Silverstone Classic 2018 – The worlds biggest classic meeting

Silverstone classic 2018 is 70 years of Grand Prix, 60 years of BTCC, 80 years of Ace café, 10,000 plus display cars and over 1,000 race entries, just some of the huge numbers and anniversaries that make up the worlds most premier classic event.

Since 1990 Silverstone has set the standard with this classic event, it’s gone from strength to strength throughout the years. When other big events catch up like Goodward Revival or the festival of Speed, Silverstone comes back bigger and better. Record-breaking crowds reaching the heights of over 100,00 visitors, soon makes you realise the scale of this event. It may not have the glamour of the dressed in time and period of the Goodward Revival but what it does is bring back the classics that for some are lost in history, collecting the memories and machines from yesteryear and bringing them together from all backgrounds and disciplines. Touring cars to open wheel, with a healthy dollop of classic sports cars to cover the wide variety of motorsport that we all love today.

For many the highlight of the event every year is the Masters Historic Formula 1, bringing boosted grids together to collectively blow our minds with the noise that we once all knew as the pinnacle of motorsport, a noise we all miss today but continues on thanks to this glorious series. The championship has 2 races this weekend following on from also have some non-championship classic F1 races at the British Grand Prix only 3 weekends ago which Nick Padmore was setting the pace the whole weekend. between 1966-1985 saw the longer set of rules to be held within F1 and this gives us a perfect setup for a strong series, such a variety of machinery all pretty closely matched just separated by the driver themselves how motorsport should be.

Second on my list this year but in my eyes the actual experience of the weekend has to be the three generations of machines racing, dubbed the ‘Daytona at Dusk’ races the endurance races are taking place into the late evening sunshine bringing the feel of a Daytona at dusk to the Northamptonshire countryside, machines from the pre 66 series all the way to the most modern machinery on display this weekend from the 2012 Lola B12/60 within the Masters Endurance legends series, a new era of motorsport brought into the ‘Classic’ generation. If you’re a sportscar fan as I am myself you would’ve heard of this series and if you aren’t then just sit back and take this in. The most recent golden era of sports cars has finally been accepted into classic racing. sports cars from between 1995-2012 now race in their own classes split up in their time periods to give multi-class racing back to the cars that are from the last 23 years, the sportscars I grew up with I now get that chance to watch race around in person and now through my television set on the Le Mans 24 hours coverage of years gone by.

This series came to the Le Mans Classic this year and boasted a huge 80 car gathering, it’s not quite as impressive here but still a healthy 25 cars featuring some of the most iconic cars of this era of sportscar racing, there’s an ex-factory Audi R8 being raced as well as one of the most brutal sounding cars to ever race around the Circuit de la sarthé, an Aston Martin Powered Lola DBR1-2. There’s the return of the long-lost GT1 cars too with a Ferrari 550 as well the infamous Aston Martin DBR9. This series has some huge highlights and impressive machinery of recent years gone by and it’s a pleasure to see these beasts racing untamed once again.

Supertourers break out on their annual reminder of why we love touring cars, especially that infamous Supertourer era with the marques such as Volvo, Audi, Nissan, Renault, and Vauxhall. The crowds once pleased by the sight and sound of these machines not only get a 60th anniversary of the BTCC era of the cars gone by, they’re also treated to multiple races, some even featuring the drivers in the cars of their period, most notably pilots such a Rickard Rydell wrestling around his Volvo classic looking Volvo S40 that he won the BTCC title in. It wasn’t all super tourers though as other wonders were out on circuit with them, most notably Abbie Eaton hurling around a brutish Holden Commodore, more know down under for the V8 supercars but a 20 year older car driven by the British star was able to keep a close pace to the super tourers as well, a good mix of battles for the crowds all adding the this great event.

It’s not all about the track action either, with over 1000+ cars on display over the weekend around the Silverstone circuit it was easy to get lost and find yourself spending hours staring at some gorgeous machines. From the displays to the village, you’d move along to the shopping side of life, numerous stalls selling merchandise, tools and little trinkets that all add to the unique style of the event this is to the classic style of event that makes this the worlds biggest of it’s kind. Nothing beats wandering around an event and spotting £70,000,000 vehicles being used on the road, to classic 1920’s big banger vehicles rumbling around the site and huge noise from a real spitfire plane starting up on the hour throughout the day, there’s not much about this event that doesn’t put you in that classic festival vibe celebrating the machines and cars of yesteryear and making us remember the glorious inventions on the motor industry.