1939 Maserati 4CL

This car competed in the Maserati UK Race for Pre 1952 Grand Prix Cars at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000.

It's Norbert Schmitz-Koep's 1939 Maserati 4CL, chassis #1566, which was designed for Voiturette racing and had a supercharged 1,491cc straight-4 engine. The 4CL had some success in its first season until racing was curtailed by the Second World War, and dominated racing in the years immediately following the war in the hands of drivers such as Raymond Sommer, Tazio Nuvolari and Luigi Villoresi, until the arrival of the Alfa Romeo 158. The green car next to the Maserati is Dick Skipworth's ERA R3A, which was driven that day by Barrie Williams.

1959 Tec-Mec F415

This car competed in the Hawthorn Memorial Race at the VSCC's Boulogne and Hawthorn Trophies race meeting at Oulton Park in June 2006.

Shown in the programme of the event as a Technica Mechanica it's better known as the 1959 Tec-Mec F415 designed by Valerio Colotti as a lightweight version of the Maserati 250F. Colotti was employed by Maserati and was working on the design when Maserati pulled out of racing at the end of the 1958 season. He set up his own company, Studio Tecnica Meccanica, and Italian racing driver Giorgio Scarlatti encouraged him to continue with this work and bought shares in the company. American Gordon Pennington then persuaded Scarlatti to sell him the shares and arranged for Camoradi's Lucky Casner to run the team for what had now become Tec-Mec Automobili. When finished the car was entered for the 1959 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and Brazilian driver Fritz d'Orey was chosen to drive it. The car had clearly not gone through sufficient testing and Fritz d'Orey only qualified it in seventeenth place. It only lasted for six laps in the race before it retired with a serious oil leak and that turned out to be the only World Championship appearance by the car. It lingered in a Miami garage until 1967 when it was acquired by Tom Wheatcroft who brought the car back into working order and it was in his museum at Donington Park for many years. It was eventually sold to Barrie Baxter who drove the car at this Oulton Park meeting and raced it successfully before eventually passing the car on to Barry Wood.

Here's Barrie Baxter at Britten's chicane during the race followed by Duncan Ricketts in 'Mac' Hulbert's ERA R4D and Matt Gillies in Rodney Smith's ERA R3A. Behind them are the Kurtis Indy Roadster of Stuart Harper and the Cooper Bristol MkII of either Mary Grant-Jonkers or Paul Grant, who drove two identical cars in the race.

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.

ERA R3A

This car competed in the Hawthorn Memorial and Spanish Trophy Race at the VSCC's meeting at Oulton Park in May 2005.

It's the 2-litre supercharged 1934 ERA R3A of Rodney Smith, and was driven in the race by Mark Gillies.

Here's Mark Gillies during the race going underneath the footbridge at Clay Hill.

On 21 August 2013 I showed photographs of Mark Gillies and R3A at Donington Park in 2008.

ERA

Here's a photograph of a car being made ready to run in the Historic Seaman Race at the VSCC's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in June 2008.

It's Duncan Ricketts' 1938 ERA E-Type, GP1, and behind it is the ERA R3A that Mark Gillies drove in the same race. You can read about the ERA cars on the ERA Club website.

ERA R3A

I've mentioned before that there's a comprehensive record of all the ERA cars on this website. The car featured today is ERA R3A at the VSCC SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in June 2008.

This is the car in the paddock and behind it you can see another ERA, the ERA E-Type GP1

Here is the car in the pit lane going out for a practice run driven by Mark Gillies - the owner of the car is Mrs M B Smith as can be seen in this list of owners of the car listed on the ERA Club website:

R3A

The Works 1934 to 1936
L G Fontes 1936
A N Black & T H Wisdom 1936 to 1937
C E C Martin 1937 to 1938
J H Bartlett 1938
R Hesketh 1938 to 1944
B Beall 1944 to 1957
G Henderson 1957 to 1965
P R Massey 1965 to 1967
H F Moffatt & N M Arnold-Forster 1967 to 1988
C A Mann 1988 to 1990
T Takahashi 1990 to 1998
R T Skipworth 1998 to 2003
R Smith 2003 to 2007
Mrs M B Smith 2007 to date