1952 Connaught A-Type

This car took part in the two Corporate Jets Historic Grand Prix Cars races over the weekend of 25th and 26th July 1992 at the Christie's International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone.

Gerry Porter and Barrie Williams were listed in the programme of the event as drivers of this 1952 Connaught A-Type which has a 4-cylinder inline engine based on the 1,767cc Lea Francis engine with the capacity increased to 1,960cc in line with the then current Formula 2 regulations. The yellow colour suggests that it is chassis number A4 which was at one time campaigned by the Ecurie Belge team.

Connaught A-Type and ERA R12B

Here are two of David Wenman's cars which both took part in the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy race at the VSCC's meeting at Oulton Park in June 2006.

The yellow car is a 1952 Connaught A Type which has a 1,960cc 4-cylinder inline engine based on the 1,767cc Lea Francis unit. It was chassis A4 and one of Connaught's works team cars in 1952, when it was usually driven by Dennis Poore, then in 1953 it went to the Écurie Belge team where the drivers were Johnny Claes and André Pilette. The blue car is the 1936 ERA R12B, named Hanuman II, with the 6-cylinder inline 1,488cc supercharged ERA engine. Before the Second World War this was one of Siamese Prince Chula's White Mouse Racing stable cars and was driven by his cousin Prince Bira. There's quite an involved story about this car and ERA R12C which you can read about in this history of all the ERA cars. David Wenman drove the Connaught in the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy race,and the ERA was driven by Tony Stephens.

Alfa Romeo 8C-35

These photographs were taken at the Vintage Sports Car Club's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2006.

This is the 1935 Alfa Romeo 8C-35 of Peter Greenfield that took part in two of the races at this meeting. The car is chassis 50013 and has a supercharged 3,822cc straight-eight engine. It was raced by the Scuderia Ferrari team, by Tazio Nuvolari amongst others, on behalf of Alfa Romeo in 1936, and by Hans Ruesch as a privateer in the latter part of 1936 and in the 1937 season. Hans Ruesch and his co-driver Richard Seaman won the 1936 Donington Grand Prix in this car.

At this 2004 Donington Park meeting the car competed in the Historic Seaman Trophy Race bearing the number 24 as in the above two photographs taken in the pit garage.

Later in the day the car took part in the Flockhart Trophy Race as a reserve entry bearing the number 20, presumably because a Cooper Bristol in the same race had already been allocated the number 24. In the above photograph Peter Greenfield is leading David Wenman in his 1952 Connaught A4 at McLean's Corner during this race.

50013 was owned by Dennis Poore after WW2 and was raced by him between 1947 and 1955, later ending up in the Donington Park Museum where I took photographs of the car in 1989.

Connaught A Type

This car competed in the Flockhart Trophy Race at the VSCC's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2006.

It's David Wenman's 1952 Connaught A type, with a 4-cylinder inline engine based on the 1,767cc Lea Francis engine with the capacity increased to 1,960cc in line with the then current Formula 2 regulations. It's chassis number A4, and was at one time campaigned by the Ecurie Belge team.

On 7 March 2017 I showed photographs of this car taken at Oulton Park in 2005.