1969 Brabham BT26A

Tom Wheatcroft bought this car in 1969 and it was raced by Derek Bell in four of the Tasman series of races in January of 1970 including the New Zealand Grand Prix where he ended in second place. The car was then brought back to the UK where Derek Bell was entered for the 1970 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, but did not start there because of an accident in practice. The car was repaired and entered for the Belgian Grand Prix, but Derek Bell retired on the first lap with gearbox problems, after which Tom Wheatcroft retired the car to his Museum where I took this photograph in May 1989.

It's a 1969 Brabham BT26A, chassis BT26/4, which was originally raced by the Brabham team in 1969 by Jacky Ickx and Jack Brabham. The Brabham BT26, designed by Ron Tauranac, was introduced in 1968 and had a 2,994cc Repco 860 V8 engine that proved to be very fast but unreliable, Jack Brabham and Jochen Rindt each managing to finish in only two of the races. In 1969 the cars used the 2,993cc V8 Ford Cosworth DFV engine and were much more competitive. Two of the 1968 cars were updated to this BT26A specification with the new engine, and BT26/4 was a new car. Jacky Ickx won the German Grand Prix and the Canadian Grand Prix and finished in second place to Jackie Stewart in the World Drivers' Championship. Jack Brabham, despite missing three races due to an injury in testing still finished in tenth place in the Championship. Jackie Ickx drove BT26/4, the Donington Park car, in his win in the German Grand Prix and the car is now part of Roald Goethe's ROFGO Collection.

1961 Ferguson P99

This car was in the Donington Park Museum for over 35 years, and this is a photograph I took of it in October 1989.

It's the 1961 Ferguson P99 and it's the first 4-wheel drive car to compete in a Formula 1 race. The car was produced by Harry Ferguson Research Ltd with a team led by Tony Rolt and Claude Hill who decided that an even distribution of weight and torque between the front and rear axles dictated that the engine must be at the front of the car despite Cooper and Lotus recent successes with mid-engined cars. A spaceframe chassis was built which could carry either a 2½ or 1½ litre Climax engine canted at 17 degrees from the vertical to allow for a propeller shaft to link to the front axle. The gearbox was mounted behind the engine from which drive was taken to a Ferguson differential, propeller shafts then leading to differentials at front and rear. A Dunlop Maxaret braking system was used, the disks being mounted inboard at front and rear, which would prevent wheels locking in difficult track conditions. The car was loaned to Rob Walker's team  and its first outing was in the 1961 British Empire Trophy race in which Jack Fairman crashed the car on the second lap. In the British Grand Prix the car was again driven by Jack Fairman but he was delayed by electrical problems and when the car was push-started by mechanics after a pit stop (which was against the rules) the car was disqualified but was allowed to keep running as it obviously wasn't going to figure in the race results. As Stirling Moss in the Rob Walker Lotus 18/21 had retired with brake failure the team decided to bring Jack Fairman in and let Stirling Moss take over, but when he started putting in some quick laps on a damp track some of the other teams (notably Ferrari) protested to the stewards and the car had to be withdrawn. In September of that year Stirling Moss won the Gold Cup race at a wet Oulton Park with the car which became the first - and so far only - 4-wheel drive car to win a Formula 1 race. The car's only track appearances after that were drives by Graham Hill and Innes Ireland in the Australian Tasman series in 1963, though it did win the British Hill-Climb Championship for Peter Westbury in 1964. After its stay in the Donington Museum the car was sold in 2010 by RM Auctions for £410,000 and is currently owned by Stuart Rolt, Tony Rolt's son.

Friday's Ferrari

I took this photograph on the last visit I made to the Donington Collection at the Donington Park museum in September 2014. The museum was closed down in November 2018 and all the vehicles on loan were returned to their owners and as far as I'm aware the rest of them were sent for auction.

