Frederico José Carlos Themudo “Fritz” d’Orey (born 25 March 1938 in São Paulo – died 31 August 2020 in Cascais, Portugal) is a former racing driver, from Brazil.
He participated in three Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on July 5, 1959.
He scored no championship points. Info from Wiki
Fritz d’Orey passed away on this Monday, August 31st, at Cascais, Portugal, where he was living in the last years. He did not survive after a long battle against cancer and died peacefully with four of his five children alongside him.
Bio by Stephen Latham
The son of a wealthy Packard car dealer, Frederico Jose Carlos Themudo d’Orey (nicknamed Fritz) was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1938 and his racing began with a Porsche Spyder. Eventually, when he was 20 he bought racer Chico Landi’s Ferrari 375 F1, now fitted with a Chevrolet Corvette V8 engine as it had been contesting the South American Mecanica Continental Championship. He went on to enjoy considerable success with the Ferrari-Corvette, at home plus in Uruguay and Argentina and won the Sao Paulo and Brazilian championships. During this time there was an impressive win in a 500km race at Interlagos in 1958. Ironically, it was the second running of the event and the first one in 1957 was won by Celso Lara Barberis, from whom Fritz had bought his car. Unfortunately, the win was overshadowed by a tragedy, as a marshall was killed after being hit by Chico Landi’s Ferrari-Corvette. There was another strong victory at the Circuito da Barra da Tijuca driving an ex-Castellotti Ferrari 500 Mondial; with the car, Castellotti had previously won the 1955 Bolzano-Mendola hillclimb plus the Coppa d’Oro delle Dolomiti.
After travelling to Argentina in 1959 to race, he came to the attention of Juan Manuel Fangio, who hired him as part of his team of drivers who would race in Europe. He was scheduled to race the team’s Maserati 250F in the Monaco GP though didn’t take part. He decided to move to Modena and after buying a Ferrari 250GT LWB Berlinetta Scaglietti, his first race was the Lottery Grand Prix at Monza, where he recovered from a spin and went on to finish seventh.
Shortly after he competed in his first World Championship Grand Prix in Reims, racing a Scuderia Centro Sud Maserati 250F (previously been driven by Hermano Da Silva Ramos and won 1956’s Glover Trophy and the Monaco GP by Stirling Moss). He qualifed eighteenth and went on to finish tenth and a week later drove his Ferrari 250GT LWB in a Trento-Bondone hillclimb, finishing second in the GT category. Of his racing, he would later state “I was a child and very crazy…Racing meant sitting down in a car and accelerating. We did not use seat belts”.
For the British GP at Aintree, he was back in a Scuderia Centro Sud Maserati 250F (there were three Centro Sud cars entered; his car plus two Cooper T51s for Ian Burgess and Hans Herrmann) though he crashed out of the race on lap 57.
There was a retirement with a Porsche 1500 RS At Avus but at hillclimb events at Wurzenpass and Gaisberg he was second in a Ferrari and third in a Stanguellini-Fiat. He continued with the Stanguellini in Formula Junior races, winning one in Messina though retired at the Nürburgring, while at Cadours in the September he won the first heat and was seventh in the final. Shortly after he contested the Coppa Inter Europa at Monza, retiring his Ferrari 250GT then later in the year travelled to America to compete in the Formula Junior support race and the US F1 GP at Sebring. He was second in the FJunior race and set the fastest lap then in the GP he drove a Camoradi team Tec-Mec Maserati F415.
The tale behind the Tec-Mec is an interesting one. After Maserati withdrew from racing, ex-designer Valerio Colotti went on to create his own Studio Tecnica Meccanica design and engineering company in Modena. They were approached by racer Giorgio Scarlatti to design a single-seater car with a Maserati 250F engine. An ex-Maserati mechanic (Consoli) built the car for then in the living room of his home and when a proper workshop was built the car (the ‘Tec-Mec F415’) was pushed out through his home’s French windows. During this time, motoring journalist Hans Tanner became involved and brought financial backing from Gordon Pennington, an American race enthusiast who was living in a hotel in Modena, intending to buy a race car. G.Scarlatti was persuaded to sell his shares in the Tec-Mec project and the company changed its name to Tec-Mec Automobili, with Lucky Casner (who ran the Camoradi team) becoming involved in helping run it. The car was tested at a local track by Jo Bonnier and Scarlatti himself then shipped over to America for 1959’s final Grand Prix, at Sebring. Fritz qualified seventeenth but was forced to retire after seven laps in the race with an oil leak and this would be Tec-Mec’s only race. The car was later taken to Daytona for a record attempt but Fritz was later injured in an accident and after Pennington lost interest the project ended.
1960 began at Sebring (with Fritz the first Brazilian to take part in this 12 Hour race) and co-driving with William Sturgis in a Ferrari 250 GT SWB they finished sixth overall and fourth in their S3.0 category.
He had intended to compete in a full season of sportscar racing for Scuderia Serenissima but three months after Sebring, he crashed heavily while practising for Le Mans. His Ferrari 250GT SWB hit a tree at 270kph, splitting in two and Fritz suffered head injuries, with some newspapers reporting he had died. He was in hospital for eight months and, at just 22, decided it was time to quit racing and returned to Brazil, where he worked in his father’s construction and garage business. He also spent five years living in Paris though returned to live in Copacabana and later raced Ferraris in the Ferrari Challenge and take part in occasional historic events.
On a different note, the Tec-Mec car lay on a trailer in a garden in Miami garden until 1967 when it was bought by Tom Wheatcroft for his Donington Collection. After it was restored, he drove it regularly, ‘just for fun’, on test days at Silverstone and Oulton Park, though on one occasion he spun off at Silverstone and crashed heavily into a parked ambulance!
Fritz D’Orey – Greetings from Copacabana – from 
Gallery F1
