My Summer “Vacation”

This past Summer, I travelled to the United Kingdom and Belgium to attend events and sketch what I found interesting.

I’ve been working at refining the idea of “live” sketching, where I sketch an interesting motorized vehicle on-the-spot, no matter what the context or situation.

The most interesting aspect of it is the not-knowing what will happen next, and be able to adapt to any changes, whatever they may be.

There are always spectators who have questions, or who want to chat, which I very much appreciate; it’s comforting as an artist to have so many people interested in what you do. There are also the professional photo-journalists who look for that different image to make their story-telling more unique.

There are the changing weather conditions (especially in the UK and Belgium!); wind, rain, the movement of the sun … they all impact the final result.

Other things that impact the art, or more accurately, the artist, are the noises of racing engines being tuned, exhaust fumes that burn the eyes, flames coming out the exhaust pipes, or even the race car being moved.

Finally, there is the time crunch of trying to get 2 artworks done in one day, for which I don’t always have much control over.

Sometimes the car is racing within the 2 hours, so there is a minimum amount of the art-piece that needs to be finished. For a land speed record car at the Brooklands Reunion, I had to reset up 3 or 4 times to get the artwork finally finished.

Below are the 16 artworks that I created at these 5 events … my summer “Vacation” …

Silverstone Classic




Brooklands Reunion



Goodwood Revival





Spa Historic 6 Hours



Sywell Classic Pistons & Props

The 1957 Cuban Grand Prix

Though it was called the Cuban “Grand Prix”, the race series was for sports cars.

It ran for 1957 and 1958 under the Battista Government. For 1959, it was not held as the Battista Regime collapsed and was taken over by Fidel Castro’s Revolutionary Government.

In that first year, Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss raced team Maserati 300s’.


Fangio chats with his mechanic pre-race
Pen&ink and watercolour pencils on watercolour paper © Paul Chenard 2014

Fangio always had a great rapport with his mechanics, showing them respect and loyalty. He gave them 10% of his winnings to show it, and in return, they would return that loyalty, and worked hard making sure his car would last the race.

With his well-sorted Maserati, he easily won the 1957 race.

Before the 1958 race, Fangio was kidnapped by Castro supporters as to embarrass the Battista Government, but was released unharmed soon after the checkered flag fell, with Moss winning in a Ferrari 335 S.

The race returned one last time in 1960, but by then the great Fangio had retired from racing.

Bira the racing Prince

Born in 1914, Birabongse Bhanudej was a Grand Prix and Formula 1 racecar driver from Siam (now Thailand).

Better known as Prince Bira, or his racing name "B. Bira", he raced a Riley, Maseratis, Connaughts, Gordinis, but is best known for successfully racing E.R.A.s.

After his formal education in the United Kingdom, he raced with his cousin Prince Chula Chakrabongse's White Mouse Racing team. In 1935-36, the team started acquiring E.R.A.s, and Bira gave a name to each; first was the R2B "Romulus", followed by R5B "Remus", and lastly, R12B "Hanuman".
Bira racing Romulus

14.5"x 11" limited edition print

© Paul Chenard 2011

I did this sketch on the outside of the package of my new book and an original art-piece that a client had ordered. He owns the car in the sketch, so I thought I'd thank him with a sketch of it. Couriers also take much better care with the package when I do that.

Prince Bira found most success racing "Romulus" throughout 1936, with 3 wins, including Monaco and Brooklands, and a second and third place finish.

Post-war, Bira won the Grand Prix des Frontières on the Chimay road circuit in 1954, racing a Maserati 250F and the New Zealand Grand Prix in 1955. He retired at the end of the 1955 season.

Prince Bira died of heart failure in London in 1985 at the age of 71.

Juan Manuel Fangio 1911-1995

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth 
of Juan Manuel Fangio.

Limited edition archival Giclee print
Edition of 100 - Signed/numbered - 11"x 17" (28cm x 43cm)
$125 USD plus shipping© Paul Chenard 2011

Many, including myself, consider this Argentinian racer as the greatest driver of the post-war era.

Born in Balcarce in 1911 to Italian immigrants, Fangio started racing in 1934, driving a Ford Model A that he built. He later raced long-distance road races driving a Chevrolet to success, becoming Argentine National Champion in 1940 and 1941.

