1. Shrill DFV music rules
Ever popular for their distinctive shapes and liveries, which made them instantly identifiable, three-litre F1 cars of the 1960s to mid-1980s remind racegoers of the age in which engines made by Cosworth in Northampton scored the lion’s share of wins against stout opposition from Ferrari, Matra, Alfa Romeo and BRM.
Silverstone hosted the British GP with Brands Hatch in alternate years back then. Keith Duckworth’s revolutionary Ford-badged DFV (double four valve) V8 powered Jim Clark’s Team Lotus 49 to victory here in July 1967 – a month after their debut gold at Zandvoort – and went on to notch a staggering 155 world championship GP race wins until 1985.
With DFVs and Hewland gearboxes commercially available in the interim, dozens of marques created cars for future superstars and pecunious or well-backed wannabes to compete for the sport’s highest prize. Not all were successful. Expect to see Williams, McLaren, Tyrrell and Lotus out front, chased by Arrows and Hesketh cars made locally. Among the fabulous 30-car field, don’t be surprised to see Matt Wrigley (Tyrrell 011), Steve Hartley (McLaren MP4/1), Stuart Hall (March 821) and Nick Padmore (Lotus 88B) feature prominently.
2. 100 years of sportscar racing
The spread of racing over the weekend offers something for all tastes, bookended by the BRDC 500 for MRL Pre-War Sports Cars and Masters Endurance Legends prototypes of the 21st century – the fastest machinery on the bill with a Le Mans flavour.
The most charismatic race on the bill features Darren Turner sharing Jonathan Lupton’s 1930 Aston Martin Team Car and a host of Bentley Boys and Girls – Ewen Getley’s daughters Louisa and Anna share a pair of 3/4 1/2s. Former Force India F1 boss Vijay Mallya and Patrick Blakeney-Edwards team up in a BMW 328, while a host of chain-gang Frazer Nashes will chase Gareth Burnett’s fast Alta and German Rudi Friedrichs’s rapid Alvis Firefly Special.
The Royal Automobile Club Woodcote Trophy and Stirling Moss Trophy race for 1950s’ sportscars – featuring Jaguar C and D-types, Lister-Jags, Cooper Monacos, Lola Mk1 and Lotus 11s – and Masters Sports Car Legends of the 1960s and 1970s fill the gaps, enabling younger attendees and even the most casually interested to follow evolving technologies from ancient to modern.
3. Grand Prix history retold
Silverstone hosted the inaugural FIA Formula 1 World Championship’s opening round in May 1950, so this year is its 75th season. While we won’t see Alfa Romeo 158/159 Alfettas to emulate Nino Farina, Luigi Fagioli and Reg Parnell’s 1-2-3, Historic Grand Prix Cars Association members always bring a representative Pre-1966 field to The Home of British Motor Racing.
Timeless Maserati 250Fs evoke 1950s memories, facing Ferrari 246 Dinos and American Scarabs, now more competitive than they were. The 2.5-litre Coventry-Climax FPF-engined Coopers, which triggered the wholesale transition to rear-engined chassis, set the pace now. Rudi Friedrichs’s ex-Jack Brabham T53 and the sister car, which Charlie Martin prepares and races for Paul Waine, were Oulton Park Gold Cup winners last month. James Hagan and Clinton McCarthy are in rival Lotus 18s.
Later Jim Clark/Peter Arundell Lotus 25 and Graham Hill/Jackie Stewart BRM P261s, powered by shrill V8 engines, reflect subsequent 1500cc regulations of 1961-65. The wonderful pack spans a 1948 Lago Talbot to mid-1960s Tasman Series Brabhams, with a bellowing Kurtis-Offenhauser roadster reminding fans of when the Indianapolis 500 counted anomalously towards the drivers’ crown.
4. Grappling Gran Turismo greats
The Royal Automobile Club Historic Tourist Trophy contest showcases the world’s oldest circuit race, first staged on the Isle of Man in 1905 when John Napier’s Arrol-Johnston triumphed. Subsequent victors include Charles Rolls, Jean Chassagne, Rudolf Caracciola and Tazio Nuvolari. Stirling Moss won seven TTs post-Second World War, including world sportscar championship rounds at Dundrod (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR) and Goodwood (Aston Martin DBR1).
