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Saturday 2 January 2016

Birthday Card

This is a card I bought for my brother's recent birthday:
When I picked it up I expected that there would be something on the back of the card saying what race was being depicted and giving some information about the cars and drivers shown, but instead.....
.....all that it says is 'Flags 1936'. The cars shown are obviously an Alfa Romeo 8C 35 or 12C 36 leading a Mercedes-Benz W125 - the Alfa could have been in a race during 1935, 1936 or 1937, but the W125 was only raced in 1937 so the date of 1936 is incorrect. Trawling through the major races of 1937 the only race this could possibly be is the 1937 Italian Grand Prix at Livorno, where the number 22 Alfa Romeo 12C 36 was driven by Tazio Nuvolari, who handed the car over later in the race to Guiseppe Farina, and the number 6 Mercedes-Benz W125 was driven by Herrman Lang. I've come across a photograph of the 1937 Italian Grand Prix of two of the Mercedes-Benz W125s about to round a corner where there's a fence exactly like the one in this painting, which seems to confirm that it is Livorno.

NB: This is the Daimler AG photograph I found showing the two W125s apparently at this corner in the 1937 race. (Photo from SportCarDigest.com: http://www.sportscardigest.com/silver-arrows-at-the-goodwood-revival-2012/4/)


2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if you can see the full flag at the top of the picture on the card, but on the artist's website you can see it's an Italian flag (first picture on this page): barryrowe.com

    I'm not completely sure, but (with a bit of artistic licence) it looks quite like this corner in Livorno today: Google Maps

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    1. You can only see a little bit of red on the edge of the Italian flag on the card. That Google Maps view looks like it could be the corner concerned and I've updated the Blog to show the Daimler AG photograph which I found of the two W125s at the corner in question at the 1937 race.

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