Allison’s Behind the Fences: Maserati

Story and photos by Jeff Allison

The Editor and Jeff Allison thought it might be a nice idea to publish a few of those old racing photos that often collect in shoe boxes. Jeff had a bundle, as he began taking racing and pit photos at the age of 17 in 1959. So here are a few of his, and perhaps our readers might want to contribute some of their old photos, and memories in future editions of VeloceToday.

Apparently I’m the first volunteer, so here goes. I’m not a photographer par excellence like Jesse Alexander, Geoff Goddard or Louis Klemantaski. I was not Bob Jackson, Allen Kuhn or others seen in Veloce Today articles either. I began as a 17-year old over-the-top fan of motor racing, who happened to have a camera – “Behind the Fences”.

I grew up in Orlando, Florida and attended races in the 1950s-1960s at Bartow, Cocoa-Titusville, Daytona, Dunnellon, Geneva, Pensacola and Sebring as a teenager. Probably what kindled my interest more than anything was my first race at the international 12-Hour race at Sebring in 1958. A mere stone’s throw at some 90 miles from Orlando unless you’re traveling with my sports car buddy and his dad in a little English Austin. You know, the one with the script “Austin of England” on the back of an awkward-looking body that only an owner could love! The one with the trafficators for turn signals, which were probably the car’s most defining feature. I think a stone would’ve gotten to Sebring faster than the Austin! Pent up with anticipation, I didn’t think we’d ever get there?

My journey has taken me to many venues around the U.S., France, Monaco and England. For 38 years, from 1959 to 1997, I watched and photographed World Sports Car Championship, Can-Am, Formula 1, Formula 2, IMSA, Interserie, IROC, SCCA, Trans-Am, and many lesser events. Concurrently, I photographed vintage and historic racing events from 1980 to 1999 but that’s another story.

I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed being there and taking them!

Okay, give me a break. I’m 17, and I had to sneak into the race because it was a non-spectator event. Also, I had a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera (120 film with just 6 or 12 exposures on a roll) that I was unfamiliar with and it was the first time I’d photographed a race. As you can see, I was way “behind the fences” with a standard lens – a long way away to photograph moving cars on a track. The photo shows a typical scene at an SCCA regional race on an airport course – a temporary track on the taxiways, runways and support roads defined by upside down fruit baskets, hay or straw bales or rubber cones and the race cars and the participant’s cars and support vehicles mixed together along a long straight nominally defined as the pits. Note there’s nothing to protect the pits from a speeding, out-of-control car! In the center, Fort Lauderdale surgeon Dr. David Lane’s 1998CC 200SI (chassis 2405) is positioned on the grid. He finished second overall and first in the E Modified class in the 30-lap, 105-mile feature race. Lane is the second owner after Lance Reventlow, the Scarab guru.

I was still 17 a month later at Sebring but was now equipped with a Konica 35MM camera that I borrowed from my dad, but he didn’t know it yet. It was much more suitable for photographing a race. My sports car buddy Jack Leete and I had driven down to Sebring from Orlando in Jack’s MG TD after school in time for night practice. We were literally two kids in the candy store after sneaking into the pits! There was always exotica to be seen scattered around the paddock, including this aluminum-bodied, two-door Maserati coupe styled by Touring of Milan. The 3500 designation comes from the 3.5-liter, in-line, six-cylinder, four-cam 220HP engine.

How many Rallye Motors mechanics does it take to change the 12 spark plugs of the six-cylinder, 2992.5cc (182.6ci) 250BHP Maserati motor? The Rallye Motors crew is all-in to get the unpainted Maserati ready for night practice. However, shortly after this photo was taken, 30-year old Detroit automobile salesman and weekend driver Edwin P. Lawrence crashed during practice at the Hairpin Turn and died. Chassis 3060 was first raced by Maserati at the 1956 Twelve Hours of Sebring, but it was involved in an accident and didn’t finish. Showing bad luck, the wrecked car was damaged even more when its trailer was hit by a truck. Repaired by Maserati of America, John Edgar bought it and Carroll Shelby scored two wins in SCCA events before the car went to Bob Bucher and then Rallye Motors, an exotic car dealer, including Maserati, of Glen Cove, New York.

The sun is setting and there’s a flurry of activity in the pits as crews ready the cars for night practice. Equipped with additional lights for the night, the car was owned by Hap Sharp but entered at Sebring by Carroll Shelby Sport Cars Inc. of Dallas, Texas. Pit crew member Frank Lance (in car) and fellow mechanics Red Byron and Bob Schroeder had a busy race tending to electrical problems, a broken half shaft and other maladies that guaranteed a poor finish for drivers Jim Hall and Hap Sharp. In 1958, 2418 was raced by Harry Schell in Cuba and later offered for sale via his brother Philip Schell in Miami. Carroll Shelby Sport Cars Inc. bought the car for Hap Sharp, who raced it extensively.

