1955 Maserati 250F

The Vintage Sports Car Club's  SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005 featured the Maserati marque and in particular the Maserati 250F, and at from time to time during the meeting various of the Maseratis that were present were displayed in a marquee in the paddock. This is a photograph I took of a few of the cars that were there one of the times I walked through the marquee.

Number 237 is the 1955 Maserati 250F of Michael Hinderer, chassis #2516, a car that was mainly campaigned for the works team in 1955 by Jean Behra. At the end of that season it was sold to Australian Reg Hunt who raced it successfully for several years and it then passed through the hands of other Australian drivers before being acquired by Cameron Millar in the 1960s. Subsequent owners were Anthony Mayman, who allowed a wide range of friends to race the car, and Thomas Bscher before it ended up with Michael Hinderer. Behind that car is Maserati 250F #2515 which was then owned by Tom Wheatcroft, the owner of the Donington Park race circuit and museum. Originally a Maserati team car, it was driven mainly by Roberto Mieres in the 1955 season then by Chico Landi and Gerino Gerini in two races in Argentina at the start of the 1956 season. It was then sold to Scuderia Guastalla for the remainder of the 1956 season before being bought by Ottorino Volonterio who contested Grand Prix races with it till the end of the 1959 season, driving it himself on two occasions, but mainly using other drivers. At the end of the 1959 season he retired the car from racing, but kept it until selling it in 1965 to Tom Wheatcroft. Beyond that is a Maserati 300S sports car that I've been unable to identify, and apparently just leaving the marquee is the 1951 Maserati A6GCM of Julia de Baldanza.

1960 Porsche 718

 I took this photograph at Tom Wheatcroft's Donington Park Museum in May 1989.

It's a 1960 Porsche 718/2, chassis 202, formerly campaigned by Dutch driver Carel Godin de Beaufort and is finished in the orange Dutch racing colours. A book printed in 1974 giving details of many of the cars in the collection says this about the Porsche (which is now in the Porsche Prototyp Museum in Hamburg):

The Porsche 718

Germany's Challenger

French driver Jean Behra began Porsche's single-seater venture into Formula 2 in 1958. He had a central-seat version of the RSK sports car built up and it proved very successful. For 1959 the Stuttgart works produced 'proper' singe-seater cars, with similar air-cooled flat-four engines and trailing-link torsion bar front suspension, and when the 1½ litre Formula 1 came into operation in 1961 they were well prepared to enter Grand Prix racing for the first time.

Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier drove the cars, which proved quite competitive, and when the new eight-cylinder was introduced for 1962 the old cars were sold. Two of them went to the giant Dutchman, Count Carel Godin de Beaufort, and he enjoyed himself hugely as one of that rare breed of private owner-drivers in Formula 1. He suffered a fatal accident in one of the obsolete old Porsches during practice for the 1964 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring. He was, as ever, trying as hard as he could to reach a qualifying time, and the loss of this jovial, larger than life character took some much-needed colour from the Grand Prix scene.

PORSCHE 718

Engine: 180° 4-Cyls; 2VPC; 2OHC; Air-cooled; 85mm x 66mm, 1498cc; c. 155bhp/7500rpm.

Chassis: Tubular spaceframe.

Suspension: IFS by trailing arms and TBs/IRS by wishbones and CSp.

Brakes: Discs.

On 25 February 2019 I showed a photograph of Carel Godin de Beaufort driving the second of the two Porsche 718/2 cars that he bought, chassis 201, at Aintree during practice for the 1962 British Grand Prix.

Donington Hall

I took this photograph from the inside of the Donington Park Circuit looking across a point just before the Old Hairpin corner during what looks looks the Britcar race at the Ferrari & Maserati Festival of Racing meeting in May 2003.