Moss’s final TT wins were in Ferrari 250 GTs at Goodwood, and Saturday’s race celebrates that pre-1963 era. The 1300cc split features seven Lotus Elites. Aces John Davison, Dan Eagling, Nick Padmore, Kyle Tilley and Andy Wolfe will fly in the Climax-engined coupes.
Former F1 racer Jan Magnussen shares fellow Dane Nikolai Mortensen’s Turner in the next class, while Jeremy Welch and single-seater hotshoe Henry Chart – a Festival winner last year in Simon Hadfield’s F5000 Trojan – head the Austin-Healey 3000 posse.
It’s Jaguar E-types versus AC Cobras in the top set, with local heroes John and Gary Pearson – whose Silverstone winning record stretches back to the first Classics in the early 1990s – trying to outrun the quickest V8s with Gregor Fisken/Chris Ward and John Spiers/Nigel Greensall up.
5. RML's 40 years of winning
Northamptonshire’s Mallock dynasty has been intertwined with the history of Silverstone since patriarch Major Arthur raced his first spindly specials with the 750 Motor Club in the 1950s.
As founder of the U2 marque, whose simple front-engined cars served from Formula Junior to F2, the renowned boffin sowed the seeds of success with which the family is synonymous to this day.
Arthur’s sons Raymond and Richard won countless races in ever-quicker Mallock U2s, without which the Clubmans Formula, set to celebrate its 60th anniversary next year, would not have thrived. The most potent Mallocks outperformed F3 cars in the 1970s, and their successors still embarrass big single-seaters in the right hands.
Ray, who progressed to European F2, British F1 and scored world sportscar championship points as a driver, designed and raced the Ecosse cars before expanding his innovative engineering business into a global race engineering leader with racer son Michael at his side. Partnering with manufacturers, the RML Group’s record in touring car, GT and sportscar racing arenas and rallying is extraordinary. Its 40th anniversary is celebrated at the Festival, where its jaw-dropping RML Short Wheelbase roadburner serves as safety car.
6. Touring cars on parade
Progressive car manufacturers’ ‘Race on Sunday, Sell On Monday’ catchline of the 1960s reflects a very different ethos to today’s more challenging marketplace, but Motor Racing Legends’ Historic Touring Car Challenge presents a welcome flashback to tin-top action in three distinct decades.
Inter-marque rivalries revisited should provide spectacular Group 2 sport as BMW CSL ‘Batmobiles’ and Ford Capri RSs lock horns as they did at Silverstone’s Tourist Trophy races in the 1970s. This time they have the Shepherd family’s thunderous Chevrolet Camaro to contend with.
Snarling Rover SDIs take on BMW 635 and Mercedes-Benz 190E in the Group A set, featuring a host of glorious BMW E30 M3s and Andy and Chris Middlehurst’s beautifully restored Toyota Corolla. Out front, three savagely powerful four-wheel-drive Nissan Skyline R32s and seven Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500s go head to head in a flame-throwing Pre-1990 turbofest.
Pre-1966 saloons are largely corralled in the Pure Michigan Mustang Trophy race celebrating 60 years of Ford’s original pony car. It’s not all big V8s though, for the quickest Mini Cooper Ss and Lotus Cortinas will pester the Americana as ever.
7. Formula 2 & F3 diversity
Silverstone was home to European F2 Championship and many F3 rounds in the 1970s and 1980s, so it is important that the period F1 feeder categories are back in all their colourful splendour in twin ‘Interseries’ races, illustrating the chassis and engine diversity of an era far removed from today’s monomarque offerings.
Two-litre F2 cars of the pre-1979 period are eligible, so fans can witness March 782s – the best production chassis of all time, produced in nearby Bicester – of the type in which Italian anglophile Bruno Giacomelli dominated the 1978 title race, winning eight rounds from 12.
