1973 BRM P160E

I took the photograph of this BRM 160E at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

BRM had introduced the P160 in 1971 and it had a relatively successful season, winning two Grands Prix and finishing in second place in the World Constructors' Championship. The car struggled the following season, however, and despite several updates couldn't match the Lotus 72 and when its successor the BRM P180 proved to be uncompetitive the P160 was updated yet again to produce the 160E. The P160E made its debut in the Spanish Grand Prix in April 1972, and despite Jean-Pierre Beltoise winning the Monaco Grand Prix BRM only finished in seventh place in the World Constructors' Championship. The team fared no better in 1973, again finishing in seventh place in the World Constructors' Championship with a solitary fourth place finish by Jean-PieBlogrre Beltoise being its best points-scoring finish. In 1974 Jean-Pierre Beltoise finished in fifth place in the first Grand Prix, in Argentina, but after the Brazilian Grand Prix he completed the season in the P201, though the team used the P160E in several more races that year. The Donington Museum's car was BRM P160/10 and when the museum closed it was bought by Australian John Gale who set about a comprehensive restoration of the car which he has detailed in a very informative Blog.

1954 BRM P30

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989 when the Collection was not displayed as well as in later days.

It's the 1954 BRM P30, V16 Mk2 No2, alternatively known as V16/05. This car competed in Formula Libre races for a few years, and the only time I saw one in competitive action was in the Formula Libre race at the 1955 Aintree 200 meeting when Peter Collins won the race in this car. The Mk2 is a shortened and lighter version of the original V16 BRM P15 but has the same 1,496cc V16 supercharged engine which was claimed to produce 600bhp at 12,000rpm. The car was owned by Nick Mason before joining the Donington Collection, then by Bernie Ecclestone who bought the whole collection when the Donington museum closed. All of Bernie Ecclestone’s cars were later acquired by Mark Mateschitz.

1959 Cooper-Climax T51

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1959 Cooper-Climax T51 and the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection has this note about it:

The works cars of Brabham and Salvadori began running 2.2-litre Climax engines and Leonard Lee of the Coventry company authorized development of full 2½-litre units for 1959. With 2,495cc, and 240bhp the Cooper-Climax T51s were on a power-to-weight par with the front-engined opposition, and Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren – his youthful New Zealand team-mate – proved them totally competitive. Brabham won the Monaco and British GPs, and when his car ran out of fuel while leading the United States GP at Sebring, McLaren took over to score a victory which assured Brabham and Cooper-Climax of the World Championship titles.

 

There’s also this note about the T51 in the Donington Collection:

 

Cooper-Climax T51

Chassis unnumbered – Collection property – believe to be works No. 2 car, as driven by Bruce McLaren in 1959. To Collection from the late Jo Siffert’s collection of racing cars, Fribourg, Switzerland.

1966 Cooper-Maserati

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1966 Cooper-Maserati, and this is what the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' says about it:

The Cooper-Maserati

Cooper stage a comeback

 

Following their dismal lack of success in the last three seasons of 1½ litre racing, the Cooper Car Company became part of the Chipstead Motors Group and with added backing they found a new enthusiasm. For 3 litre racing in 1966 they adopted the massive, thirsty but powerful Maserati V12 engine, which was installed in their first monocoque chassis, a ‘bathtub’ type designed by Tony Robinson, a racing mechanic-cum-engineer of long-standing experience. These T81 Cooper-Maseratis were big, hefty cars, but they were ready early in the season and attracted such customers as Rob Walker, Jo Bonnier and the Frenchman, Guy Ligier. Jo Siffert raced Walker’s car, while Jochen Rindt, Richie Ginther and later John Surtees handled the works entries. Surtees joined the team after a mid-season break from Ferrari, and he developed the unwieldy but reliable cars into really competitive propositions late in the season. He won the Mexican Grand Prix – Cooper’s first major success since McLaren’s win at Monaco in 1962. This, in conjunction with his Belgian win for Ferrari and second and third places for Cooper, made him runner-up to Brabham in the World Championship. Pedro Rodriguez scored a lucky win for the T81s in the South African GP, opening the 1967 season, and later in the year the type was replaced in works hands by lighter and slimmer T81B derivatives. In 1968 the new BRM V12 engine was adopted in preference to the ageing Maserati unit, and this became Cooper’s final fling in Grand Prix racing. The Cooper Maserati was never a great racing car, but it gave this pioneering marque their last Formula 1 successes.