This is the 1952 Formula 2 Ferrari 500 (chassis #05) with which Alberto Ascari won the 1952 and 1953 World Drivers' Championships. When Alfa Romeo withdrew from racing after the 1951 season and BRM were seemingly unable to turn their car into a serious contender Ferrari were left as the only team capable of contesting World Championship races in 1952 under the 1½ litre supercharged/4½ litre unsupercharged formula. It was decided, therefore, to run the Championship in 1952 (and 1953) for 2 litre Formula 2 cars. Alberto Ascari won six of the eight races in 1952 and five of the nine races in 1953 and his record of 7 consecutive wins spanning the two seasons  was not beaten until Sebastian Vettel won 9 consecutive races in 2013. Ascari's winning run would have been 9 also, but was interrupted by the 1953 Indianapolis 500 mile race which was at that time included in the World Championship programme, although not contested by the European teams.

The car behind the Ferrari 500 is the 1950 Ferrari Thin Wall Special, which I featured on 8 March 2019.

1957 Vanwall 'Streamliner'

I took this photograph in a dark corner of the Donington Park museum in March 1996 before the later alterations which provided a proper display for the Vanwall Grand Prix cars.

It's the 1957 Vanwall F1 car with the streamlined body that never actually raced. The Vanwall of 1956-58 was designed by Colin Chapman and the body by Frank Costin, and it used the Vanwall engine designed by Norton engineer Leo Kuzmicki which was basically an enlarged version of four single-cylinder 498cc Norton engines joined together. The streamlined body was taken to the high-speed Reims circuit (a triangular five-mile road circuit with just two sharp corners and a couple of long sweeping curves) in July of 1957 for the non-championship Reims Grand Prix for evaluation. Regular drivers Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks were unavailable and Roy Salvadori and Stuart Lewis-Evans were drafted in for the race. Both drivers tried the streamlined car in practice, but it proved no faster than the normal one, which both drivers preferred to use in the race.

1948 Alta

I photographed this car on a visit to the Donington Park Museum in May 1989. The museum sadly closed in November 2018, cars on loan going back to the owners and as far as I'm aware the rest were put up for auction.

It's a 1948 Alta which was raced by George Abecassis in 1948 and 1949. I've recently come across the book that I bought at the museum on one of my visits there, and this is what it has to say about the Alta:

'The Alta

Geoffrey Taylor's 'Special'

Geoffrey Taylor was an arch motoring enthusiast. He built his first Alta car in a small workshop behind his home in Kingstone-upon-Thames between 1928 and 30, painstakingly fashioning vital engine parts out of the solid. This was followed by a line of sports and independently-suspended racing cars until he outbreak of the war.

He outlined a design for a 1½ litre supercharged Grand Prix car towards the end of the war, and announced his plans with a flourish in November 1945. But post-war shortages delayed the car's debut until 1948, when 'GP No. 1' appeared in the British Empire Trophy race in Douglas, Isle of Man.

The new Alta used an updated version of Taylor's well-proven twin overhead-camshaft four-cylinder engine, supercharged by a Roots-Alta blower driven from the crankshaft nose. He used a special four-speed all-synchromesh gearbox of his own construction with a low drive-line, allowing the driver's seat to be very low-mounted within a rakish and sleek bodyshell, reminiscent of the pre-war Mercedes also copied by ERA in their unsuccessful E-Type.

George Abecassis raced the car throughout 1948 and 1949, while his HW Motors partner John Heath also drove on occasions. Its best performance was in the 1949 British GP, when Abecassis ran fifth before a broken float chamber forced him to stop. He then fought his way back through the field to finish seventh.

For 1950 this duo concentrated on their own Alta-engined HWMs, while the same engine became standard in 2½ litre form in Connaught cars. Tony Brooks won the 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix in one of these Connaughts to score the first all-British Continental GP victory since 1924!

Three of the rubber-block suspended GP Altas were built; the others went to Geoffrey Crossle and Joe Kelly, and the Collection's car includes parts from all three.

Engine:4-Cyls IL; 2VPC; 2OHC; 78mm x 78mm. 1490cc; 230bhp/7000rpm; (S).

Chassis: Round tube ladder frame

Suspension: IRS/IFS by wishbones and rubber blocks.