In 1948, he went racing in Europe, capturing a few wins, and the notice of the Grand Prix teams. He was hired by Alfa Romeo in 1950, and finished 2nd in the Championship. In 1951, he won his first of five Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championships, again driving for Alfa Romeo. He finished 2nd again in 1953 with Maserati.

In 1953, he also won the La Carrera Panamericana, driving a Lancia D24.

In 1954, he started with Maserati, winning two races, then switched to Mercedes, and won four more races, taking his second Championship.

He won again in 1955, driving for Mercedes, in 1956, driving for Ferrari , and in 1957, driving again with Maserati.

His most famous win came in the 1957 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, where he beat a strong Ferrari opposition, driving the famous Maserati 250F. At the same time, he established a new track record.

He retired to Argentina in 1958 at the age of 47. He made countless guest appearances at many automotive events worldwide, and even appeared as himself in John Frankenheimer’s film “Grand Prix”.

The Juan Manuel Fangio Museum opened in Balcarce in 1986. This fine gentleman racer died in 1995 in Buenos Aires at the age of 84.

1934 Grand Prix de Nice

In the beautiful coastal setting of Nice, France, the 1934 Grand Prix was vaguely reminiscent of Monaco.

The racers started along the Quai des États-Unis, with the waterfront and grandstands to their left, and the cityscape and pits to their right.

1934 Grand Prix Season – Grand Prix de Nice – Alfa Romeo P3Limited edition of 50 – 14.5”x 11” (36.8 cm x 27.9 cm) – $150 USD plus S/H

At the green flag, they raced off down the Promenade des Anglais, past the Hôtel Negresco, downshifting quickly at the tight hairpin curve to the right, back down the Promenade, upwards through the city, around the Jardin Albert 1e, and back to the waterfront starting point.

Three Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos (driven by Louis Chiron, Count Trossi, and Achille Varzi) squared off against seven Maseratis (whose drivers included Tazio Nuvolari, Philippe Étancelin, and Whitney Straight), one Bugatti team car driven by René Dreyfus, and some privately entered Alfas, Bugattis, and Maseratis. Both the Mercedes and Auto Union teams chose not to participate.

The race start saw Varzi and Chiron leading, with Nuvolari and Dreyfus battling for third place. Dreyfus crashed out, allowing Nuvolari’s attention to shift to Chiron. But Nuvolari’s Maserati was not up to another duel and threw a piston.

After the necessary pits stops by all the racers, Étancelin’s Maserati took second place, with Trossi slipping into third position.

With Nuvolari’s retirement, there was no one to really challenge Varzi’s lead, and the somber Italian took the race.

Grand Prix de France 1934

The French Grand Prix in Montlhéry, just south of Paris, signaled the return of Rudolf Caracciola with the Mercedes Team, having spent the last fourteen months recovering from a serious accident.

Auto Union was present, along with the Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos and a couple of Maseratis. Tazio Nuvolari was invited to try the Bugatti Type 59 by Ettore Bugatti.

At race start, Louis Chiron driving for Scuderia Ferrari quickly took the lead from Caracciola, Luigi Fagioli (Mercedes) and Hans Stuck (Auto Union). Stuck than pushed hard past the Mercedes drivers to take the lead from Chiron.

Nuvolari experienced gearbox trouble in the Bugatti so he handed it off to Jean-Pierre Wimille. Fagioli was instructed to push harder to catch the lead cars.

The high pace of the race started taking it’s toll on the new German cars, and one by one they dropped out, Caracciola with fuel-feed problems, Fagioli with a broken brake-line, von Brauchitsch with supercharger woes, the persistent Stuck with engine problems, and Momberger with a steering break.

The other teams also dropped out, Bugatti with mostly engine and transmission issues, and Maserati with axle and engine breaks.

Trossi, Chiron and Varzi, race-ready for Scuderia Ferrari

Pen&ink, markers and pencil on white archival stock 12”x 9” (30.5cm x 22.9cm) © Paul Chenard 2010

Original sketch available, as is the limited edition.

This led to a clean sweep for the Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos with Chiron first, Varzi second and the Trossi/Moll duo third.

The 80,000 spectators were thrilled with Chiron’s win over the Germans teams. This win hid the fact that all the German cars, though still being very new, fell out of the race for fairly minor reasons, and that with better preparation, they would have clearly matched the opposition.