1954 BRM P30

This is a photograph that I took in the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's the 1954 BRM P30, V16 Mk2 No2, alternatively known as V16/05. This car competed in Formula Libre races for a few years, and the only time I saw one in competitive action was in the Formula Libre race at the 1955 Aintree 200 meeting when Peter Collins won the race in this car. The Mk2 is a shortened and lighter version of the original V16 BRM P15 but has the same 1,496cc V16 supercharged engine which was claimed to produce 600bhp at 12,000rpm.

1988 McLaren MP4/4

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1988 McLaren MP4/4, the car that dominated the 1988 Formula 1 season driven by Ayrton Senna an Alain Prost. It was designed by Steve Nichols, and was powered by the 1,494cc turbocharged V8 Honda RA168E engine in place of the previous season's TAG Porsche unit. Ayrton Senna won 8 of the 16 races that year and Alain Prost 7, the remaining race being won by Ferrari's Gerhard Berger - appropriately the Italian Grand Prix. Senna and Prost finished first and second in the World Driver's Championship with Berger a long way behind in third place. McLaren, of course, won the World Constructors' Championship, scoring only two points less than the combined total of all the other teams.

1961 Lotus 21

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It’s a 1961 Lotus 21, and the book ‘Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection’says this about it:

 

The Lotus 21

Chapman’s slimline

 

For 1961 and the new 1½-litre Formula, Lotus produced a Formula Junior-based car which was a great improvement on the Lotus 18 both technically and aesthetically.The sleek Formula Junior 20 was in full production by the time the Lotus 21 made its debut in the Monaco Grand Prix. The new car was very small and sleek, although the body had a larger cross-section than the Junior to house 30 gallons of fuel; also bigger wheels were fitted to cope with its greater performance potential.

The front suspension was new, with coil-springs and dampers tucked away within the bodywork, and at the rear the drive-shafts were relieved of their wheel location duties. The four-cylinder Climax engine was canted at 18 degrees to reduce its overall height, and German ZF all-synchromesh transmission was adopted.

Team Lotus raced their 21s throughout the season, and although Innes Ireland had a bad crash first time out in the tunnel at Monaco, he won the United States GP at Watkins Glen right at the end of the year, and also won non-championship races in Austria and Germany. At last Team Lotus had won a major Grand Prix in their own right.

1961 Vanwall VW14

This is a photograph I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's the last car built by Vanwall, the rear engined 1961 Vanwall VW14, which was built when the old 2½ litre limit for Formula 1 cars was reduced to 1½ litres starting with the 1961 season, and VW14 was built to contest the 3 litre Intercontinental Formula. The car originally had a 2½ litre Vanwall engine bored out to 2,605cc and only contested a handful of races before development was stopped when the Intercontinental Formula didn't catch on in Europe. Behind the Vanwall is  the 1959 Scarab F1 car built by American Lance Reventlow.

1970 BRM P153

 This is one of the cars I photographed in the Donington Park museum in October 1989.

It's a BRM P153 which was designed by Tony Southgate and had BRM's own 2,998cc V12 engine. Its only victory was in the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix driven by Pedro Rodriguez. Behind it is a BRM P261 which was driven in the 1964 season by Graham Hill and Richie Ginther, and in the 1965 season by Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart.

1959 Aston Martin DBR4

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1959 Aston Martin DBR4, originally called the DBR4-250, which has a 6-cylinder inline 2,493cc engine. The book ‘Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection’ has this note about the car.