Brakes: Drums, hydraulically-operated.'

1962 Porsche 804

I photographed this car in the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's a 1992 Porsche 904, chassis #2, that was driven in the first two races of 1962 by Dan Gurney, and by Jo Bonnier for the rest of that season. The car was designed by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, grandson of the company's founder, Ferdinand Porsche, and has a flat 8-cylinder 1,494cc boxer engine. Dan Gurney won the French Grand Prix, finished third in the German Grand Prix and in fifth place in the USA Grand Prix to end the season in fifth place in the World Drivers' Championship. Jo Bonnier finished in fifth place in Monaco and sixth place at Monza for fifteenth place in that Championship, and Porsche finished in fifth place in the Manufacturers' Championship.

The car behind the Porsche is the 1948/49 Cisitalia 360 Grand Prix Car that was designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

2011 Williams FW33

This is one of the photographs I took on my last visit to the Donington Park motor museum, in September 2014.

It's a Williams FW33, the car that the team ran in the 2011 season which resulted the worst display by the team since its first season in 1977. The car was powered by a 2,400cc V8 Cosworth CA2011k engine and driven by Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado, but the only points scoring finishes were two ninth places for Barrichello and a tenth place for Maldonado.

1978 Brabham BT46B

This is a photograph I took at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989 of a controversial Grand Prix car that only competed in one race in this configuration.

It's the 1978 Brabham BT46B, powered by a 2,995cc Alfa Romeo flat-12 engine. This was a Brabham BT46 modified by Gordon Murray in order to counter the dominant Lotus 78, the underside of the body of which was designed to allow the flow of air to 'suck' the car closer to the ground and allow higher cornering speeds. Gordon Murray's answer to this was the enormous fan at the rear of the car, ostensibly to cool the engine but which also had the effect of drawing the air from beneath the car more quickly thus increasing the ground effect. The car only competed in one race in this form, the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix where Nike Lauda won convincingly, helped in no small part in the latter stages of the race when a back-marker dropped oil on the track which proved less of a problem for the Fan Car (as it was dubbed) than for the other competitors. There was lots of controversy about the car as movable aerodynamic devices were not allowed, but FISA accepted that the main purpose of the fan was to cool the engine - which was known to have overheating problems - and the race result was allowed to stand. The Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) was founded that year and Bernie Ecclestone, then owner of Brabham, became Chief Executive of the organisation. Fearing he would lose the support of the other constructors he agreed that the BT46B would not compete in any future races. 

The concept of ground effects is more fully explained in this article.

Friday's Ferrari

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in September 2014.

This is the last of the Ferrari Thin Wall Special cars, which were Ferrari Formula 1 cars modified by Tony Vandervell by using his own thin wall engine bearings. The car was based on the 4,494cc V12 1950 Ferrari 375 Grand Prix car, but used the longer chassis of the Ferrari 375 Indianapolis car. The car didn't achieve any great success, but paved the way for Tony Vandervell's own Vanwall car in which Stirling Moss narrowly failed to win the 1958 Drivers' World Championship, but which won the first ever Constructors' Championship that year for Tony Vandervell. Below is the board that was alongside the car at Donington Park.

I've shown photographs of this car twice previously, on 14 February 2014 and 9 June 2017.

Cosworth 4WD F1 Prototype

From 1961 to 1965 the capacity limit for Formula 1 engines had been limited to 1½ litres, but in 1966 that limit was increased to 3 litres giving the potential for a massive increase in power. This was realised in the 1967 season with the introduction of the Cosworth DFV engine but the downside was that cars were finding it increasingly difficult to transfer this power to the road, particularly in wet conditions. Several teams tried their hand at building four-wheel drive cars to improve the grip, and they were joined by Frank Costin and Keith Duckworth, the men behind the Cosworth engine.

