Special Feature

1964 Cooper–Maserati T61P – Rain Bird

Ed McDonough

1964 Cooper–Maserati T61P

By the time Roy Salvadori chased Bruce McLaren to the checkered flag at the Daily Express International Trophy meeting at Silverstone on May 2, 1964, sports car racing had already begun to change significantly.

Roger Penske often gets the credit—or the blame—for what led to the real “big bangers” when he took a 1961 F1 Cooper and built it into a barely disguised Grand Prix car that was eligible for sports car racing. It started with a Climax engine, but by the time McLaren drove it against Salvadori at Silverstone, it had acquired a lightweight Oldsmobile. Jim Clark was also in that race with a Lotus 30 with a Ford engine, and Salvadori’s Tommy Atkin’s Cooper T61P had the 4.9-liter Maserati unit. The American USRRC series a year earlier had really pushed sports car racing along, and the cars were sleeker, quicker and the engines were getting bigger…Can-Am and Interseries were not very far away.

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