Mark Charteris’s ex-Brian Henton 782 in striking Toleman Group warpaint, with a shrill Hart 420R engine, is freshly restored, but the Classic Clubmans king can expect strong opposition in a pack embroiling Chevron and Ralt cars. Earlier 1600cc F2 cars, which raced up to 1971 (Ronnie Peterson’s year), will be competitive too.
The air-restricted two-litre F3 cars of the 1974-to-mid-1980s epoch in which Ford engines were supplanted by Toyota, then Volkswagen and Alfa Romeo units, will also evoke memories.
8. Sporting icons under the hammer
Iconic Auctions – formerly Silverstone Auctions – has amassed a mouthwatering roster of lots for its ‘home’ sale, from inexpensive automobilia to sensational competition cars.
From opposite sides of the spectrum two stand out. The last works MGB, registered BRX 854B, a veteran of the 1964 Spa-Sofia-Liege Rally in its year of manufacture and the 1965 Acropolis, Tulip and RAC rallies, should whet appetites. Discovered many years later by the late marque guru Barry Sidery-Smith, ‘BRX’ raced at the Goodwood Revival in 2022.
The extraordinary 1992 Simpson-Ferrari V12 GTR has a very different dynamic. Commissioned by Italian Stefano Sebastiani – who competed as ‘Stingbrace’ (STefano IN GB RACE) – this project is unique. Built by the late Robin Simpson Smith, the road-registered scarlet beauty is powered by a normally aspirated 5.4-litre V12 Maranello engine instead of its siblings’ three-litre twin-turbo V8s. It contested British GT races and the 2004 and 2005 Vallelunga 6 Hours.
Also in the catalogue are an ex-works MG Metro 6R4, ex-Jason Plato 2016 Subaru Levorg, and Elio de Angelis’s 1978 Monaco F3-winning Chevron B38.
9. Thank you for the music
Live music concerts have been a huge draw at the Festival (nee Classic) for many years, with some attendees subscribing purely for the evening entertainment. Many though – including competitors, their families and support crews – simply look forward to relaxing and winding down in front of the stage with a drink and picnic dinner after the rigours of long action-packed high-octane days.
This year’s edition will continue the tradition of world-class performers belting out their stuff in Silverstone’s dedicated arena. Brilliant disco diva Sophie Ellis-Bextor – of Groovejet and Murder On The Dance Floor fame – will get everybody up bopping when she performs her set from 2000-2100 on Friday. Nath Brooks (1745-1815) and Shola Ama (1845-1930) are the warm-up acts.
On Saturday, Busted winds the volume up from 2000 after sessions from Cassa Jackson and Somebody’s Child. Sunday’s star turn is Olly Murs, who brings the event to a rousing climax. Furnace & The Fundamentals and ADMT start the evening. Each night is rounded off by a hot air balloon glow show as dusk descends.
10. Historic Formula Junior
The Historic Formula Junior races are usually the programme’s best. Yet, in their traditional Saturday and Sunday breakfast slots, sadly they are missed by many spectators not in trackside vantage points by then. Fortunately the racing is live-streamed, and accessible thereafter, so nobody need miss out!
The FJHRA’s international grid is over-subscribed, with reserves eager to join in. The 1958-63 showcase’s quality is magnificent, with 21 chassis marques represented, spanning Alexis to Terrier, including such rarities as Deep Sanderson and Nike.
Fresh from his Oulton Park Gold Cup victory on the debut of the ex-Paul Hawkins Brabham BT6, 2023 Lurani Trophy champion Horatio Fitz-Simon will take some beating, but Michael O’Brien (Ford France Lotus 27), Andrew Hibberd, Austrian Lukas Halusa and Nick Fennell (Lotus 22s), Brabham duo Alex Ames (BT6) and American Tim de Silva (BT2) and German Rudi Friedrichs (Lola Mk5A) should be in the mix.
Twenty-year-old Yorkshireman Samuel Harrison – the Historic FF2000 champion-elect is gunning for his third different title in as many years – in an Australian Rennmax, triple Historic FF1600 champ Callum Grant (ex-Denis Welch Merlyn Mk5/7) and Stuart Roach (Alexis Mk4) are dark horses.
