Legendary Astons at Silverstone: DBR1, DB3S, and Jim Clark's Zagato

He coasted up the pit lane, the Aston Martin DBR1 and I, engine now silent. Helmet in the passenger seat, I listened to the utter silence in my ears that followed 10 laps of unsilenced mayhem as surely as night follows day. This very car won six of the DBR1’s eight world championship victories including, of course, the 1959 Le Mans 24 Hours.

I parked it next to the DB3S, registration 62 EMU. It saw the Le Mans podium too, the year before the DBR1, with a fine and fighting second place despite its then five-year-old design. The visual comparison between Aston Martin’s two finest sports-racing cars is utterly compelling. Yet now, no-one crowds around either of them. Everyone is standing beside the DB4GT Zagato: Jim Clark’s immortal 2 VEV.

“Can I have a go?” came a voice from the throng. On occasions such as this, it is not uncommon for an on-looker to ask if a photograph can be taken with them sitting in the car but the request not simply to climb aboard but to drive away too, around Silverstone, called for more nerve than I’d imagined one man could possess. This I continued to think, right up to the moment I identified the voice and then recognised the face from which it was coming.