1955 Maserati 250F

I took this photograph at Lodge Corner during the Historic Car Championship race at the Aston Martin Owners Club's meeting at Oulton Park in September 1986.

It’s the 1955 Maserati 250F of Anthony Mayman and has a 6-cylinder inline 2,490cc engine. It is chassis #2516, a car that was mainly campaigned for the works team in 1955 by Jean Behra. At the end of that season it was sold to Australian Reg Hunt who raced it successfully for several years and it then passed through the hands of other Australian drivers before being acquired by Cameron Millar in the 1960s. Subsequently owned by Anthony Mayman who allowed a wide range of friends to race the car, and it was driven at this meeting by Rodney Felton.

1959 Lotus 16

This car is at Lodge Corner during the Historic Car Championship race at the Aston Martin Owners Club's meeting at Oulton Park in September 1986.

It’s Anthony Mayman in Bruce Halford’s 1959 Lotus 16 which has a 2,495cc straight-4 Coventry Climax FPF engine. Bruce Halford raced in Formula One from 1956 to 1960, firstly with a Maserati 250F, then a Lotus 16 in 1959 and with Cooper T45 and T51 in 1960. In the mid-1970s he bought this Lotus 16 and competed at Historic meetings himself for several years. The Lotus 16 was raced by Team Lotus, and private entrants, from 1958 to 1960 with little success in World Championship races. Colin Chapman had to wait until the Monaco Grand Prix of 1960 for his first Lotus victory, achieved by Stirling Moss in Rob Walker's Lotus 18.

Cooper T51 and ERA Delage

These unlikely looking competitors took part in the 12 Lap Allcomers Race at the VSCC's Richard Seaman Trophy Vintage Car Races meeting at Oulton Park in August 1992.

Number 1 is Martin Stretton in his ex-BRP/Yeoman Credit 1960 2,495cc Cooper T51 and 229 is Chris Mayman in his cousin Anthony Mayman's 1927/36 ERA Delage, a 1927 Delage 15 S8 Grand Prix car with a 1,982cc supercharged 1936 ERA engine. The Cooper is passing the ERA Delage going into Lodge Corner.

The Coopers were raced by the British Racing Partnership in 1959, mainly in Formula 2 races with a 1½ litre Borgward engine, then by the Yeoman Credit team in both Formula 1 and some Formula 2 races in the 1960 season with 2½ litre and 1½ litre Coventry Climax engines.

The ERA Delage was created by Rob Walker who replaced the original engine of a 1927 Delage Grand Prix car with an ERA engine.

On 19 December 2016 I showed a photograph of one of the ex-BRP/Yeoman Credit Racing team's Cooper T51s, and on 9 April 2018 photographs of the ERA Delage.

ERA

Here are photographs of some of the ERAs that took part in the Richard Seaman Memorial Historic Trophy Race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Oulton Park in July 1987.

This is the six-cylinder 1½ litre supercharged engine of the 1935 ERA R1B, then owned by Sue Marsh and driven in the race by Duncan Ricketts. This car was originally owned by Dick Seaman.

This is R11B, named 'Humphrey' by its first owner Reggie Tongue after the ERA founder, Humphrey Cook. It was originally a 1½ litre car in 1936, but was given a 2 litre supercharged engine in the late 1940s. This car was owned, and driven, by Martin Morris from 1962 until his death in 2006 when it passed to his son David.

This is Martin Morris in R11B at Lodge Corner during the race.

This is R5B, a 1936 1½ litre car purchased by Prince Chula for his White Mouse team and driven by his cousin Prince Bira. Prince Chula already owned R2B and the two cars were named 'Romulus' (R2B) and 'Remus' (R5B) after the Roman twins. Driven here at Lodge Corner by Ludovic Lindsay who inherited the car from his late father the Hon. Patrick Lindsay in 1986. The programme of this event shows the engine capacity as 1,986cc supercharged.

This is R12B, a 1936 car with rather a messy history, originally with a 2 litre engine, but here with a 1½ litre supercharged unit. Another car that was once a White Mouse team car driven by Prince Bira and named 'Hanuman', it's here being driven at Lodge Corner by Bill Morris and trying to pass Rodney Felton in a 1934 Alfa Romeo P3.

Lastly, again at Lodge Corner, we have Anthony Mayman in R4D, a 1936 car with 2 litre supercharged engine.