Circuito Di Modena Grand Prix 1934

At the beginning of the season, Tazio Nuvolari was recovering from a crash in Alessandria. Once he was back in form, Ettore Bugatti offered him the Type 59, which Nuvolari disliked (poor brakes and acceleration). He chose instead to take his skills to the Maserati team, driving their somewhat under-classed 8CM.

This car did not do well for him, finishing very few races he started.

For the Italian Grand Prix, Nuvolari debuted a promising new model, the 6C-34. It ran a 3.7 litre supercharged straight-six cylinder engine giving it 270 bhp, good for 155 mph (250 kph).

Unfortunately for Nuvolari, the mechanics forgot to refill the break-reservoir so that he raced without his breaks, yet he still finished 5 ^th!

For most of the remainder of the season, the Maserati team worked very hard to find reliability in the new car, with little success.

Pen&ink, markers and pencil on white archival stock

© Paul Chenard 2011

The true potential of the 6C-34 came to the front at the Modena Grand Prix. Nuvolari came against the full might of the Scuderia Ferrari team, passing each one to finally take the lead from Varzi, and merrily thumbing his nose at Ferrari as he won.

Nuvolari would follow this up with another win at the Circuito di Napoli race. This was the last official race of European racing season.

1934 Belgian Grand Prix

Race enthusiast had great expectations for the Belgian Grand Prix, held on the stunning Spa-Francorchamps track.

Unfortunately, Belgian customs officials demanded a heavy duty from the German Grand Prix teams for their alcohol-based racing fuel. The result was a withdrawal of both the Mercedes-Benz and the Auto Union teams from the race.

This made for a very small grid of seven cars; three Bugatti T59s, two Alfa Romeo P3s, a Maserati 8CM and a Montier-Ford Special.

Pen&ink, markers, and pencil on archival white stock 12”x 9” 
© Paul Chenard 2010

Original art & limited editions available.

Raymond Sommer was the only Maserati driver present, so that the real race was going to be between the Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos and the Bugattis.

As the typically rainy race began, Louis Chiron took the lead in the Alfa Romeo, with the Bugattis pitting with fouled plugs.

It looked very much like another Scuderia Ferrari win in the works. Unfortunately, Chiron’s racer slid off the track and overturned; he was luckily uninjured in the incident.

Achille Varzi took comfortably over his teammate’s lead, and at the same time, the track record. This was not to last, with his smoking Alfa Romeo coming in with a blown engine.

With their only real opposition out of the way, the Bugattis of René Dreyfus and Antonio Brivio cruised in first and second, with Sommer a distant third for Maserati.

It was to be one of the very rare top-level wins for Bugatti in 1934.

1934 Italian Grand Prix

The Italian Grand Prix was held on September 9th at the Autodromo Di Monza. In the previous year’s Grand Prix, serious accidents had taken the lives of Giuseppe Campari and two other drivers. To lessen the speeds, it was decided that the track should be shortened from 10kms to 4.3kms, with many chicanes added in. With 500kms to cover for the Grand Prix, this made for a longer, more grueling race.

Mercedes had their W25, Bugatti their Type 59, Scuderia Ferrari the Alfa P3, while Maserati introduced the new model 6C-34, to be driven by Tazio Nuvolari. The balance of their team would drive the 8CMs.

Pen&ink, markers, and pencil on archival white stock 12”x 9” © Paul Chenard 2010

Original art & limited editions available.

At the start, Hans Stuck took an early lead for Auto Union but was soon overtaken by Mercedes driver Rudolf Caracciola. His teammate Manfred Georg Rudolf von Brauchitsch was not competing, having been injured in a crash at the previous Swiss Grand Prix. Battling amongst the leaders were Luigi Fagioli (Mercedes), Archille Varzi (Alfa Romeo), Nuvolari (Maserati) and Count Carlo Felice Trossi (Alfa Romeo).

Unfortunately for Nuvolari, the Maserati mechanics forgot to top-up his car's brake fluid after weigh-in, so he slowly lost his brakes during the long race.

The 4.75 hour race, with it’s 1600 total corners, took a toll on the drivers and the cars. Fagioli, whose car broke down, later replaced Caracciola, who had to be lifted out of his car. Stuck had to be replaced by zu Leiningen, and Trossi by Comotti.

