Maurice Trintignant (and Stirling Moss)

This is another of my brother's Kodak Brownie 127 photographs from practice day at the 1956 British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July 1956.

It's the French driver Maurice Trintignant who drove a Vanwall in the race, and Stirling Moss who drove one of the eleven Maserati 250F's. Neither finished the race, Trintignant retiring with fuel line problems and Moss with transmission failure. Maurice Trintignant had a lengthy career in racing, from 1938 to 1965, his best seasons in the World Drivers' Championship being 1954 and 1955 when he finished in fourth position, and he won the Monaco Grand Prix on two occasions. In 1955 he drove an outdated Ferrari 625 to victory after the Mercedes-Benz W196 cars of Juan Fangio and Stirling Moss had suffered mechanical problems and Alberto Ascari had crashed his Lancia D50 into the harbour. In 1958 he won in Rob Walker's 2-litre rear-engined Cooper Climax, beating the Ferrari 246 Dinos of Luigi Musso and Peter Collins into second and third places. Only six cars finished the race. Maurice Trintignant also drove in the World Sportscar Championship for many years, competing regularly in the Le Mans 24 Hour race for Ferrari and Aston Martin amongst others, and winning it in a Ferrari 375 Plus with Froilán González in 1954.

Cooper Climax T45

This car is pictured in the paddock at Aintree in April 1960 where it took part in the BARC 200 race for Formula 2 cars.

It's the Scuderia Centro Sud Cooper Climax T45 and was driven in the race by Maurice Trintignant, finishing in fifth place. It's the ex-Rob Walker car and is chassis #F2-9-58.

Friday's Ferrari

I've recently been able to scan into my laptop some of the photographs that my brother and I took at Oulton Park and Aintree, and one meeting at Silverstone, between 1955 and 1962. They were mostly taken on Kodak Brownie 127 cameras but even so the quality of some of them is surprisingly good - others not so much. Here's one of the photographs we took at practice for the 1957 British Grand Prix at Aintree.

It shows three of the four Ferrari 801 cars that took part in the race. The middle car, number 14 (chassis no. 0010), was the car driven by Luigi Musso and the car on the left looks to have number 16 (chassis no. 0006), which was Maurice Trintignant's car, taken over by Peter Collins when his car failed half-way through the race. The other two cars were number 10 (chassis no. 0009), driven by Mike Hawthorn, and number 12 (chassis no. 0008) which was Peter Collins' original car.

During the race Stirling Moss in a Vanwall had a comfortable lead part way through the race, but stopped to change cars with Tony Brooks, then in ninth place, because of a persistent misfire. This allowed Jean Behra in a Maserati 250F to take the lead with Mike Hawthorn in the Ferrari in second place. Stirling Moss got up to third place, but still some way behind, when Jean Behra's clutch and flywheel exploded. Mike Hawthorn had the misfortune to run over the debris sustaining a puncture leaving Stirling Moss in the lead which he maintained to the finish - the first win by a British car in a World Championship race. Luigi Musso finished in second place with Mike Hawthorn recovering after his pit stop to finish third and the Maurice Trintignant/Peter Collins Ferrari was fourth. 

The Ferrari 801 was the final development of the Lancia D50 cars handed over to Ferrari at the end of the 1955 season on the demise of Scuderia Lancia. The cars competed in the 1956 season with minor modifications as Lancia-Ferrari D50s but were modified to such an extent for the 1957 season that they were given a new identity as Ferrari 801s.