1959 Tec-Mec F415

This car competed in the Maserati UK Race for Pre 1961 Grand Prix Cars at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000 and is pictured here leaving the pit lane during the morning qualifying session.

Shown in the programme of the event as a TecMec it's 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 Silverstone meeting and raced it successfully before eventually passing the car on to Barry Wood.

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.

Tec-Mec Maserati F415

This was one of the competitors in the Ron Flockhart Memorial Trophy Race for Pre 61 Racing Cars at the VSCC's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting at Donington Park in May 2001.

It's the 1959 Tec-Mec F415, the last evolution of the Maserati 250F which had begun with the start of the 2½ litre F1 Formula in 1954. The car only competed in one World Championship race - the 1959 USA Grand Prix - retiring very early in that race, and its full history was related by Bonhams when it was offered for auction in 2003. The car was entered for this Donington Park race in 2001 by Barrie Baxter.

On 23 July 2015 I showed three photographs of the car that I'd taken over a period of some 36 years.

Tec-Mec Maserati

The Maserati 250F was first raced in 1954, evolving from the earlier A6GCM model, and was used by the Officine Alfieri Maserati team until 1957, Juan Fangio winning the World Championship in that year, after which Maserati pulled out of racing for financial reasons. The 250F continued to race in the hands of private entrants until the end of the 1960 season when the 2½ litres formula ended. In 1958 the Tec-Mec company was founded by former Maserati designer Valerio Colotti who built an updated version of the Maserati 250F, designated the F415, which only competed in one World Championship Grand Prix, the 1959 United States GP, where it retired after only 6 laps.

The car has competed since then in historic car race meetings, and for a time it was also part of the Donington Collection in the museum at the Donington Park racecourse.

Here's the car at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in 1969

In October 1989 it was in the museum collection at Donington Park

In 2005 it took part in the SeeRed race meeting at Donington Park