Lancia D50

Not a competitor at this meeting, but one of the participants in A Demonstration of Italian Racing Cars at the VSCC's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005.

It's a 1955 2½ litre V8 Lancia D50 recreation, at that time owned by Tom Wheatcroft and kept in his museum at Donington Park.

Following the withdrawal of the Lancia team from racing at the end of the 1955 season all the D50 cars and spares were handed over to Ferrari with the exception of one car which went to the Fiat Museum and one which went to the Biscaretti Museum.

Ferrari raced the cars as Lancia-Ferraris in the 1956 season with some modifications and Juan Fangio won the World Championship that season. For the 1957 season the cars were modified to such an extent that it was redesignated as a Ferrari 801, but didn't enjoy any great success.

At the end of the 1957 season with the introduction of the Ferrari 246 F1 car (with which Mike Hawthorn won the 1958 World Championship title) the cars were broken up and the parts stored at the Ferrari factory.

From the 1990s these parts have been used to recreate, I understand, seven examples of the car, including one to the specification of the 1956 Lancia-Ferrari.

Here's the car during one of the demonstration runs being driven by Kevin Wheatcroft, Tom Wheatcroft's son.

On 2 January 2013 I showed photographs of the original Lancia D50 from the Fiat Museum which was part of a display at Silverstone in 1998.