Mike Hawthorn

This is a photo my brother took in the paddock at the Gold Cup meeting at Oulton Park in September 1955.

It's Mike Hawthorn who drove one of Ferrari's recently acquired Lancia D50s in the Gold Cup race, finishing in second place to Stirling Moss in his Maserati 250F. Mike Hawthorn had won the Le Mans 24 Hour race earlier that year following the dreadful accident when Pierre Levegh and 83 spectators were killed when his Mercedes Benz 300SLR crashed into the crowd in the grandstand opposite the pits after colliding with Lance Macklin's Austin Healey 100S. In 1958 Mike Hawthorn won the World Drivers' Championship despite only winning one race out of the 10 contested but finished in second place in 5 races, whilst Stirling Moss won 4 races but only finished in second place in the Championship - the only other points he won were for a solitary second place. At this Gold Cup meeting Mike Hawthorn's team mate Eugenio Castellotti finished in seventh place and my brother took a photo of his car returning to the paddock after the race with the nose of Mike Hawthorn's car showing just behind it.

Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn

I took this rather fuzzy photograph with a Kodak Brownie 127 camera in the paddock during practice for the British Grand Prix at Aintree in July 1957.

It's Stirling Moss who was part of the Vanwall team, and Mike Hawthorn who drove a Ferrari 801 for the Scuderia Ferrari team. Stirling Moss qualified his Vanwall in pole position on the grid with team mate Tony Brooks also on the front row, the two Vanwalls sandwiching Jean Behra's Maserati 250F. Mike Hawthorn was on the second row in fifth place with the Ferrari 801, which was the final evolution of the D50 cars that Ferrari had inherited from Lancia towards the end of the 1955 season. Eventual World Drivers' Championship winner (for the fourth consecutive season) Juan Fangio was next to Mike Hawthorn in fourth position. Stirling Moss led the 90 lap race in the early stages, pulling away from Jean Behra for about 20 laps, but his car then developed a misfire and after two quick pit stops to try to rectify the problem Tony Brooks, having a painful drive following an accident at Le Mans, was flagged into the pits for Stirling Moss to take over his car, then in fifth place, but dropping to ninth after the change-over. Stirling Moss began to catch the cars in front of him, getting up to fourth place behind Jean Behra, Mike Hawthorn and Stewart Lewis-Evans in the third Vanwall by lap 69 when everything suddenly changed. Coming down the Railway Straight towards the Melling Crossing the clutch in Jean Behra's Maserati exploded leaving him to roll round to the pits to retire. As Mike Hawthorn came to pass the stricken Maserati one of his tyres punctured on the debris left by the broken clutch and he had to slow down to stop at the pits for a wheel change. Stuart Lewis-Evans quickly caught and passed the Ferrari, but almost immediately was passed by Stirling Moss to take the lead in the race. So at the end of the lap which he had started in fourth place with a hope of maybe catching the leader by the end of the race Stirling Moss crossed the line in the lead, which he held to the end of the race. Luigi Musso in a Ferrari 801 was second and Mike Hawthorn finished in third place - all the other finishers had been lapped by those three cars.

Jaguar D-Type

This car was in the paddock at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2004 promoting a raffle to raise funds to finance a statue to Mike Hawthorn and 'Lofty' England at Goodwood.

'Lofty' England was the manager of the Jaguar team when they won the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1955 with a Jaguar D-Type driven by Mike Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb. The car above is a Jaguar D-Type with the same registration and race numbers as the car which won that race and looks identical to that car in every way, except for the rather spindly-looking rear view mirror. It apparently has the chassis number of the Le Mans winning car, XKD505, but like the proverbial 50-year old hammer that's had four new handles and 2 new heads bits and pieces of the car have been swapped around and renewed in the intervening years. It looks like the real thing though, and that's the main thing. The statue was commissioned, and eventually unveiled on 17 September 2005.

Lancia Aurelia B20 GT

This car was in the Paddock at the VSCC's Hawthorn Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in June 2008.

It's a 1954 Lancia Aurelia B20 GT and I took the photograph because it's a car that you don't see very often, even at historic race meetings. It has a 2½ litre V6 engine, and what's particularly special about this one is that it was once owned by the 1958 World Champion Mike Hawthorn himself. You can read about Mike and the car in this Mike Hawthorn tribute site.

Mike Hawthorn

This is a photograph taken at Oulton Park at, I think, the British Empire Trophy meeting in April 1956. Not a terribly good photograph, and taken with a Kodak Brownie 127.

It's Mike Hawthorn, destined to become England's first Formula 1 World Champion in 1958 at the wheel of a Ferrari Dino 246. At this British Empire Trophy race he drove a Lotus Eleven and finished in fourth place behind the winner Stirling Moss in a Cooper T39 Bobtail with Colin Chapman in a Lotus Eleven in second place and Roy Salvadori in a Cooper T39 Bobtail in third place.

Lancia D50

When Lancia pulled out of racing in the middle of the 1955 racing season due to financial pressures the team of D50 Formula 1 cars was passed over to Ferrari. At the time their appearance at the Gold Cup race at Oulton Park in September 1955 they were still badged as Lancias and it seemed that Ferrari had not yet carried out any modifications to the cars. This photograph, taken with a Kodak Brownie 127 camera by my brother, shows the two cars returning to the paddock at the end of the race.

This is Eugenio Castellotti's car, which finished in 7th place, and behind it is Mike Hawthorn's car which finished second in the race to the Maserati 250F of Stirling Moss.

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.