It's Donington Hall, and the racing circuit is situated in what was once part of the grounds of the Hall. The Hall was built in the late eighteenth century for Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira, later created Marquess of Hastings and it remained in his family (one of whom was created Baron Donington in 1870) until 1901 when it was sold to Frederick Grafton, son of Lord Grafton of Stapleford Park. He never lived at the Hall and it was maintained by John Gillies Shields, the late Lord Donington's land agent, Frederick Grafton occasionally visiting for sporting and social purposes. During the First World War the Hall and grounds were transformed into a prisoner of war camp for German officers, then in 1929 the Hall was put up for sale again and bought by the land agent, John Gillies Shields. In 1931 the owner was approached by Fred Craner, a former motorcycle racer and now secretary of the Derby & District Motor Club asking to be allowed to use the roads of the Estate to create a racing circuit. This was agreed, and over the next few years the circuit was gradually improved, the first Grand Prix taking place there in 1935. It gained international prestige in 1937 and 1938 when the German Auto Union and Mercedes Benz teams took part in the Grand Prix, Auto Union's Berndt Rosemeyer and Tazio Nuvolari winning those races. On the outbreak of the Second World War the Estate was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and the Park was turned into a vehicle storage depot. It was 1956 before the Estate was handed back to the grandson of the pre-war owner, Major John Gillies Shields, who rented out parts of the Estate as farm land and opened the Hall to refugees from the Hungarian Revolution. In 1971 Tom Wheatcroft bought part of the Estate that included the motor racing circuit, rebuilding the track and moving his collection of grand prix cars to a museum that became known as the Donington Grand Prix Exhibition. When the Ministry of Defence occupied Donington Park a Royal Air Force airfield was built on land adjacent to the racing circuit and it was decommissioned in 1946. In 1964 the site was purchased by a consortium of local government authorities and after development work was opened as East Midlands Airport in 1965. In 1976 British Midland Airways bought Donington Hall, renovating it and using it as their headquarters from 1982. British Midlands Airways later became BMI and was taken over in 2009 by Lufthansa who sold it in turn to International Airlines Group in 2012 who quickly announced that many of the staff at Donington Hall were to be laid off. Donington Hall was then sold to the Norton Motorcycle Company who hand-build bikes at the nearby Hastings House and they now use Donington Hall as an events venue.

1954 Maserati 250F

This car took part in a paddock display and track demonstration runs by various cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005 which paid tribute to Maserati racing cars, and in particular the 250F.

This is the 1954 Maserati 250F, chassis #2515, that was for a long time one of the exhibits in Tom Wheatcroft's museum at the Donington Park circuit. Originally a Maserati team car, it was driven mainly by Roberto Mieres in the 1955 season then by Chico Landi and Gerino Gerini in two races in Argentina at the start of the 1956 season. It was then sold to Scuderia Guastalla for the remainder of the 1956 season before being bought by Ottorino Volonterio who contested Grand Prix races with it till the end of the 1959 season, driving it himself on two occasions, but mainly using other drivers. At the end of the 1959 season he retired the car from racing, but kept it until selling it in 1965 to Tom Wheatcroft.

Here's the car at McLean’s corner during one of the demonstration runs.

On 16 May 2016 I showed a photograph I took in the paddock at Aintree during practice for the 1959 British Grand Prix where the car was entered by Scuderia Centro Sud and driven by Fritz d'Orey.

Donington Grand Prix Collection

Tom Wheatcroft was born close to the Donington Park racing circuit and in his youth he attended the Donington Park Grand Prix races in 1937 and 1938 where the German Mercedes Benz and Auto Union cars sparked his love of motor sport which stayed with him the whole of his life. After serving as a tank driver in the Second World War he became involved in the construction industry and launched his own successful building company in 1946. In 1964 he bought his first racing car, a 1949 Ferrari 125 Grand Prix car formerly owned by Peter Whitehead, and this was the start of a collection that he added to over the next few years. In 1971 he bought a large part of the Donington Park estate which included the pre-war racing circuit, and which had been used by the army as a supply depot during the war. He moved his growing car collection to the estate and over the next six years rebuilt the circuit, opening it for racing again in 1977. In the meantime work had started on a building which was to become a museum for his cars, and this opened to the public in 1973. Tom Wheatcroft died in 2009 and his son Kevin inherited the collection, and in 2017 Motor Sport Vision took over the operation of Donington Park but the following year decided the museum should close 'as it did not fit into their business plan'. The museum closed on 5 November 2018.

The last time I visited the museum was in September 2014 and here are some of the photographs I took that day.

Outside the entrance was this tribute to Juan Manuel Fangio listing the Grand Prix victories during his career in which he won five World Drivers' Championships. Alongside him is Ayrton Senna and a list of the 41 Grand Prix victories which brought him three World Drivers' Championships. In what is widely said to be his greatest race he won the 1993 European Grand Prix on a rain-soaked Donington Park circuit, dropping to fifth place at the start before taking the lead before the end of the first lap.

Donington Park had the largest number of exhibits of any motor sport museum, including a large number of Williams Grand Prix  cars.....

…..and an equally impressive display of McLarens.

The Donington Park museum also had a comprehensive display of Vanwall Grand Prix cars.

