500cc Formula 3 cars at Donington Park

I took this photograph at McLeans Corner during the 5 lap Scratch Race for Formula 3 Racing Cars at the VSCC's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in May 2011.

Leading is the 1952 Cooper Mk VI of George Shackleton with close behind on the right the 1954 Cooper Mk VIII of Nigel Challis. The red car, mostly hidden by George Shackleton's Cooper, is the 1955 Petty F3 car of David Lecoq, and behind that is the yellow 1952 Kieft CK52 of Rodney Delves. Bringing up the rear in this photograph is the blue 1955 Cousy No2 of John Jones. There's a thriving 500 Owners Association with details of lots of the cars that have competed in 500cc racing since it started in 1946.

On 16 February 2016 I showed photographs of several of the 500cc cars that I had taken in the paddock at this meeting.

1953 HWM Jaguar

This car took part in the HGPCA Sports Car Race at the Christie's International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1992.

It's the 1953 HWM Jaguar of Clive Rides, and he's waiting here in the paddock to go out on the track for the morning practice session. John Heath and George Abecassis, partners at Hersham and Walton Motors, had built Alta powered cars which they raced in the 1948 and 1949 seasons, then for the 1950 season they built three Alta powered cars that could be adapted to race in both Formula 2 and sports car events and with which they could spend the season travelling from race to race on the continent. That season they took part in 20 international events over 27 weeks commuting backwards and forwards to run their garage whilst the team took the cars to the next meeting and prepared them for racing. Other drivers were taken on to drive the third car, including a 20 year old Stirling Moss who had previously only raced a 500cc F3 Cooper. Despite their lack of power compared to the other cars they enjoyed a relatively successful season. For the 1951 season the HWMs became proper F2 single seaters and they continued their European exploits over the next three years with the help of drivers such as Peter Collins, Harry Schell and Paul Frère. In 1953 John Heath and George Abecassis fitted a Jaguar engine to a modified HWM F2 chassis and gave it an all-enveloping two-seater body to compete in sports car racing. Originally given the registration number HWM 1 it was later given the number YPG 3 and is the car shown in the photograph above. This car was driven by George Abecassis in the 1954 Mille Miglia race but failed to finish - his co-driver was motoring journalist Denis Jenkinson, who was co-driver for Stirling Moss in the winning Mercedes-Benz 300SLR the following year. Several more sports car were built by HWM, some of which are still active in historic racing, but the HWM team lost most of its impetus with the death of John Heath in the 1956 Mille Miglia.

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.

1924 Vauxhall 30/98 OE

This car competed in two races, including the 2-hour long VSCC Team Relay race, at the Vintage Sports Car Club's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in May 2011.

It's the 1924 Vauxhall 30/98 OE of Phil Dobbin and he shared the driving in the 'Vaguely Vauxhall' team in the relay race with three other Vauxhall 30/98s. The 30/98 OE was an updated version of the 30/98 E with overhead valves and a detachable cylinder head instead of the side-valves and fixed cylinder head of the earlier car. A shorter stroke gave the OE an engine capacity was 4,224cc instead of the E's 4,525cc.

Friday's Ferrari

This was one of the Ferraris that attended the Ferrari Racing Days meeting at Silverstone in September 2017.

It's a 2006 Ferrari F430 Spider which has a 4,308cc F136 E four-cam V8 engine and was in production from 2004 to 2009.

1969 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTV

This car took part in the HSCC Historic Roadsports Championship Race at the Gold Cup meeting at Oulton Park in August 2005.

It's Matthew Newman's 1969 Alfa Romeo Giulia GTV which has a 1,750cc 4-cylinder inline twin-cam engine, and the car was produced from 1967 to 1977.

1934 MG K3

This car competed in the Pre-War MGs race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2007.

It's a 1934 MG K3, and the programme of the event shows that it was entered by Peter Gregory and driven in the race by Brandon Smith-Hilliard. It looks remarkably like the car sold by Sotheby's at an auction in 2013 for €408,800, but the auction description says that was a 1933 car with an engine of 1,086cc whereas the programme at the Donington Park meeting says that this is a 1934 vehicle and the capacity of the engine is 1,286cc. Peter Gregory apparently produced a number of MG K3 replicas so this is possibly another of his efforts with a larger engine.