Pre 1952 Grand Prix Car Race

This is a photograph that I took during the HGPCA Pre '52 GP Car Race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996.

Leading is Martin Stretton in Simon Bull's 1932 Maserati 4CM closely followed by Peter Hannen's 1937 Maserati 6CM with Ludovic Lindsay's 1936 ERA R5B bringing up the rear. The car in the background appears to be Tony Merrick's 1934 ERA R1B.

1937 Maserati 4CM

I took this photograph in the paddock at the Vintage Sports Car Club's Richard Seaman Memorial meeting at Oulton Park in June 1969 where it competed in the Historic Trophy race. 

It's the 1937 Maserati 4CM of Dan Margulies which the programme of the event says has a 1,498cc supercharged engine. Grand Prix racing in the 1930s was dominated by the German teams of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union, and to a lesser extent the Italian Alfa Romeo team. Smaller manufacturers like Maserati built their cars for the Voiturette (or 'small car') class which was for cars with a maximum capacity of 1½ litres. The 4-cylinder Maserati 4CM introduced in 1932 had considerable success, but when these cars started to be outclassed by the British ERA cars Maserati produced the 6CM with a 6-cylinder 1½ litre supercharged engine. I don't know the chassis number of this car, but Dan Margulies was associated with several of the 4CM models and I've been unable to find a photograph of one with a nose like this one.

1932 Maserati 4CM

This car took part in the HGPCA Pre '52 Grand Prix Car Race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996.

It's a 1932 Maserati 4CM, chassis 1120, originally delivered to Giuseppe Furmanik of Rome as an 1,100cc car. He doesn't appear to have had any great success racing the car, but he did set a World Speed Record for 1,100cc cars in 1934 with a speed of 222.634 kph for the flying kilometre. The car was later acquired by Gino Rovere who replaced the 1,100cc engine with a 1.500cc unit for Voiturette racing and also commissioned the distinctive radiator grille. At the time of this Silverstone meeting the car was owned by Simon Bull and was driven in the race by Martin Stretton.

Silverstone Pit Lane

This is a photograph I took from the pit wall at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1994. It shows the competitors for the Chopard HGPCA 100-Mile GP car race going out for a practice session.

Leading the pack are three red Maserati 250Fs, from left to right Jeffrey Pattinson (no. 8) Burkhard von Schenk (no. 10) and Nigel Corner (no. 5). Number 23 just poking out of the pit garage on the left is the Cooper Bristol of Oliver Robinson  and the light green car in front of him is also a Cooper Bristol, that of Graham Burrows (no. 22). Coming out of the next pit garage is the Cooper T41 of Alan Miles (no. 14) and beyond that Paul Jaye's Alta (no. 18) has just left the garage. In front of Peter Jaye's car is another Alta, that of Ian Nuthall (no. 26), and behind that the Cooper Bristol of Paul Alexander (no. 19). The red car behind that Cooper is another Maserati 250F and it appears to have a number 7 which is shown in the programme as Robin Lodge's car, but he actually drove his Maserati 4CM in the  race (also number 7) and that is the red car at the end of the pit garages. The green car behind the three Maserati 250Fs is the Vanwall of John Harper (no. 1), and on the right behind that is another Maserati 250F which I can't identify as there were another five of these cars in the race. In the far distance is what appears to be ERA R1A or R3A, but there were three ERAs in the race, driven by Tony Merrick, Duncan Ricketts and Tony Stephens and the programme doesn't identify which ERAs those were.

Maserati 250F

I took these photographs at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1997.

This is the ex-Gilby Engineering 2½ litre 1954 Maserati 250F, chassis 2507/2 which does not have a racing number and may or may not have taken part in the meeting. In the programme of the event seven Maserati 250F's are listed in the HGPCA Pre-1960 Grand Prix Race and the programme shows the colour of each of the cars, but one is shown as being blue and the other six are red. The 1936 Maserati 4CM behind the 250F belonged to Robin Lodge who did have a Maserati 250F but it is not listed in the programme for this race.

On 11 May 2019 I showed a photograph of Roy Salvadori in this car at Silverstone in 1993.

Maserati 4CM

This car took part in the Motor Sport HGPCA Pre '52 Grand Prix Car Race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1995.

It's a 1932 Maserati 4CM, originally delivered to Giuseppe Furmanik of Rome as an 1,100cc car. He doesn't appear to have had any great success racing the car, but he did set a World Speed Record for 1,100cc cars in 1934 with a speed of 222.634 kph for the flying kilometre. The car was later acquired by Gino Rovere who replaced the 1,100cc engine with a 1.500cc unit for Voiturette racing and also commissioned the distinctive radiator grille. At the time of this Silverstone meeting the car was owned by Simon Bull and was driven in the race by Martin Stretton. A more complete history of the car was provided by Bonhams when the car was offered for auction in 2014.