Donington Historic Festival 2016

The sixth annual Donington Historic Festival was once again held on the May Day Bank Holiday last weekend…

The Donington historic is becoming a huge meeting in the British Motorsport calendar and once again there was no disappointment from the organisers. This years event had cars spanning over nine decades from pre-war grand prix and sports cars up to the most modern of super tourers from the BTCC of the early 00’s. Not only did the weekend have such variety in automobiles it also had variety in its weather conditions, Saturday we seemed to have four seasons in one day, beautiful sunshine in the morning followed by snow and hail in the afternoon. Luckily the sun showed once again for one of the big highlight races of the weekend, the ‘1000km’ race for 1964-1971 World Sports, Touring and GT cars – 180 minutes enabling drivers to experience what is was like ‘back in the day’ racing these special cars into the dusk.

Sunday brought once again a wide selection of racing from 60 minute pre 66 GT Endurance races to the 20 minute races of the Nuvolari Trophy, as well as the Super Tourers and Group-A race. A welcome sound echoed through the rolling hills of the Donington Park Circuit during the lunch break, distinctive engines noises, the sounds of Formula 1 cars of yesteryear, such as the Lamborghini powered Lotus of Martin Donnelly, the 1993 Ford powered Benetton of Michael Schumacher and the most modern of them all was the 2002 Honda v10 powered Jordan EJ12.

42 paddock

Bank holiday Monday was the final day for the Derbyshire event, and it didn’t disappoint. The Stirling moss Trophy was on for Pre 61 Sports Cars, a 60 minute race for some stunning machinery as well as the ‘Mad Jack’ race, a 40 minute battle of pre-war sports cars – the sun ‘donned it’s hat’ for the drivers of this race. However the Pre 66 Jaguar Classics race weren’t quite so lucky with this 40 minute race starting in the dry turning to serious rain by the end, drivers struggled with the sudden downpour mainly at the Cramer curves, a common spot for mistakes emphasised further by the sudden change in track conditions.

The day came to an end with a 45 minute race for ‘Touring Greats’ the Pre 60 Touring Cars who had the honour of closing out the Donington Historic weekend, the race started with the father-son duo of none other than Mike and Andrew Jordan on pole in their Austin A40. Once again the Donington historic was a huge success with a plethora of cars being showcased and the big names piloting them around one of Britain’s oldest motor racing circuits.