Varzi dropped out with mechanical woes, so the race finished with Caracciola/Figioli in first place, Stuck/zu Leiningen in second, with Trossi/Comotti in third. After 4th place Chiron (Alfa Romeo), Nuvolari finished a respectable 5th place, using his gears to brake for the last half of the race.

Seeing Red – The Italian Racing Colour

In these days of race cars covered with sponsors logos and colours, it’s easily to forget that race teams used to race for their country, not their sponsors.

To differentiate the country for which to team raced, a colour-coding was developed. The first usage of this came during Gordon Bennett Cup races in 1900-1905 which was a race between Nations and their automotive products. 

Germany was assigned white, Belgium yellow, USA red, United Kingdom green, and France blue.

As more and more countries got into racing, the colour palette grew, and some colours changed, most notably Germany to silver, Italy to red, and the USA to white with blue.

The cars that shared various shades of Italian red are Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Fiat, Lancia, Bandini, Cisitalia and of course, Ferrari.

They were much simpler times, when racers drove for their nation, and not necessarily the highest bidder.

This all changed in 1968, when Colin Chapman carried non-automotive, Players cigarette graphics on his Lotus 49’s.

The advertising floodgates were opened for good … and gone, with very few exceptions, were the international colours. True to tradition, Scuderia Ferrari team cars are always red.

All images copyright © Paul Chenard - Automobiliart.com

Distinct Gift Idea – 1950’s Grand Prix Engines

Maserati 250F - Italy
© Paul Chenard 2008

Mercedes W196 - Germany
© Paul Chenard 2008

Talbot-Lago T26C - France
© Paul Chenard 2008

Vanwall 2.5L - England
© Paul Chenard 2008

Pencil and Prismacolor pencil on coloured paper 12"x9"

Grand Prix race cars of the 1950’s were interesting pieces of rolling engineering.

The French used the best bits of straightforward, tried and true racing technology for their racers, somewhat short of funding. The Germans developed highly engineered and tested machines; the British experimented with new technology and approaches, but were not always fully sorted. And the Italians pushed old technology to the full extent of its development, and always with flair.

National pride drove them all to push for the utmost in their machines, and they all carried their Nation’s colours into the melee; the Italian red, the British green, the French blue and the German silver.

Automobiliart.com offers a series of illustrations of 50’s Grand Prix Racing engines in International Racing Colours. There is the 1957 Maserati 250F in red, the 1956 Mercedes W196 in gray/silver, the 1950 Talbot-Lago T26C in blue and the 1957 Vanwall in green.

The series is available as limited edition premium archival Giclee prints, 14.5'x 11' (image size 12'x 9'), signed and numbered to a limit of 100 of each. The suggested retail price is $125 USD each plus shipping/handling, or all 4 for $445 USD plus shipping/handling.

Maserati 250F - A Masterpiece of Speed & Beauty

Polistil-Tonka 1/16 1980's (Italy), Matchbox Models of Yesteryear #Y10-4 1/36 1980's (England), Mercury #52 1/43 1950's (Italy), Solido Ré-edition 1990's (France)

If you ask knowledgeable Grand Prix (or general racing) historians what is the greatest race car of all time, 9 out of 10 would say the Maserati 250F.

Conceived with little funding, but much enthusiasm, dedication and know-how, the 250F was built along fairly conventional lines, but with an incredible visual aesthetic. The car looks fast just siting there, and with it's balanced light chassis and powerful inline 6-cylinder engine, it was!

It's first victory came in 1954 at Aintree in the capable hands of Sir Stirling Moss, and it's last major win came in the legendary 1957 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring in the hands of the Argentinean master Juan Manuel Fangio, giving him his last of five World Championship titles.

The image above includes the Maserati 250F diecasts in my collection. Below, I've included a few of sketches I did of Fangio driving the rolling masterpiece, the heart of the masterpiece, and a paper model I created.





Fangio at Nürburgring 1957, pencil on paper
© Paul Chenard 2006
Charles McCabe Collection


Fangio at Monaco 1957, pen & ink on paper © Paul Chenard 2006


Prismacolor and pencils on red archival stock
© Paul Chenard 2008

Paper model that I created using Adobe Illustrator on a Mac
© Paul Chenard 2001