The 179 made its debut at the 1979 Italian Grand Prix, replacing the flat-12 engined Alfa Romeo 177.

Although Alfa Romeo did not win a race that season largely due to horrendous unreliability, they were often up there with the front runners, although the team's season was marred by the death of Depailler at a testing session at Hockenheim in Germany when he crashed due to a suspension failure which pitched his car into the Armco barrier at the high-speed Ostkurve, inflicting fatal head injuries as the vehicle overturned and skidded along the top of the guard rail for several hundred feet prior to flipping onto its top and into the trees.

[6] Following the 1980 season, Alfa entered one of their 179s, with Giacomelli doing the driving, in the non-championship 1980 Australian Grand Prix at the Calder Park Raceway in Melbourne.

Calder circuit owner and race promoter Bob Jane invited the factory Alfa team in the hopes of attracting spectators from Melbourne's large Italian community (a ploy that, along with the presence of Jones, saw a capacity crowd on race day).

Giacomelli qualified second behind Jones (and easily faster than the F5000 cars) and after showing surprising speed and taking the lead from Jones part-way through the race, eventually finished a lap behind the Williams in second place.