This car, photographed in the Donington Park museum in September 2014, is the Cosworth 4WD F1 prototype which was hampered by a variety of teething problems. In the meantime the F1 teams also had problems with their 4WD cars, and Colin Chapman's experiments with wings on his Lotus cars, soon taken up by other teams, and also advances in tyre technology solved the grip problem to a large extent and the 4WD revolution never took hold. Keith Duckworth shelved the Cosworth 4WD project without the car having turned a wheel in anger.

Friday's Ferrari

This is a car I photographed at the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's the car that started the Donington Grand Prix Collection, a 1949 Ferrari 125, chassis #114. Originally a works race car it was bought by Peter Whitehead in 1951, the first time that Enzo Ferrari had sold a Grand Prix car to a private owner. It was designed by Valerio Colotti with Gioacchino Colombo's 1,497cc supercharged V12 engine. Donington Park owner Tom Wheatcroft bought the car in 1964 and completely restored it after it had spent time in Australia and at one point had a Chevrolet V8 engine.

I've previously shown photographs of the car on 7 February 2014 and 23 December 2016.

Lancia D50

Not a competitor at this meeting, but one of the participants in A Demonstration of Italian Racing Cars at the VSCC's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005.

It's a 1955 2½ litre V8 Lancia D50 recreation, at that time owned by Tom Wheatcroft and kept in his museum at Donington Park.

Following the withdrawal of the Lancia team from racing at the end of the 1955 season all the D50 cars and spares were handed over to Ferrari with the exception of one car which went to the Fiat Museum and one which went to the Biscaretti Museum.

Ferrari raced the cars as Lancia-Ferraris in the 1956 season with some modifications and Juan Fangio won the World Championship that season. For the 1957 season the cars were modified to such an extent that it was redesignated as a Ferrari 801, but didn't enjoy any great success.

At the end of the 1957 season with the introduction of the Ferrari 246 F1 car (with which Mike Hawthorn won the 1958 World Championship title) the cars were broken up and the parts stored at the Ferrari factory.

From the 1990s these parts have been used to recreate, I understand, seven examples of the car, including one to the specification of the 1956 Lancia-Ferrari.

Here's the car during one of the demonstration runs being driven by Kevin Wheatcroft, Tom Wheatcroft's son.

On 2 January 2013 I showed photographs of the original Lancia D50 from the Fiat Museum which was part of a display at Silverstone in 1998.

Stewart Ford SF01

This is one of the cars that I photographed at the Donington Park museum in September 2014.

It's a 1997 Stewart Ford SF01, the first car built by Stewart Racing (Jackie Stewart and his son Paul) to contest F1 races. After three not very successful years - the best result being a win by Johnny Herbert in the 1999 European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring - the team was sold to Ford who ran the cars as Jaguars until in turn being taken over by Red Bull in 2005.

On 6 May 2017 I showed a photograph of one of these Stewart Ford SF01 cars at Silverstone in 1998.

Friday's Ferrari

I photographed this car on a visit to the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's the Ferrari 500 with which Alberto Ascari won the World Drivers Championship in both 1952 and 1953 when it was contested under the 2 litre Formula 2 Regulations. The car had a 4-cylinder inline engine with a capacity of 1,985cc and Ascari won 7 consecutive races spanning the two seasons, setting a record that was not beaten until Sebastian Vettel won 9 consecutive races in 2013. Ascari's winning run would have been 9 also, but was interrupted by the 1953 Indianapolis 500 mile race which was at that time included in the World Championship programme, although not contested by the European teams.

On 4 July 2014 I showed a photograph of the car that I had taken at the Donington Museum in 1989, together with two taken at Oulton Park in 1970.

Auto Union D-type

In March 1996 I made a visit to the Donington Park Museum to see a special car. It was one of a group of Auto Union racing cars that disappeared after the Second World War when the part of Germany where they had been produced and were stored was occupied by Soviet Russia when the war ended, and all the remaining cars were transported to Russia. It was generally assumed that after the Russians had gleaned what information they could from the cars they had all been destroyed. With the breakdown of the USSR, however, several of these cars came to light and one by one the remains were resuscitated by the engineers at Crosthwaite and Gardiner in Buxted, East Sussex. This is one of those cars and was on display at the Donington Park Museum for a period after its restoration.