In 1958 the rear-engined, or more accurately ‘mid-engined’, Cooper-Climaxes had proved themselves capable of winning Grand Prix races. They were smaller, lighter and more nimble than the classic front-engined cars, and several designs were overtaken by this fundamental revolution in thinking. Aston Martin had built a single-seater version of their successful DB3S sports car as early as 1955, racing it New Zealand, and from this project grew Formula 1 ambitions. But development was slow with most of the racing department’s time taken up by sports car programmes. A car was designed contemporary with the later Maserati 250F’s and the Vanwalls, but when it appeared in 1959 it was too late. On its debut at Silverstone in the 1959 non-Championship meeting, Roy Salvadori put the 280bhp six-cylinder, De Dion rear axled car on pole position and finished second, and that was to prove its best performance. Failure with the Formula 1 car took some of the prestige away from Aston’s World Sports Car Championship victory that year, and although lighter cars were built for 1960 they were totally out-moded and were withdrawn before the season’s end. The Collection’s car is believed to be the first 1959 chassis, but it was acquired in disassembled and drearful condition, and has been totally restored in the Collection’s Leicester workshops.

1953 Cooper Bristol Mk2

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

The book 'Great Racing cars of the Donington Collection says this about the car:

The Cooper-Bristol

Front-engined Formula 2

 

Easter Monday, 1952, was an electrifying day for British racing enthusiasts. It was the day on which a new Formula 2 car and a new young driver burst into the headlines. The car was the Cooper-Bristol, and the driver was twenty-three-year-old Mike Hawthorn.

Three of these brand-new cars had appeared at Goodwood, and had won three of the day’s main events. Hawthorn won two, Alan Brown the third, and then the blonde young ‘Farnham Flyer’ was second to Gonzales’ fearsome 4½-litre Ferrari in the last event of the meeting.

For the rest of the 1952 season Hawthorn went from strength to strength. Headline-writers discovered he was known as ‘Mike’, not ‘Mick’, and his Cooper-Bristol season earned him a French Grand Prix-winning works Ferrari drive for 1953.

Charles and John Cooper had taken the BMW-based sports Bristol engine and gearbox, mounted it in a box-section, transverse rear spring, independently-suspended chassis, and had produced a light, easy to drive and manoeuvrable Formula 2 car. Design was based on knowledge gained from their mid-engined F3 cars, but the proprietary engine and gearbox made a front-engined layout more practical for the 2-litre class.

For 1953, a Mark 2 tubular-chassised version was developed, which proved very popular with such private entrants as Ken Wharton, Alan Brown and Écurie Écosse – for whom Jimmy Stewart, Jackie’s elder brother, drove at times. The Cooper-Bristols could never challenge the Italians on equal terms, but they have a vital place in the story of Britain’s rise to Grand Prix dominance.

Later in the book there's this note about the exhibit:

Cooper-Bristol Mark 2

Chassis ‘OBMK 2/9/53’ – Collection property – believed to be the car taken to Australia by Reg Hunt, later owned and raced by Len Lukey of ‘Lukey Muffler’ exhaust fame. To Eddie Clay, fitted Holden engine when the Bristol burst. Believed sold to Peter Menere. A Collection rebuild.

The Cooper Bristol Mk2 was later renamed as the Cooper Bristol T23.

1960 Porsche 718

I took this photograph at Tom Wheatcroft's Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1960 Porsche 718/2, chassis 202, formerly campaigned by Dutch driver Carel Godin de Beaufort and is finished in the orange Dutch racing colours. A book printed in 1974 giving details of many of the cars in the collection says this about the Porsche (which is now in the Porsche Prototyp Museum in Hamburg):

 

The Porsche 718

Germany's Challenger

French driver Jean Behra began Porsche's single-seater venture into Formula 2 in 1958. He had a central-seat version of the RSK sports car built up and it proved very successful. For 1959 the Stuttgart works produced 'proper' singe-seater cars, with similar air-cooled flat-four engines and trailing-link torsion bar front suspension, and when the 1½ litre Formula 1 came into operation in 1961 they were well prepared to enter Grand Prix racing for the first time.

Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier drove the cars, which proved quite competitive, and when the new eight-cylinder was introduced for 1962 the old cars were sold. Two of them went to the giant Dutchman, Count Carel Godin de Beaufort, and he enjoyed himself hugely as one of that rare breed of private owner-drivers in Formula 1. He suffered a fatal accident in one of the obsolete old Porsches during practice for the 1964 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring. He was, as ever, trying as hard as he could to reach a qualifying time, and the loss of this jovial, larger than life character took some much-needed colour from the Grand Prix scene.

 

PORSCHE 718

Engine: 180° 4-Cyls; 2VPC; 2OHC; Air-cooled; 85mm x 66mm, 1498cc; c. 155bhp/7500rpm.

Chassis: Tubular spaceframe.

Suspension: IFS by trailing arms and TBs/IRS by wishbones and CSp.

Brakes: Discs.

1932-34 Alfa Romeo Tipo B

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1932-34 Alfa Romeo Tipo B and the book Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection has this to say about it:

 

The car was based on a very slender channel-frame chassis, carrying a similarly slim body only 26 inches wide. The cockpit sides were low-cut to give the driver elbow room, and the basic eight-cylinder engine was developed to a 2.65 litre capacity with enlarged bore and stroke. Two small Roots supercharger were used, and the power was boosted from the Monza’s 165bhp to 215bhp a 5600rpm. Drive to the rear wheels was unique, with the differential on the back of the gearbox instead of in a rear axle assembly. Two separate propellor shafts enclosed within torque tubes veed rearwards to drive the wheels through simple bevel boxes attached to each hub. Historical controversy clouds the reasoning behind this system, although claims of reduced axle ‘hop’ and added ease of final drive ratio changing to suit varying circuits seem logical. The Monoposto (literally ‘single-seater) made its debut at Monza in the five-hour Italian Grand Prix, held in June 1932. With Nuvolari at the wheel, it won. Three more major victories fell to this car before the season’s end, and then Alfa Romeo bowed to economic strictures for 1933, leaving their racing honour in the hands of Enzo Ferrari’s private Scuderia with older models, and put the Monoposti into store. When the re-engined Monza cars proved fragile, the Milan management relented and released the Tipo Bs to Ferrari. Luigi Fagioli drove the first car to a win at Pescara, and he and Louis Chiron quickly added four more major victories. In 1934 a new 750-kg maximum weight Formula came into effect, for which the German industry had built powerful new all-independently-suspended cars which should have rendered the solid-axled, leaf-sprung Alfas obsolete overnight. An 85-centimetre minimum width rule led to the Monoposto’s cockpits being bulged, and with 2905cc engines and 255bhp the P3s won no less than thirteen major events, old 2.6-litre models winning twice, and a streamlined 3.2 model once at Berlin’s AVUS speedway. For 1935 modified suspensions, 3165cc and later 3822cc engines were adopted to stave off the German menace, but normally they were only successful in the absence of Mercedes and Auto Union. Nuvolari’s genius brought them the Nürburgring triumph to add to their fifteen other successes. Richard Shuttleworth won his first Donington Grand Prix in his private car in England and thereafter the Monoposto became one of the earliest, generally acknowledged ‘historic racing cars’.

1955 Connaught B-Type

This is a photograph that I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1955 Connaught B-Type, chassis B7, and the book 'Great Racing Car of the Donington Collection' says this about it:

The non-Championship Syracuse Grand Prix, held in Sicily late in 1955, forms an historic landmark in racing history. The amateur driver C.A.S. 'Tony' Brooks took on the might of the works Maserati team in his unrated 2½ litre Alta-engined Connaught, and beat them on their home soil!  It was the first time that a Continental 'Grand Prix' had been won by a British car and driver since Henry Seagrave had won the San Sebastian in a Sunbeam in 1924. Rodney Clarke and Kenneth McAlpine (of the famous building family) had founded Connaught Engineering in 1947, to build a sports car for McAlpine to race. In a small works at Send in Surrey, they built a prototype powered by a modified 1767cc Lea-Francis engine, and its results prompted a production batch of the cars, financed by McAlpine.

