2024 Silverstone Festival: dates and line-up – 20-strong race card released

For more than 100,000 fans, it’s the only soundtrack to the August Bank Holiday weekend, and now the Silverstone Festival has announced exactly which roars, pops and bangs will fill the air during one of the biggest historic racing weekends in the world.

The Festival once again takes an end-of-summer spot on the racing calendar with a revised 2024 schedule that includes new categories, as well as plenty of well-loved favourites with 20 races over the course of three days on 23-25 August.

More than 1000 cars are expected on track across 14 categories, including Minis taking on American muscle cars in the Transatlantic Trophy; a grid of ’60s-’80s F1 cars; plus as legendary endurance and sports cars.

This year will also see a debut for the F2 Classic InterSeries, featuring F2 cars from 1967 and 1978, as raced by the likes of Jochen Rindt and Ronnie Peterson, as well as the return of the Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy for ’50s and ’60s GT cars.

There’s a non-stop timetable off-track too, with live music and a packed programme of family entertainment.

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2024 Silverstone Festival timetable — full schedule coming soon

Detailed timings for the week have now been released, along with news of the parades and demonstrations on track between the racing.

Gates open at 7.30am, with cars on track from 9am. Racing is held until 7pm, followed by a concert each day.

Friday 23 August

Expect a full day of qualifying as the Silverstone festival opens, offering the chance to see cars from all 14 categories on track, with drivers pushing from the word go in sessions that can total less than 20 minutes. Lunch is typically given over to demonstration runs, while a performance from Sophie Ellis Bextor will close the day on the main stage.

Saturday 24 August

The race programme is usually split between both weekend days, so Saturday is likely to see the first ten, with the specific categories still to be confirmed. Themed parades and demonstrations typically take place between races, while it could be another late finish as early 2000s boyband Busted play on the main stage.

Sunday 25 August

The final day of this year’s Festival is expected to host the final ten races, which will include some of the cars that competed on the Saturday, thanks to the six double-headers. There should be a return too of some of the previous day’s parades, but they aren’t always identical.

Closing the festival will be left in the hands of Olly Murs, who will perform the final concert of the weekend.

Race categories for 2024 Silverstone Festival

Historic Formula Junior 

Few motor sports are more worldwide than the historic Formula Junior series, which has been known to travel as far as New Zealand and North America on its journey to the Silverstone Festival. The series originally began as a stepping stone toward F1, with the likes of Jim Clark, John Surtees, Jochen Rindt and Lorenzo Bandini all making their early names behind the wheel of the 1.1 litre mini-grand prix car.

MRL Historic Touring Car Challenge

Featuring celebrated machines from the British and European Car Championships between 1966 and 1990, the MRL Historic Touring Car Challenge promises to be one of the loudest additions to the Silverstone Festival race card. Flame-spitting Ford Sierra RS Cosworths and BMW M3s will face off against a strong field of Alfa Romeo GTV6s, Cheverolet Camaros, Renault 5 GT Turbos and VW Golf GTis over 45 minutes of raucous on-track action.

F2/F3 Classic InterSeries

The newly created F2 Classic InterSeries celebrates the star-studded single-seater category that brought top names racing wheel-to-wheel with up-and-coming drivers. It’s open to cars built between 1967 and 1978, including Formula B and Formula Atlantic machines.

The race will join the already-popular F3 Classic InterSeries, with pre-1985 2-litre F3 racers running to the same technical regulations; cars where the likes of Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell earned their racing stripes on the route towards motor sport’s top echelon.

Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy, Woodcote Trophy and Stirling Moss Trophy

This year brings three Royal Automobile Club GT categories, with the return of the Tourist Trophy that will transport spectators back to the 50s and 60s, featuring an evocative grid filled with AC Cobras, Ferraris, Jaguars and Aston Martins.

Fields for the Woodcote and Stirling Moss Trophy will be combined: the former features sports cars of the post-war era (up to and including December 1955); the latter has a later generation of cars built before 1961 including Jaguar D-Types, Lister Knobblys and Lola Mk1s. The winning team is presented with the 1955 British Grand Prix trophy — the award for Moss’s first F1 victory.

Both races last for at least an hour with compulsory pitstops.

Watch 2023’s race here:

 HGPCA Pre ’66 Grand Prix Cars

This pre-1966 grand prix car race will feature some of the oldest cars found anywhere on this summer’s grids; last year it included the Lago-Talbot T26 which made its debut in the line-up for Silverstone’s first event in 1948, alongside machines such as the Maserati 250F and the Ferrari 246 Dino which were once piloted by the likes of Stirling Moss, Juan Manuel Fangio, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins.

Masters Historic Racing (Masters Racing Legends, Sports Car, Endurance and GT)

All six of the Masters Historic Racing categories include the Silverstone Festival on their calendar, bringing some of the most popular machinery of the weekend, including prominent cars from F1’s DFV era (between 1966 and 1985) as well as the stars of sports car, endurance and classic GT series.