Next Thursday will be 42 years since the famous Ferrari F1 driver Gilles Villeneuve was killed at the Zolder circuit In Belgium during qualifying for the next day’s Belgian Grand Prix. The images on this page were both taken during practice at Zolder before the fatal accident. This race followed two weeks after the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola where Villeneuve’s teammate Didier Pironi had snatched victory in an apparent violation of a team understanding. Villeneuve felt deeply betrayed and had vowed never to speak with Pironi again. At Zolder he was on his final qualifying lap, attempting ..read more

Following their close win, here are the victors of the Le Mans 24 Hours held on June 11-12, 1954. On the left standing behind the wheel is José Froilán González while on his right is his co-driver Maurice Trintignant. Trintignant has obviously been out of the car for the last stint as he looks recently refreshed, unlike González who until recently has been driving in the rain. Their car was a Ferrari 375 Plus with a motor enlarged to 4.9 liters. Much of this Le Mans was run in wet conditions as seen at the left in Dunlop Curve with Trintignant at the wheel. The winning Ferrari was less than t ..read more

Here is a very special new Ferrari having been prepared for its first race, the Mille Miglia on May 4, 1952. It is now the day before the start at the scrutineering in the Piazza Vittoria in Brescia. This one-of-a-kind Ferrari is a 250 Sport which has a new 3 liter V12 and will score an outstanding win in its first appearance after a long battle with a works Mercedes 300SL. The two Ferrari drivers will be the current Ferrari driving stalwart Giovanni Bracco who will be joined by Alfonso Rolfo whose limited racing experience appears to have been in small Fiats. Bracco had excellent open road a ..read more

On the back of the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring is a famous jump where truly powerful and fast cars can really take off. Here is one such, a Porsche 908 during the 1000km. race on May 19, 1968. This 908 wa being driven by Jo Siffert and Vic Elford. They would be victorious in this famous race, winning over another works-entered Porsche, a 907 with a 2.2 liter motor, by just over three minutes. Even so, the same 907 had been on pole after practice. The other strong competitors were another works 908 which qualified third and two special GT40s, including the Le Mans winner which lined up se ..read more

Here is Nelson Piquet having a bit if a light moment in downtown Long Beach during the United States Grand Prix West on March 30, 1980 with his Brabham BT49. This race was an opportunity for the normally-aspirated Ford-Cosworth-powered Brabhams to make up ground on the turbo Renault RE20 with which René Arnoux had won the previous two races in Brazil and South Africa. In practice Piquet was ahead of the field by as near as may be to a full second ahead of Arnoux’s Renault and Patrick Depailler’s Alfa Romeo 179. Once the race started Piquet was all by himself in the lead, extending it over the ..read more

Here is Lord Selsdon (actually Patrick Peter McEacharn Mitchell-Thomson, the second Baron Selsdon) in his Ferrari 166 MM after winning the Le Mans 24 Hours on June 26, 1949. Selsdon had driven numerous times at Brooklands in the prewar years and had also driven at Le Mans in 1938 and again in 1939, finishing fourth overall. As is well known, Lord Selsdon had an even more experienced Le Mans co-driver, Luigi Chinetti, the winner in 1932 with Raymond Sommer in an Alfa Romeo. Chinetti was also the reason Selsdon had the Ferrari, as Chinetti was a partner in the Paris Ferrari dealership and had h ..read more

Practice is about to start from the pits along the harbor front at Monte Carlo before the Monaco Grand Prix which will take place on May 22,1955. It will be quite a fierce contest with teams from Ferrari, Maserati, Lancia and Mercedes-Benz to take part, among others.  Above we see the Lancia D50 which will be driven by team leader Alberto Ascari. He and his close friend Luigi Villoresi had left Ferrari at the end of Ascari’s Championship season of 1953 to go to Lancia and their newly-designed D50. But the D50 only appeared in late 1954, so 1955 would be its first real season. The Lancia ..read more

This is Juan Manuel Fangio diving a lightweight Maserati 250F at the French Grand Prix on the public road circuit of Reims-Gueux on July 6, 1958. Fangio had earned the World Championship five times with four different manufacturers, most recently with Maserati in 1957. In this photograph he is accelerating out of the Thillois hairpin and onto the start/finish straight at Reims. He would only qualify eighth which told him that his favorite Maserati 250F, even somewhat updated, was no longer going to be competitive. In the race he would finish fourth, but only thanks to the Ferrari of Peter Col ..read more

This is a truly famous Maserati – the 8CM built for Whitney Straight, an American living in England. Here it is seen at a speed trials event at Luton Hoo in England on October 9, 1949 on a course of just about 1.5 miles. The course was over a private road on the Luton Hoo estate which is near Luton in Bedfordshire. Driving this Maserati here is the then current owner Kenneth McAlpine. This Maserati, chassis number 3011, was delivered in 1934 to Whitney Straight for initial testing at Brooklands. The car was thereafter modified by Reid Railton of the Thompson & Taylor workshop at Brookland ..read more

In the years before aerodynamics were “discovered” for racing cars. streamlining was often thought as being the way to go for greater speed. Here are two examples as tried in practice at the French Grand Prix which would take place on July 1, 1956 at the Reims-Gueux circuit. Above is one such trial of a special nose and side sponsons between the front and rear wheels, copied no doubt from those on the Ferrari-Lancia like Juan Fangio’s n. 10 in the background. But these possible improvements are fitted here to a Maserati 250F bearing the race number which will be used on a different 250F in th ..read more