Engineer Mike Oliver drove one of the cars successfully, and in 1950 he assisted in building a prototype Formula 2 Connaught, using the existing engine in a modified form. For 1951 nine F2 cars were built with Connaught 1864cc engines - still 'Leaf'-based but now developed almost beyond recognition as such. Between 1952 and 1953 the Connaughts never achieved major success; they lacked power although their road-holding and handling were as good as any.

The B-Type Connaught was prepared for 1954 Formula 1 racing with a special 2½ litre  four-cylinder Alta engine and initially all-enveloping streamlined central-seat bodywork. This was replaced for practical rather than technical reasons by a more normal 'slipper' body and it was one of these cars which made history in 1955.

During 1956 Connaught were a force in Grand Prix racing, but success - and real power - still eluded them. A C-Type car of advanced design was laid down for 1957, but McAlpine decided that the financial strain was too much to be borne alone and, when outside sponsorship was not forthcoming, he withdrew, and Connaught tragically collapsed.

1934 Maserati 8CM

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's the 1934 Maserati 8CM, chassis 3018, originally owned by Tazio Nuvolari, and this is the note about the car in the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection':

'In 1933, while the new Alfa Romeo Monoposti were languishing in enforced inactivity, the Scuderia Ferrari persevered with their old Monza models, fitted with more powerful 2.6 litre engines. This added urge proved too much for the fragile transmissions, which regularly failed and robbed thr Scuderia drivers of several good placings.  Tazio Nuvolari – the legendary Italian ace – suffered more than most. The Press began to call him a car-breaker. He and some of his team-mates broke with Ferrari and moved down the Via Emilia to buy competitive cars from the Maserati brothers in Bologna. These were the 2991cc supercharged eight-cylinder 8CMs, and the ex-Alfa Romeo aces quickly turned them into race winners. Alfieri Maserati had begun competitions in the 1920s, and in 1926 he modified an eight-cylinder Diatto which became the first Maserati racing car when Diatto lost interest in racing and dispensed with Alfieri’s services. He and his brothers Bindo, Ernesto and Ettore formed their own company to build competition cars and quickly proved successful, selling many cars to private entrants. Early in 1933 their 8CM engine was introduced, installed in originally 2.8 litre ‘two-seater’ chassis from the previous year. Three of these cars were produced before Maserati introduced their first Monoposto with incredibly slim chassis and body, only 62 centimetres wide. With the advent of the 750kg Formula in 1934, the later 8CMs were widened to meet the 85-centimetre minimum width rule, although this was cleverly achieved in the chassis and lower body sides only, leaving the upper part of the shell as slim and wind-cheating as before. In its original form the 8CM chassis was whippy and made the lightweight 210bhp car a ferocious thing to drive. Its braking was sophisticated, however, for the brothers had revived hydraulic operation for all four brakes – twelve years after their value had been proved by Duesenberg in winning the 1921 French Grand Prix. Burly opera-singing driver Giuseppe Campari gave the 8CM engine its first victory in the French Grand Prix, and then Nuvolari won the Belgian event in his brand-new privately-owned single-seater. The Mantuan won again at Montenero and Nice, was second in the Italian GP and led in Spain before his car failed him. This brilliant season was marred by the deaths of fellow Maseratistis Campari and Borzacchini in the Monza GP, but Nuvolari continued racing his slim-bodied car – number 3007 – into 1934. Early in the new season he wrecked this car in the Bordino Cup race at Alessandria, somersaulting it into a stout tree. A young newcomer named Carla Pedrazzini was killed in his unmanageable 8CM in this same event, but the indomitable Nuvolari was soon recovered and racing again. His new wide-chassis car – number 3018 – was second to Fagioli’s Mercedes in the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara, and then the 8CM was replaced by a new Tipo 34 six-cylinder 3.3 litre model for the Italian GP. About twenty-three Maserati 8CMs were built in this period, nineteen of them single-seaters, and one – number 3003 – being based on a Bugatti chassis for Count Premoli, to form the PBM, or Premoli-Bugatti-Maserati. They were exceptionally popular among private owners, particularly since Alfa Romeo would not release their P3s at the time. Earl Howe and Philippe Étancelin ran single-seater cars with some success, while the American-born Cambridge undergraduate Whitney Straight ordered a three-car team. He had them modified by Thomson & Taylor at Brooklands, fitted with Wilson pre-selector gearboxes and stiffened chassis and even designed his own grille shape. These cars were raced widely and successfully by the Straight team and, in later years, by private owners. The immaculate and very original 8CM in the Donnington Collection is 3018, Nuvolari’s personal 1934 car; it is possible that it was built using some of the parts salvaged from his Alessandra wreck. In present form it is fitted with a Wilson pre-selector gearbox, which Nuvolari disliked and used only occasionally. The car was in the Collezione Giorgio Franchetti for many years and is one of the best-preserved of all the great racing cars of the 1930s.'

