Solved NIC#106 - Cooper-Ferrari V12 of Chris Lawrence

[nicanary]

What is this car? Tell me the year, make and model of chassis, and the source of the engine.

[AppyKing]

is it a Cooper F1 car?

[nicanary]

is it a Cooper F1 car?

Yes, it is a Cooper. But I need a lot more from you.

[AppyKing]

yes, I see that and I'm working on it it must be between 1963 and 1965?

[AppyKing]

I can't get to the bottom of this one without looking up stuff I don't know anything about... sadly...

[nicanary]

I can't get to the bottom of this one without looking up stuff I don't know anything about... sadly...

Keep looking - the internet holds the answer to everything if you have the patience. The chassis dates, as you say, from between 1963 and 1965, but the photo was taken in a different year.

[nicanary]

Experts? Easy one.

[shamrock]

chris lawerence in the ferrari engined coper F1 car at Brands Hatch

[nicanary]

chris lawerence in the ferrari engined coper F1 car at Brands Hatch

Yes, of course it is. The Rookies were asleep. But there is misinformation on the web - what chassis number is it? Locked for you.

(oh PS, where did the engine come from, and what year is it?)

[shamrock]

T73

[nicanary]

T73

You've done enough for the point. Well done.

It is indeed Chris Lawrence in the car built by J A Pearce Engineering to contest selected races in the 1966 "Return to Power" F1 season. Suitable cars were few and far between, and the team reckoned, I suspect, that they could obtain entries and thus starting money by "filling" the grid.

The website for the company claims that the car is the one driven by Bruce McLaren to victory in the 1964 Monaco GP - utter rubbish as Graham Hill won that year. It is in fact (according to the usually infallible Doug Nye) chassis T73-F1-2-64, the car driven for most of the season by Phil Hill with very little success. Into this they shoehorned what they thought was the engine from a Ferrari GTO, which they had bought from Chris Kerrison, and which was fitted beforehand in his Drogo-bodied  Ferrari GT road/race car. What they did not realise is that Kerrison's car was in fact a rebodied 250GT SWB, and produced considerably less horsepower than they expected.

The photo is taken, as you said, at Brands Hatch during the 1966 British GP.

(The car was destroyed in the infamous "Pearce transporter fire" - very rum do, that. Best say no more....)
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