1959 Tec-Mec F415

This car competed in the Maserati UK Race for Pre 1961 Grand Prix Cars at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000.

Shown in the programme of the event as a TecMec it's the 1959 Tec-Mec F415 designed by Valerio Colotti as a lightweight version of the Maserati 250F. Colotti was employed by Maserati and was working on the design when Maserati pulled out of racing at the end of the 1958 season. He set up his own company, Studio Tecnica Meccanica, and Italian racing driver Giorgio Scarlatti encouraged him to continue with this work and bought shares in the company. American Gordon Pennington then persuaded Scarlatti to sell him the shares and arranged for Camoradi's Lucky Casner to run the team for what had now become Tec-Mec Automobili. When finished the car was entered for the 1959 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and Brazilian driver Fritz d'Orey was chosen to drive it. The car had clearly not gone through sufficient testing and Fritz d'Orey only qualified it in seventeenth place. It only lasted for six laps in the race before it retired with a serious oil leak and that turned out to be the only World Championship appearance by the car. It lingered in a Miami garage until 1967 when it was acquired by Tom Wheatcroft who brought the car back into working order and it was in his museum at Donington Park for many years. It was eventually sold to Barrie Baxter, who drove the car at this Silverstone meeting, and he raced it successfully before eventually passing the car on to Barry Wood.

1959 Tec-Mec F415

This car competed in the Maserati UK Race for Pre 1961 Grand Prix Cars at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000 and is pictured here leaving the pit lane during the morning qualifying session.

Shown in the programme of the event as a TecMec it's the 1959 Tec-Mec F415 designed by Valerio Colotti as a lightweight version of the Maserati 250F. Colotti was employed by Maserati and was working on the design when Maserati pulled out of racing at the end of the 1958 season. He set up his own company, Studio Tecnica Meccanica, and Italian racing driver Giorgio Scarlatti encouraged him to continue with this work and bought shares in the company. American Gordon Pennington then persuaded Scarlatti to sell him the shares and arranged for Camoradi's Lucky Casner to run the team for what had now become Tec-Mec Automobili. When finished the car was entered for the 1959 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and Brazilian driver Fritz d'Orey was chosen to drive it. The car had clearly not gone through sufficient testing and Fritz d'Orey only qualified it in seventeenth place. It only lasted for six laps in the race before it retired with a serious oil leak and that turned out to be the only World Championship appearance by the car. It lingered in a Miami garage until 1967 when it was acquired by Tom Wheatcroft who brought the car back into working order and it was in his museum at Donington Park for many years. It was eventually sold to Barrie Baxter who drove the car at this Silverstone meeting and raced it successfully before eventually passing the car on to Barry Wood.

1959 Tec-Mec F415

This car competed in the Maserati UK Race for Pre 1961 Grand Prix Cars at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000.

Shown in the programme of the event as a TecMec it's the 1959 Tec-Mec F415 designed by Valerio Colotti as a lightweight version of the Maserati 250F. Colotti was employed by Maserati and was working on the design when Maserati pulled out of racing at the end of the 1958 season. He set up his own company, Studio Tecnica Meccanica, and Italian racing driver Giorgio Scarlatti encouraged him to continue with this work and bought shares in the company. American Gordon Pennington then persuaded Scarlatti to sell him the shares and arranged for Camoradi's Lucky Casner to run the team for what had now become Tec-Mec Automobili. When finished the car was entered for the 1959 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and Brazilian driver Fritz d'Orey was chosen to drive it. The car had clearly not gone through sufficient testing and Fritz d'Orey only qualified it in seventeenth place. It only lasted for six laps in the race before it retired with a serious oil leak and that turned out to be the only World Championship appearance by the car. It lingered in a Miami garage until 1967 when it was acquired by Tom Wheatcroft who brought the car back into working order and it was in his museum at Donington Park for many years. It was eventually sold to Barrie Baxter who drove the car at this Silverstone meeting and raced it successfully before eventually passing the car on to Barry Wood. The number 53 car alongside is the 1½ litre 1961 Cooper T53 of Chris Bullimore who took part in the Maserati UK Race for Pre 1966 Grand Prix & Tasman Cars while the number 39 car at the back on the left is Peter Austin’s 1963 Brabham BT7A which was also one of the competitors in that race. The red cr on the right at the back is George Rozwadowski’s 1½ litre 1957 Lotus Eleven that  took part in he 1950s Sports Car Race.