1959 Stanguellini FJ

This is a photograph I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a Stanguellini Formula Junior car from the late 1950s. Formula Junior was conceived in 1958 as a class of racing which would form a relatively inexpensive entry level class for drivers to take their first steps to a racing career. The engine, transmission and brakes of the car had to be sourced from production cars with a 1,000cc limit on cars weighing 360kg and 1,100cc for 400kg cars. Italian cars mostly using the Fiat 1,100cc engine were the most successful in the first two years as the British manufacturers still concentrated on the 500cc Formula 3 series. Cooper, Lotus and others soon started to produce mid-engined Formula Junior cars though, and by 1960 British cars were picking up most of the victories. This car was sold by the Museum in 1994 and in 2004 it was offered in auction by Bonhams who gave this information about the car.

1968 Lotus 49B

This is one of the photographs I took on a visit to the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1968 Lotus 49B and the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' says this about it:

'Lotus-powered-by-Ford

dawn of a new domination

Seven successive World Championship titles - from 1968 to 1974 – have so far been won using Cosworth-Ford V8 Formula 1 engines. In that period these Northampton-built Keith Duckworth–designed units have become the most numerous in Grand Prix history, and have won more Championship-qualifying events and more Formula 1 races than any other engine. The Cosworth-Ford engine story began late in 1965, when Colin Chapman was casting about for a 3-litre engine to power his cars in the new Grand Prix Formula, due to start in the following year. Duckworth’s company had a wonderful success record with the Ford-based minor formulae engines, and through Chapman he admitted interest in building a Formula 1 unit. Ford of Britain came forward with £100,000 to sponsor its development, and on 4 June 1967 the first ‘FORD’ Grand Prix engines made their shattering debut in brand-new Lotus 49 cars. This was in the Dutch Grand Prix, at Zandvoort, where Graham Hill put his 49 on pole position in practice, and led for the first eleven laps before retiring with cam-drive failure in the new engine. Then his team-mate Jim Clark took over, and he built up an ever-increasing lead, at record-breaking speeds, to score a fairy-tale win first time out. The die was cast. The Lotus-Fords took pole position in every one of the eight remaining events run that season, and Clark won three more of them. He failed in his bid to regain the World Championship, as chassis, engine and gearbox failures took their toll, but the new engine and Chapman’s new Maurice Phillippe-designed car had established themselves as the standard of their time. Duckworth’s engine was a neat, practical 90-degree light-alloy V8, with four valves per cylinder, twin overhead camshafts per bank and a pedigree developed from the four-cylinder Cortina-based ‘FVA’ 1600cc Formula 2 engine. The V8 was virtually two FVA blocks mounted in a common crankcase. It produced an honest 400 horsepower in its original form, and for 1968 Ford made it available to al interested customers, depriving Team Lotus of the exclusive use hey had enjoyed in that first season. McLaren and the Tyrrell Matra team confirmed orders, and with Team Lotus they shared the new season’s honours, confirming the Cosworth-Ford’s superiority. Clark won the opening race in South Africa, to set a career record of twenty-five GP wins, and then dominated the Tasman Championship in 2½ litre Lotus-Ford 49s, wearing the red-and-white livery of Lotus’ new John Player Gold Leaf tobacco sponsors. It looked a certain Jim Clark season, but in April he was killed in a trifling Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, Graham Hill bounced back for Lotus to win in Spain and at Monaco, and after a season-long struggle with Jackie Stewart in the