Friday's Ferrari

This photograph was taken at Silverstone at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting in July 1997.

It's a 1955 Ferrari 750 Monza, serial number 0520M, originally owned by Louis Rosier and in 1997 owned by José Albequerque who drove it in the Shell Ferrari Historical Challenge race.

Friday's Ferrari

Amongst the cars that Talacrest displayed at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting in July 1995 at Silverstone was this 1955 Ferrari 750S Monza. Behind it you can see one of the 1975 Ferrari 312T F1 cars. The 750S was very close to the fence you can see in front of it, so I had to use a wide-angle lens on the camera.

This car is serial number 0520M and you can see its history here.

Friday's Ferrari

Before 1955 I had, to the best of my knowledge, only seen one Ferrari. This was during a school trip to France  in 1954 when we spent a couple of days in Paris then about a week in Tours visiting the chateaux of the Loire Valley. I saw the Ferrari in Paris and don't know what model it was, although looking at the models which were around at the time it was probably a 212 Inter.

In April 1955, though, I saw my first race at Oulton Park, the British Empire Trophy race which was run on a handicap basis and won by Archie Scott Brown in a Lister-Bristol. I remember that Duncan Hamilton drove a Jaguar D-type and the Aston Martin DB3S team was there whilst Colin Chapman drove one of his early Lotus cars. But the cars which really caught my eye were the two Ferrari 750S Monzas driven by Luigi Piotti and Mike Sparken. This Scaglietti bodied car remains my favourite Ferrari and below are photographs of two examples taken at historic racing meetings at Silverstone in the 1990s. I could sit and look at one of these for hours.

1997 Coys Historic Festival at Silverstone 26 July 1997. The serial number of this car is 0520M.

1999 Coys Historic Festival at Silverstone 31 July 1999

Footnote 18 Aug 2014:

I've since found that this second car is, in fact, a 1955 Ferrari 500 Mondial Spyder Scaglietti Series II, serial number 0564MD or 0424MD. The 750S Monza and 500 Mondial Series II are almost identical and as far as I can make out it's only the sizes of the engines that differ.