Silverstone Classic
Silverstone, Northants, UK 28-30 July
EVERY YEAR we say, ‘Silverstone Classic is
big’, but that hasn’t always worked to its benefit, because it has sometimes meant that the attractions were too far apart.
The organisers have gradually addressed this over the years, so that for 2017 – the biggest Silverstone Classic yet – the gaps were filled by so many attractions that the sheer size of the ‘home of British motor sport’ site finally became an advantage.
And so an already strong festival becomes a world-beater – and it remains the world’s largest motor sport event too, with remarkable figures to back that up. That’s 22 races, more than 31 hours of track action, over 50 cars per grid in many cases, 1000 entries and 800 drivers. Oh, and 100,000 visitors over the three days.
Add to that a number of track demonstrations and parades, from Mansell’s 1992 Williams FW14B to the line-up of over 40 Jaguar XJ220s, including all four XJ220C Le Mans cars together for the first time, and a parade of 115 McLarens to mark what would have been Bruce McLaren’s 80th birthday.
Off-track, there was the Mike Wheeler Car Clinic, eBay Restoration Live, off-road courses, trade village, 125 clubs, live music, fairgrounds, manufacturer displays and much, much more.
And on-track? Plenty of exciting action, wellrelayed around the circuit via huge screens, which helped compensate for the similarly large distances between track and certain viewing areas at Silverstone. Races were exciting, from the 1920s Pre War Sports Cars to the Super Touring Cars of the 1990s and 2000s.
As ever, a highlight was the Saturday evening twilight Group C race, made more interesting this year by a pre-race downpour. Equally exciting, albeit slower, was the Celebrity race of HRDC Academy Austin A35s. First-time racers Howard Donald (Take That) and Amy Williams (Olympic skeleton racer) did particularly well, while Neil Primrose of Travis was best-placed of the non-professional drivers. The 21 celebrity drivers and the car owners raised more than £20,000 for the charity Prostate Cancer UK.
Next year’s Classic has been provisionally set for the earlier date of 20-22 July.