1954 Maserati 250F

I never thought I'd call a Maserati 250F ugly, but the anti-roll hoop on Dieter Streve-Mülhens' 1954 car is a bit of a monstrosity.

The car was a contestant in the HGPCA Pre-1960 Grand Prix Cars race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1997 and has a 6-cylinder inline 2,490cc engine. It was originally chassis 2501 but with the Maserati team's habit of swapping chassis numbers around it was later 2526, then 2523, 2504 and back to 2523 again.

1956 Maserati 250F

This was one of the competitors in the Allcomers Historic Car Race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in June 1971.

It's Richard Bergel's 1956 Maserati 250F with the 6-cylinder inline 2,490cc engine, and like most of the 250Fs has a chequered history. Originally chassis 2522, it was the car with which Stirling Moss won the 1956 Monaco Grand Prix and later that season was renumbered as 2523. Towards the end of the 1956 season it was used as a test bed for the 2½ litre V12 engine but by 1957 the 6-cylinder engine had been put back and the car was later sold to Centro Sud and the chassis number changed once more, this time to 2526.

Here's Richard Bergel in the race heading towards Hilltop, and in the top right-hand corner is what was still called Esso Bend.