Silverstone's best-ever Historic Festival

A new date, a new theme and a new programme give the annual Silverstone Historic Festival a very different feel this year. The Festival runs over the August Bank Holiday weekend of August 25-27. A 17-race programme is split across the three days and, for the first time, classic motorcycles feature, contesting the Mike Hailwood Trophy each day.

Headlining will be the two-hour British Empire Trophy Race for GpC endurance cars, which will start at 6.30pm and run into the dusk of Saturday evening. The same cars will have a sprint race on Monday for the Bob Wollek Memorial Trophy.

A magnificent entry of more than 40 cars will feature in this most important race in the short but spectacular history of the Group C Revival movement. Topping the field will be the pace setting Jaguar XJR-16 of Win Percy, but that will be just one of possibly eight Jaguars in the field – from XJR-5 through to XJR-17. With cars from Porsche, Spice, Nimrod, Nissan, Tiga and Ecosse all due to take part, these races will recapture a classic era of World Endurance Racing.

Each day’s racing includes an Italy vs Rest of the World race. On Saturday and Monday, this event will be for 1960s World Endurance Cars, while Sunday’s encounter is for Pre-1959 drum-braked sportscars.

Adding to the sportscar flavour will be two races for the BRDC Historic Sports Car Championship, one contesting the Duncan Hamilton Trophy, one the Innes Ireland Trophy.

Saloons make a popular return to the Festival, with two events for a 40-strong field of Pre-65 Touring Cars. On Saturday and Sunday there will be 40-minute two-driver races.

Single-seater races include events for Pre-1961 Grand Prix Sunday evening Cars, Formula Junior, Pre-66 Grand Prix and Tasman Cars, and Pre-78 Grand Prix Cars.

All races will have first-class fields, with more than 450 cars expected to race during the weekend.

The weekend is completed by the Historic Rallysprint on Sunday evening. PL