I've shown photographs previously of two other ERAs taking part at this meeting: on 3 May 2015 I featured R4A, and on 30 April 2017 it was R8C.

You can read the history of all the ERAs, including the confusion about the identity of R12B here.

BRM P261

This car competed in the Pre-1966 Allcomers Race at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in August 1992.

It's Anthony Mayman's 1964 BRM P261, about which the programme of the event said this:

'The Pre-1966 Allcomers Race runs to regulations much the same as for Saturday's post-war event, except that newer cars are admitted this time. Only one entrant has taken advantage of this: Anthony Mayman is fielding his 1964 BRM P261. This Formula One car was later uprated to two-litre specification for racing in the Australasian Tasman series.

The 1961-65 Grand Prix formula saw an almost universal switch from tubular spaceframe chassis construction to aircraft-type monocoque designs, and great strides were also made in tyre technology, all of which should give Mayman an advantage over the older cars.'

The P261 was driven in the 1964 season by Graham Hill and Richie Ginther, Hill winning the Monaco and United States races and finishing in second place in the Drivers' Championship to the Ferrari of John Surtees. Ginther finished in fifth place in the Drivers' Championship and BRM were second to Ferrari in the Constructors' Championship.

BRM fielded the P261 again in the 1965 season, Graham Hill's team-mate now being Jackie Stewart. Hill was again second in the Driver's Championship, this time to Jim Clark's Lotus, and again winning in Monaco and the USA. Jackie Stewart was third in the Drivers' Championship, winning the Italian Grand Prix, and BRM finished second in the Constructors' Championship which was won by Lotus.

OSCA 20

After the death of Alfieri Maserati in 1932 the remaining Maserati brothers Ernesto, Ettore and Bindo encountered mounting financial problems which finally came to a head in 1947 when the company, together with the Maserati name, was sold to Adolfo Orsi. Their desire to build cars remained, however, and they formed a new company, OSCA (Officine Specializzate Construzioni Automobili), which began by constructing cars for the 1100cc racing class. The urge to build a Grand Prix contender was still there though, and in 1951 they introduced the OSCA 4500G and then, when the World Championship of 1952 was contested by Formula 2 cars, the OSCA 20. Neither car was particularly successful and when new Formula 1 regulations were introduced for the 1954 season OSCA withdrew from Grand Prix racing to concentrate on building sports cars.

The Osca 20 is sometimes seen in Historic racing events, however, and here is one which competed at the Richard Seaman Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in August 1992:

The car was then owned by Anthony Mayman but according to the programme of the meeting was driven that day by T S Fellows, here seen approaching Lodge Corner.

Friday's Ferrari

This is a car which appeared in the Allcomers Invitation Race at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting at Oulton Park in August 1992. It was entered by Anthony Mayman and driven in the race by John Harper.

The car was shown in the programme as a 1952 Ferrari with an engine capacity of 2496cc

First owned by Frenchman Louis Rosier, hence the blue colour, it was originally a 2 litre1952 Ferrari 500, shown in www.barchetta.cc to be serial number 0186F2

The car was fitted with a 625 engine in 1954 and in one of www.slotforum.com's forums it says:

'Rosier's 500 had a 625 engine that year, for the new 2.5-litre F1, so it was often described as a 500/625.'

I understand that the chassis had to be lengthened to accommodate the larger engine

Maserati 250F

Stirling Moss has said that that the Maserati 250F was the nicest front-engined F1 car that he ever drove. It was also the car that Juan Manuel Fangio drove to win the last of his World Championships in 1957. Here's a short YouTube film of him driving a 250F round the Modena Autodrome in what the title to the clip says is 1950, but looks to be either 1957 or 1958. Click on the 'full screen' icon and turn the sound up to get the best effect - and just look at the track he's driving on. The surfaces of some of the minor roads maintained by Tameside Council are in better condition than that one!

The photographs below are of a Maserati 250F at an Aston Martin Owners Club meeting at Oulton Park in September 1986. The car was at that time owned by Anthony Mayman.

The car at Lodge Corner being driven by Rodney Felton.

The Maserati 250F chassis numbers are well documented and this excellent site shown the full racing history of each of them. This indicates that the Maserati pictured above is chassis number 2516 and this site gives additional information about this particular car.