Ferrari 500 F2 with it's owner-driver Bobby Baird (the bespectacled figure in the dark overalls and tweed jacket on the left).
Bobby Baird was an Irish newspaper propriator who owned a lot of MGs before and after WW2 and modofied many of them beyond recognition. He later built a car based on a Maserati chassis called the Griffin (which we have a photo of in our store) and then bought this Ferrari F2 car which he raced untill his death in a track accident in about 1955, at which ppoint it had been uprated to 3.5 litre 625 spec.
The Ferrari 500 was the dominant car of the 1952-53 season winning back to back world titles for Ascari and most of the grands prix . It was also more or less the last customer car that Ferrari built for Grands prix racing and several of them regularly appeared alongside the works including Bobby Baird's, Reg Parnell's and Rudi Fischer's.
On the right of the photo is the F2 FrazerNash with it's driver Ken Wharton with his foot on the rear wheel. This was a car built especially for Wharton but which didn't achieve much success against the more popular Cooper Bristols and Connaught A Types in British events.
10x8 inch (254x203mm)
