a flat six, more characterful than a V12. And of them all Alfa’s or, more specifically, Vittorio Jano’s is the best. Its timbre bears no relation whatever to a V8, be it with a flat-plane or 90-degree crank, indeed its offbeat voice is to my ears closer to that of a V10. But it is in fact a unique warbling, pulsating growl that’s now filling the Lincolnshire air with sound and smell.

Oh yes, smell. The engine in this P3 runs on pure methanol, which is why the P3 was so difficult to start this morning. Its advantage is that it has a higher octane than conventional petrol and therefore can be used to produce more power, its drawback being that it is considerably less energy-dense, meaning fuel consumption figures usually look like typographical errors. Some love its odour and the way it prickles at your eyelids, but it’s nasty, corrosive stuff, explaining why the P3 has four filler caps on view: water, oil, methanol and a secondary fuel tank containing petrol, which you run through the system after use to make sure that when the P3 stands for any period of time it’s gasoline and not methanol sitting in its arteries.

While it warms I am at least able to look around and spot certain other salient details. This really is the ultimate specification Tipo B P3. It has the wide body mandated by the 1934 sporting regulations. Its engine is to full 3.2-litre specification, earlier cars having 2.6- or 2.9-litre motors. Its twin Roots-type superchargers help push out what Hall & Hall estimates to be an easy 300bhp. The rear suspension is of the later reversed quarter-elliptic configuration with both hydraulic and friction dampers, while at the front there is the rare independent configuration with trailing arms and encased spring and shock absorber units after a design by vermouth heir and suspension engineer André Dubonnet.

The twin-cam engine, cast as two conjoined fours with power taken from its centre, is considered to be Jano’s masterpiece, but no less clever to me is the location of the differential right behind the gearbox with driveshafts spearing off at 30-degree angles to each rear wheel. This was the first truly ‘monoposto’ Grand Prix car and Jano’s design not only solved the problem of the driver having to sit inconveniently high on top of the propshaft, he also decimated the unsprung mass of the rear axle and, as an added bonus, created the world’s most accessible differential.

The P3 becomes increasingly bad tempered then raises two fingers to the lot of us and stops dead

It was genius.

The cockpit is no less interesting. There are, for instance, not one but two rev-counters, I presume in case one breaks. One is red-lined at 5000rpm, the other at 4500rpm. There are the usual dials for oil and water, but a further one recording fuel pressure. Why is that important? Because the car’s fuel pump is your right shoulder. You pump up pressure before you start the car using an elegant aluminium handle and, if the pressure looks like falling below 1psi, you pump while you’re driving.

The pedals are odd too, in their lack of oddness. I was sure the P3 would throw me a centre throttle to keep me on my toes, but they’re all where you’d expect them to be. Which is more than can be said for the gears. Bizarrely, it has just three. The absence of a reverse I can understand on a GP car but no fourth ratio in an era where terrifying new rivals from both Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz had five each? Apparently some P3s had four gears and some did not. This one does not. So just to keep you awake it positions first where you expect it at top left, but second at top right with third below. So you have to go right around the corner to catch second and then pull back for third.

Finally the P3 is hot enough to drive. The prescribed means of access is to creep up on it. Approach from behind, put one foot on a rear spring, the other on the tyre, step into the cockpit and lower yourself down. The driving position locates your body and legs at 90 degrees with your back bolt upright, but once ensconced and if you are able not to think about all the rotating metal just below your limbs, it’s comfortable enough. I move the long, thin gearlever between my legs awkwardly across and forward and gratefully feel it slot into first.

The reason for the three-speed gearbox becomes apparent as soon I lift the clutch; it explains also why it needs be towed rather than pushed. First gear is incredibly long, so long in fact that the ratios should be considered as second, third and fourth with first simply omitted. Thought of that way, the gearing combined with the torque of the engine actually makes sense. But it also makes trailing along behind a camera car a nightmare. Every time you touch the throttle, the Alfa wants to leap forward and it complains when you don’t let it. A steady 30mph is emphatically not what this car was designed to do. Temperatures rise even in this weather, exhausts cough and bang as the P3 becomes increasingly bad tempered and then just raises two fingers to the lot of us and stops dead.

Happily no one from Hall & Hall seems remotely surprised or concerned by this unexpected turn of events, but once the Transit has been re-attached and the straight eight cajoled back to life, the time for crawling along behind a camera car has gone.