When I drove through the tunnel and into the vast Daytona International Speedway for the first time, I was awestruck by its immensity and the stark emptiness of the flat, featureless 200-acre infield. It was the first professional and international race for sports cars at the then new (February 1959) Daytona track. Sanctioned by the United States Auto Club, it was listed on the Federation International de l’Automobile’s International Racing Calendar, which helped attract international entries and drivers. The race offered prize money of $20,000. I was way, way “behind the fences” on the 3.81-mile course of 2.5 miles of 31-degree banked oval and 1.31 miles of flat infield road racing course! Jesse E. “Ebb” Rose entered his “Micro Lube Special” (manufacturer of oil and fuel additives in Dallas, Texas) Maserati 300S, powered by a Chevrolet V8, for Carroll Shelby. A broken driveshaft after 98 laps compared to the winner’s 147 laps stopped Shelby’s run in the car. Notice the now iconic scoreboard way off in the distance in the center of the photo, for an idea of the distances and size of the 200-acre track. Sportsman and driver Briggs Cunningham was the original owner of chassis 3052, and it passed to Philip Stewart and then Jack Hinkle before becoming a part of Rose’s Micro-Lube Racing team.

The cars looked small on the 31-degree oval at Daytona for the United States Auto Club Sports Car Championship race. Powered by a bellowing 4477CC, (273 ci), 400BHP Maserati V8, Lloyd Ruby’s “Micro Lube Special” drops down the banking to pass the Antonio von Dory and Roberto Mieres 1498CC Porsche RSK. Ruby had the race well in hand with a lap advantage until a broken oil line caused his and the car’s retirement after 110 laps of the 147-lap race even though Bill Krause and Carroll Shelby took futile shots, despite a deteriorating clutch and the oil leak, at continuing in the car. The little Porsche benefitted from the retirements of the bigger, faster cars and sped to the overall win as approaching darkness curtailed the race at six hours after 901.2KM or 560.01 miles. Rose was the original owner of chassis 4509, taking delivery in 1958 and racing it in SCCA and USAC events into 1960 with Lloyd Ruby after Daytona.

What’s left of the 3.0-liter “Birdcage” Maserati of amateur owner and driver E. D. (Edwin Dennis) Martin after it came to rest in flames after crashing into the Armco at the top of the Daytona banking and spinning wildly down the transition to the infield course. Don Sesslar’s 1.5-liter 1959 Porsche RSK hit the spinning Maserati, rupturing its fuel tank. That’s Sesslar sitting on the grass with the Porsche in the background! Martin got out of the car on his own, ran into the infield and collapsed. He was in hospital for three months with second-degree burns to his face, neck, arms and legs and never raced again.

Ironically, chassis 61.2453 was the first “Birdcage” in the U.S., and this was only its second race. The front section and suspension were ripped away and remarkably the engine remained in the car albeit badly damaged. Serviceable bits of the frame, body section and some components were salvaged from the wreck and sold and re-sold several times. Imagine my surprise when I saw an ad in a magazine for chassis 61.2453 in 1994. It was “reconstructed” in the U. K. and was raced in vintage events in Europe. Does anyone know what’s just on the outside of the Armco behind someone with one foot on the Armco and to the left of a white station wagon – looks like an umbrella on a long pole?

The British media deservedly trashed the 5.2-mile Sebring track as a grand prix circuit, calling Sebring and the track “…a place as dull as ditchwater,” and the entry “…the moteliest collection of also rans that ever graced a grand prix circuit.” It was an ugly track in 1959 – a nightmare for photographers and spectators. In the foreground are the remnants of a crumbling building and in the background are marshals’ vehicles unsafely scattered randomly inside the Hairpin. Roy Salvadori’s Cooper T45 (chassis number unknown) was entered by privateer Tommy Atkins’ High Efficiency Motors and was powered by a 2489CC, (152CI), in-line, four-cylinder Maserati engine of some 240HP. Never a threat, he retired the private entry with a broken transmission on the 24th lap of the 42-lap race.

See lead photo: When Maserati withdrew from racing in 1958, Valerio Colotti, Maserati’s chassis and transmission engineer, completed an unfinished 250F in his shop, Studio Tecnica Meccanica. It would have been chassis 2535 if it had been assigned a 250F chassis number. Colotti produced the Type F415 Tec-Mec, fitted with a 2.5-liter, 265hp Maserati 250F engine in a short, lightweight chassis. It weighed about 240lb less than a 250F. With little testing and development, owner American Gordon Pennington, Jr. bought and entered the car at Sebring with Lucky Casner’s CAMORADI team preparing it and providing race support. Little known Brazilian, wait for it, Frédérico José Carlos Themudo d’Orey, was the driver. After practice, d’Orey suggested (SUNSHINE, SPEED AND A SURPRISE, 2006), “…the best thing to do with the car was to sell it for scrap.” The Tec-Mec lasted but seven laps when d’Orey retired in a cloud of smoke from oil leaks. At the start, the Tec-Mec (#15) is flanked by the Cooper T45-Climax of George Constantine (#16) and the center-seat Formula 2 Porsche RSK (#17) of Harry Blanchard.

The author attended these races and photographed the cars. His personal knowledge and memory of the events was greatly assisted and reinforced by the following books by Maserati historian Willem Oosthoek: his seminal three-book SPORTS CAR RACING IN THE SOUTH – TEXAS TO FLORIDA 1957-1958 (2011), 1959-1960 (2013), 1961-1962, (2014), THE MAGNIFICENT FRONT-ENGINED BIRDCAGES (2009), BIRDCAGE TO SUPERCAGE (2004) and MASERATI 450S – THE FASTEST SPORTS CAR OF THE 50’S (2005).