The Alfa Romeo 156 has long since staked its rightful claim to a place in the motor racing history books as a highly successful racing car on the world's greatest circuits but well into its retirement years it has sensationally won a round of the highly competitive Swedish Touring Car Championship.

The Alfa Romeo 156 first hit the track in anger more than a decade ago and in the hands of the official factory team, run through the N.Technology outfit, it claimed huge successes, the "Super Touring 2000" category car winning race after race in the FIA European- and World-Touring Car Championships with world-class tin-top drivers such as Fabrizio Giovanardi, Gabriele Tarquini, Augusto Farfus, Roberto Colciago and James Thompson.

Today the Alfa 156's glories on tracks such as Silverstone, Monza, Pau, Imola, Brno, Brands Hatch and Spa-Francorchamps have been virtually consigned to the pages of history books, with just a handful of privateer-run machines still in race action, although the first-ever Alfa Romeo 156 to be built for the track is still racing with honour in the hands of Belgian team Giallo Corse.

One of the most competitive Alfa 156s still to be racing is the example driven by Mattias Andersson of the MA:GP team in the hotly-contested Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) and in the second race of the second round of the 2010 series, held at Knutstorp earlier this month, the experienced Swede fended off tough challengers to take his first ever STCC victory. With a fastest lap of 1:10.938 during the wet final qualifying session Andersson had planted the Italian machine on the sixth row off the grid and by the end of the 19 lap first race of the double header, which featured a very slippery track and the appearance of the safety car after two leading contenders collided, he had climbed from eleventh place into a final eighth spot, crossing the line 33.643 seconds behind the winning West Coast Racing-run BMW 320si of Richard Göransson.

With the top-eight of the grid reversed for race two that set Andersson up perfectly, the white, blue and red Alfa Romeo planted firmly on pole position. Next to him on the front row of the grid was Roger Eriksson in the Mattias Ekstöm Junior Team's SEAT Leon thanks to his seventh place in race one. Over the 19-lap race Andersson fended off the attentions of the key championship front runners in very greasy conditions and after 21 minutes and 20.111 seconds of frenetic racing the Swedish driver delivered a stunning result for the venerable Alfa Romeo racer, and it couldn't have been closer, he took the flag just over half a second ahead of Robert Dahlgren in the Volvo Olsbergs Green Racing Volvo C30 with the entire top-five covered by less than three seconds.

"It feels amazing," said a delighted Andersson afterwards. "We have fought so long for this, we were perhaps not fastest today but we won. The car was setup for something between dry and wet, it was all about keeping Dahlgren behind me to the hairpin; from the hairpin and to the start finish straight I had a good car," Andersson added.

The final podium step was claimed by race one winner Richard Göransson (+1.149 seconds) while fourth went to the Flash Racing BMW 320si of Thed Björk (+1.618) and fifth place was secured by Fredrik Ekblom in the Team Biogas Se VW Scirocco CNG; he was just 2.992 seconds adrift of Andersson at the end. There were two more Alfa 156s in action over the weekend, Claes Hoffsten in the finished eleventh overall in the second race having followed Andersson home in race one in ninth place, while Robin Appelqvist, after retiring on the fourth lap of the first race, failed to make it out to the grid for the final race. Andersson is upbeat that there is more to come from the ageing Alfa 156: "There are going to be more victories," he said, adding that: "we were fifth last year and the goal is to do an even better job this year."