1955 Lancia D50

This car took part in 'A Demonstration of Italian Racing Cars' at the Vintage Sports Car Club's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005.

It's a 1955 2½ litre V8 Lancia D50 recreation, at that time owned by Tom Wheatcroft and kept in his museum at Donington Park. Following the withdrawal of the Lancia team from racing at the end of the 1955 season all the D50 cars and spares were handed over to Ferrari with the exception of one car which went to the Fiat Museum and one which went to the Biscaretti Museum. Ferrari raced the cars as Lancia-Ferraris in the 1956 season with some modifications and Juan Fangio won the World Championship that season. For the 1957 season the cars were modified to such an extent that it was redesignated as a Ferrari 801, but didn't enjoy any great success. At the end of the 1957 season with the introduction of the Ferrari 246 F1 car (with which Mike Hawthorn won the 1958 World Championship title) the cars were broken up and the parts stored at the Ferrari factory. From the 1990s these parts have been used to recreate, I understand, seven examples of the car, including one to the specification of the 1956 Lancia-Ferrari. In this photograph the car is being driven in one of the demonstration runs by Kevin Wheatcroft, Tom Wheatcroft's son.

Maserati 8CM

Three weeks ago I featured a 1955 Lancia D50 recreation and showed a photograph of the car being driven in a demonstration at the 2005 SeeRed meeting at Donington Park by Kevin Wheatcroft. Here's another photograph from that demonstration run.

The car on the right is Kevin Wheatcroft again in the Lancia, but leading is his father, the late Tom Wheatcroft, the man who resurrected the Donington Park circuit in the 1970s and founded the Donington Grand Prix Collection museum. Tom is driving the museum's 1934 Maserati 8CM, chassis #3018, that was driven by Tazio Nuvolari in the 1934 racing season. The 8CM had a supercharged 2,991cc straight-8 engine but after some success in the 1933 season it was outclassed by the Alfa Romeo, Mercedes Benz and Auto Union cars in 1934.

Mercedes-Benz W154

I recently showed a photograph of a 1939 Mercedes-Benz W154 in the museum at Donington Park where it was on display for a while after being restored in Tom Wheatcroft's workshops there for the National Technical Museum of Prague. On 13 October 2015 I showed photographs of another of these cars that Mercedes-Benz had taken to Donington Park in 2008 to make some demonstration runs during the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting. Here are three more photographs of the car I took at that meeting.

The photographs above and below were taken in the pit garage where the car was being prepared for the demonstration runs.

Here's Tony Dron at Redgate corner during one of the demonstration runs.

Mercedes Benz W154

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in May 1989.

It's a 1939 Mercedes Benz W154, sometimes known as a W163 though it's actually a 1938 W154 with the M154 engine replaced by the 1939 M163 unit.

During the Second World War Mercedes Benz had stored its racing cars in and around the factory at Unterturkheim, but later in the war when the allied bombing became more of a threat many of the cars were taken to other, less targeted places for safety. They were usually stored in pairs and this car, chassis W154/10, together with W154/9, was walled up in the workshops of Czech pre-war racing driver Antonin Vitvar in Stará Paka. After the war W154/9 ended up in the USA and W154/10 was handed over to the National Technical Museum of Prague. Many years later the car was sent to Tom Wheatcroft's workshops at Donington Park for restoration and then had a period on loan at the Museum.

Friday's Ferrari

Here's a photograph I took of a Ferrari at the Donington Park museum in March 1996, though the flash on the camera doesn't seem to have been terribly effective.

It's a 1949 Ferrari 125, the car formerly owned and driven by Peter Whitehead and was the car that started Tom Wheatcroft's Donington Grand Prix Collection. I showed better photographs of the car on 7 February 2014 that I'd taken on other visits to the museum. The car behind the Ferrari is a Cooper F3 car that had been campaigned by Lewis (known as 'Pop') Lewis-Evans in the 1950s. 'Pop' Lewis-Evans was the father of Stuart Lewis-Evans who drove for the Vanwall team in 1957 and 1958 and who died following an accident in the Moroccan Grand Prix, the last race of the season, in 1958.

Friday's Ferrari

This photograph taken at the Donington Grand Prix Collection (now known as the Donington Grand Prix Exhibition) in May 1989 is of a 1949 Ferrari 125. The car (serial number 114), once owned by Peter Whitehead, was bought by Tom Wheatcroft in 1964 and was the first of what was to become an extensive collection of Grand Prix machinery, eventually being opened to the public in 1973.

This is another photograph of the car, taken in October 1989