It's a 1938 Auto Union D-type which had a supercharged 3 litre V12 engine.

The D-type was driven in 1938 by Hermann Müller, Rudolf Hasse, Christian Kautz, Hans Stuck, Tazio Nuvolari and Ulrich Bigalke.....

.....and in the curtailed 1939 season by Herman Müller, Tazio Nuvolari. Rudolf Hasse, Georg Meier and Hans Stuck.

I went to Donington Park that day as I thought that it would be the only chance I would get to see this car that I'd read so much about since I was a youngster.

Five years later, however, at the VSCC's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Donington Park, Audi brought along  restored Auto Union C-type and D-type models which were displayed in the paddock and took part in demonstration runs round the circuit.

I showed photographs of these cars on 2 December 2012.....

.....and also on 10 August 2016.

Friday's Ferrari

I photographed this car in the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's the 3 litre flat-12 1970 Ferrari 312B raced in the 1970 season by Jackie Ickx and Clay Regazzoni and is chassis 003 70. The car was succeeded by the 312B2 in 1971 and was further revised, but still called the 312B2, for the 1972 season. It was second in the World Constructors Championship in 1970, third in 1971 and fourth in 1972. The 1973 car was designated the Ferrari 312B3, but it was a totally redesigned car.

On 18 December 2015 I showed a photograph of this car displayed in the Paddock Suite at the Donington Park SeeRed meeting in 2004.

Derby Maserati

This is a car that I photographed in the Donington Park Museum in October 1989, and it's one that I remember seeing at race meetings in the 1960s.

It's the Derby Maserati, a front-wheel drive car built by the French Derby company in 1935 with a 1½ litre supercharged 4-cylinder engine from a Maserati 4CM. The car was built for Mrs Gwenda Stewart whose future third husband, Douglas Hawkes, was a director of the Derby company which was founded in 1921 at Courbevoie on the outskirts of Paris. Gwenda Stewart didn't have much success with the car, and after the Second World War the car appeared at historic car meetings until the 1960s when it went to the Donington Park Museum for almost 40 years. 

Mercedes Benz W154

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in May 1989.

It's a 1939 Mercedes Benz W154, sometimes known as a W163 though it's actually a 1938 W154 with the M154 engine replaced by the 1939 M163 unit.

During the Second World War Mercedes Benz had stored its racing cars in and around the factory at Unterturkheim, but later in the war when the allied bombing became more of a threat many of the cars were taken to other, less targeted places for safety. They were usually stored in pairs and this car, chassis W154/10, together with W154/9, was walled up in the workshops of Czech pre-war racing driver Antonin Vitvar in Stará Paka. After the war W154/9 ended up in the USA and W154/10 was handed over to the National Technical Museum of Prague. Many years later the car was sent to Tom Wheatcroft's workshops at Donington Park for restoration and then had a period on loan at the Museum.

Lancia D50

At the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2006 this car was one of those on display in the Paddock Suite.

It's the Donington Museum's 1955 Lancia D50 recreation. The D50s were handed over to the Ferrari team when Lancia withdrew from racing towards the end of the 1955 season, and the cars were gradually modified over the next couple of seasons until, in the then usual Ferrari manner, the cars were scrapped when they reached the end of their useful life. In recent years the engines and many of the original components of the cars were recovered and several replicas constructed. Two of the original cars still exist in museums though, and on 2 January 2013 I showed photographs of one of these that was loaned to Silverstone in 1998 when they marked the 50th anniversary of the Silverstone circuit.

Ferrari 312B

I took this photograph in the Donington Park Museum in May 1989.

It's a 1970 Ferrari 312B, a car used by Ferrari in 1970 and in the early part of the 1971 season. The photographs in front of the car wheels are of Jackie Ickx and Clay Regazzoni, who finished in second and third places in the 1970 World Drivers' Championship behind the only posthumous winner of the title, Jochen Rindt.