Tony Brooks

The Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000 celebrated 50 years of the Formula One World Drivers' Championship with the first race on 13 May 1950 at Silverstone. There was a display in the paddock of many of the cars that competed during those 50 years, some of which took part in track demonstrations during the weekend of the meeting. I took this photograph in the marquee in the paddock that housed the cars.

It's Tony Brooks sitting in the Connaught B Type, possibly reminiscing about his win in the Syracuse Grand Prix in 1955 in one of these cars. The car he is sitting in is chassis B4, originally owned and raced by Rob Walker's racing team and owned in 2000 by, I think, Tony Smith. The car in which Tony Brooks won the Syracuse Grand Prix was chassis B1, and like all the Connaught B Types had a 4-cylinder inline 2,470cc Alta engine. The photograph below shows Tony Brooks leaving the pit lane in the car on one of the demonstration runs.

1955 Connaught B Type

This car competed in the Corporate Jets Historic Grand Prix Car 100-Mile Race at the Christie's International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1992.

It's the 1955 Connaught B Type of David Duffy, and was driven in the race by Martin Stretton. The Connaught B Type was made famous by Tony Brooks' win in the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix where the main opposition were the five cars of the Maserati works team, since when the B Type has been known as the Connaught Syracuse. It has a 4-cylinder inline 2,470cc Alta engine and seven of the cars were produced, David Duffy's car, chassis B4, being originally acquired by Rob Walker for whom it was raced by several drivers between 1955 and 1958, amongst them Tony Rolt, Jack Fairman and Reg Parnell.

On 27 December 2014 I showed photographs of the car that I had taken at Oulton Park in 1987.

Craner Curves, Donington Park

This is a photograph taken at the Craner Curves during the first lap of the Ron Flockhart Memorial Trophy Race at the VSCC's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2004.

Leading is Andrew Smith in his 2 litre 1957 Cooper T43 followed by two more Coopers, the 2 litre 1958 T45 of Anthony Ditheridge and the 2 litre 1957 T43 of Tania Pilkington. The two cars behind them are the 3.8 litre 1958 Lister Jaguar Monza of Rod Jolley and Alexander Boswell's 3 litre 1952 Ferrari 625A. Following them is a group consisting of B Type and A Type Connaughts, a Cooper Bristol and another Cooper T45. Bringing up the rear are the 4.2 litre 1957 Kurtis Offenhauser KK500G of Stuart Harper and the 2 litre 1953 Cooper Bristol T23 of David White.

Connaught B Type

This car took part in the Historic Car Championship race at the Aston Martin Owners' Club's Historic Car Races meeting at Oulton Park in September 1986.

It's Christopher Mayman's 1955 Alta-engined 4-cylinder in-line 2,470cc Connaught B type, and I understand that it's chassis #B1. Chassis #B1 is the car in which Tony Brooks won the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix (giving the car the 'Connaught Syracuse' name by which it is generally known), but the car was written-off in an accident in practice for the 1957 Syracuse Grand Prix when being driven by Les Leston. The frame was rescued and later used in this reconstruction of the car.

Here's Christopher Mayman at Lodge Corner during the race.

Connaught B type

This is one of the entrants in the VSCC Ron Flockhart Trophy race at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting at Donington Park in June 2003.

This is the 1955 Connaught B Type of J W Morley, driven in the race by Simon Diffey, and has a 2,470cc Alta engine. The B Type has been known as the Connaught Syracuse since Tony Brooks' victory in the Syracuse Grand Prix in 1955. Behind it is another Connaught, the 1956/57 car of Michael Steele shown in the programme of the event as a C Type. Only one C Type was made, the last car produced by Connaught, and it was sold to Bob Said in the USA. He entered it for the 1962 Indianapolis 500 race, but Jack Fairman failed to qualify the car for the race. The car is shown here with a copy of the 'toothpaste tube' body worn by B Type chassis B3 in the 1957 and 1958 seasons, but the C Type never had that body in period.

On 9 March 2015 I showed a photograph of B Type chassis B3 with the 'toothpaste tube' body at Aintree in 1958, when it was owned by Bernie Ecclestone.

Connaught B-Type

I've shown photographs previously of some of the cars that took part in a parade at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000 to mark 50 years of the World Championship for Drivers, and here's another one.

It's a 1955 Connaught B-Type driven by Tony Brooks, who won the Syracuse Grand Prix that year in one of these cars. This one is in the colours of Rob Walker's racing team which entered one of these cars in a few British non-Championship F1 races in 1956, in which it was driven by Reg Parnell. On 27 December 2014 I showed photographs of (presumably) this car at a 1987 meeting at Oulton Park.

Crowded Paddock

This is a photograph I took in the paddock at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2007.

There's a preponderance of British Racing Green, and even the blue car nearest the camera is a British car - it's the 1955 Cooper T39 Bobtail of Adrian van der Kroft that I featured on 11 July 2016. Adrian van der Kroft is also the owner of car number 38, a 1952 HWM F2 car fitted with a Jaguar engine. There are 5 Cooper Bristols - those of David White, Patrick Walker, Nigel Bancroft and Geoffrey O'Connell lined up together at the rear, and the one with the red nose is Paul Grant's. Number 49 is the 1954 HWM Jaguar of Michael Steele, 27 is Ian Nuthall's 1952 Alta F2, and numbers 10 and 7 are Nick Wigley's 1954 Connaught B type and 1959 Cooper T51 respectively.

Connaught

Finance was always a problem for Rodney Clarke's Connaught racing team and only two years after making history when Tony Brooks won the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix in a Connaught B Type the team was disbanded when the money ran out.

Here's Rodney Clarke at the Oulton Park Gold Cup meeting in September 1955, just a month before the Syracuse race, in the Connaught B Type, chassis B1, which Tony Brooks drove in that race. In the Gold Cup race the car was driven by Reg Parnell. who finished in fourth place.

Connaught B type

This is another of those old Kodak Brownie 127 photographs, this time from the BARC 200 race at Aintree in April 1958.

It's a Connaught B type, chassis B3, entered by Bernie Eccleston who had bought two cars from the disbanded Connaught team, this one being driven to 14th place in the race by Paul Emery. This photograph was taken on the Friday practice day and the number 14 was still on the car from the Easter Monday Glover Trophy race two weeks earlier at Goodwood. In the Aintree race the car was number 6. The car has the famous 'toothpaste-tube' body and the truncated nose which was used in the Monaco Grand Prix to reduce the possibility of damage in that crowded street race.

Connaught B Type

This car was entered in the Cheshire Building Society Allcomers Race at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in July 1987.

It's a 1955 Connaught B Type, the same kind of car with which Tony Brooks won the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix - the first foreign Grand Prix victory for a British car (although it wasn't a World Championship race) since Henry Seagrave won the 1923 French Grand Prix in a Sunbeam.

The car has got a 2½ litre Alta engine

Here's the car during the race at Lodge Corner being driven by David Duffy