Tyrrell Matra-Ford and the works McLaren Fords he won the final round in Mexico City to clinch his second World Drivers’ Championship and the first Constructors’ title for Lotus-Ford. Stewart won three Grand Prix races, Denny Hulme won two, Bruce McLaren himself won in Belgium and Swiss driver Jo Siffert scored probably the most popular success of the year by winning the British GP in Rob Walker’s private Lotus-Ford 49B. Phillippe took advantage of the new engine’s ability to be used as a stressed chassis member in similar style to the BRM H16. The Lotus 49’s monocoque chassis terminated abruptly behind the cockpit, leaving a vertical bulkhead to which the engine was rigidly bolted. Rear suspension was carried on the engine and gearbox assembly, and for maintenance it was possible to undo a few bolts and connections and wheel the entire rear end of the car away from the forward nacelle. In 1968 a modified version was developed, with lengthened wheelbase, revised suspension and early aerodynamic aids in the form of nose aerofoils and an upswept engine cowling. A lightweight Hewland gearbox replaced the original ZF unit, and this model became known as the Lotus 49B, winning at Monaco, Brands Hatch and Mexico City. In 1969 Jochen Rindt joined Graham Hill in the works ‘Gold Leaf’ team 49Bs. Hill won at Monaco for a staggering fifth time, and Rindt became Stewart’s closest competitor during the season. After forty-eight unsuccessful attempts he finally won his first Grand Prix, in America, where Hill crashed his car and was seriously injured. The historic old Lotus was finally retired from the front line in 1970, when the futuristic Lotus 72 came along to give Rindt his tragically posthumous World Championship title, but he drove one of the obsolete ‘49C’ cars to that exciting last corner victory at Monaco to close this chapter on a classic racing car’s supremely successful life.'

The agreement between Ford and Lotus specified that Ford had to be given one of the cars for promotional purposes, and as all the existing cars were needed for the race track Lotus built this car, chassis 49B/12, for Ford and it never actually competed in period. After it had served its purpose Ford sold the car to Donington Park's Tom Wheatcroft for his collection.

1948 Maserati 4CLT

I took this photograph in the Donington Park Museum in May 1989.

It's a Maserati 4CLT which was a development of the pre-War 4CL and has a 4-cylinder inline 1,491cc supercharged engine. The first 4CLT was produced in 1947 and the 1948 variant made its debut at the San Remo Grand Prix, winning the race in the hands of Alberto Ascari. The 4CLT has ever since been known as the 'San Remo'. The museum car was apparently built up by Reg Parnell in late 1950, possibly using the chassis of 4CLT 1597 which was crashed in Brazil in March 1949 by Alberto Ascari. The figure behind the car seems to represent Juan Manuel Fangio who drove a Maserati 4CL in the late 1940s and early in 1950 before joining the Alfa Romeo team.

1962 Lotus 25

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1962 Lotus 25 with a 1,496cc V8 Coventry Climax FWMV engine. The Lotus 25 was raced by Jim Clark in the 1962 season but its initial unreliability leading to retirement in four of the races meant that he could only finish in second place to Graham Hill's BRM in that season's World Drivers' Championship. He won the Championship the following year though and finished in third place in 1964 driving the Lotus 25 in the early part of the season before switching to the Lotus 33 for the second half of the season.

Maserati 250F

This is a photograph I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It wasn't part of a display like the majority of the cars in the museum, just tucked away in a corner as if they didn't know what to do with it. I asked a member of the staff about it and he said that it didn't belong to the museum, but had been "left behind after the previous race meeting at the circuit".