Celebration Maserati Invitation Race

The SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005 featured the Maserati marque, and in particular the Maserati 250F. One of the races was a Celebration Maserati Invitation Race, and I took this photograph at McLean's Corner during that race.

Leading is the Tec-Mec F415 of Barrie Baxter, a car that Valerio Colotti was working on as a development of the Maserati 250F when Maserati pulled out of racing at the end of the 1957 season. Colotti set up the Studio Tecnica Meccanica to build the car for the 1959 season, but only one car was built, and it only started in one race, the 1959 US Grand Prix, where it only lasted for six laps. There were 12 Maserati 250Fs listed in the programme of the event for this race and two of them are behind the Tec-Mec here but I can't identify which ones they are - although the one to the right of the Tec-Mec may be the Cameron Miller replica CM7 of Allan Miles. The car with the blue band round the nose behind that trio is the V12-engined Maserati 250F (2531) of Thomas Bscher and the car bringing up the rear is the Cameron Miller 250F replica (CM2) of Ian Duncan, being driven by Rick Hall.

1959 Tec-Mec F415

This car competed in the Hawthorn Memorial Race at the VSCC's Boulogne and Hawthorn Trophies race meeting at Oulton Park in June 2006.

Shown in the programme of the event as a Technica Mechanica it's better known as the 1959 Tec-Mec F415 designed by Valerio Colotti as a lightweight version of the Maserati 250F. Colotti was employed by Maserati and was working on the design when Maserati pulled out of racing at the end of the 1958 season. He set up his own company, Studio Tecnica Meccanica, and Italian racing driver Giorgio Scarlatti encouraged him to continue with this work and bought shares in the company. American Gordon Pennington then persuaded Scarlatti to sell him the shares and arranged for Camoradi's Lucky Casner to run the team for what had now become Tec-Mec Automobili. When finished the car was entered for the 1959 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and Brazilian driver Fritz d'Orey was chosen to drive it. The car had clearly not gone through sufficient testing and Fritz d'Orey only qualified it in seventeenth place. It only lasted for six laps in the race before it retired with a serious oil leak and that turned out to be the only World Championship appearance by the car. It lingered in a Miami garage until 1967 when it was acquired by Tom Wheatcroft who brought the car back into working order and it was in his museum at Donington Park for many years. It was eventually sold to Barrie Baxter who drove the car at this Oulton Park meeting and raced it successfully before eventually passing the car on to Barry Wood.

Here's Barrie Baxter at Britten's chicane during the race followed by Duncan Ricketts in 'Mac' Hulbert's ERA R4D and Matt Gillies in Rodney Smith's ERA R3A. Behind them are the Kurtis Indy Roadster of Stuart Harper and the Cooper Bristol MkII of either Mary Grant-Jonkers or Paul Grant, who drove two identical cars in the race.

Tec-Mec Maserati F415

This was one of the competitors in the Ron Flockhart Memorial Trophy Race for Pre 61 Racing Cars at the VSCC's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting at Donington Park in May 2001.

It's the 1959 Tec-Mec F415, the last evolution of the Maserati 250F which had begun with the start of the 2½ litre F1 Formula in 1954. The car only competed in one World Championship race - the 1959 USA Grand Prix - retiring very early in that race, and its full history was related by Bonhams when it was offered for auction in 2003. The car was entered for this Donington Park race in 2001 by Barrie Baxter.

On 23 July 2015 I showed three photographs of the car that I'd taken over a period of some 36 years.