Silverstone Classic – July 2007

Yesterday I was at Silverstone, in the UK, for one day of the three day Historic racing event…………….. What a fantastic day!

For a start, the weather was the best we have had for ages, with the rain waiting til we had finished eating our outdoors evening meal before it decided to dampen everything………. so my face is a little pink today! There were all sorts of interesting, unusual and very rare cars in evidence. I am saving some of the best for some “Name the car” contests (you have been warned!).

I doubt I have ever seen so many of the original Lotus Elite in once place, or so many Ferarris, or Porsches at once. We could have spend the whole day just looking at the club displays, with literally hundreds of interesting cars either grouped together or just lurking in odd corners somewhere……….but that would have meant missing out on the racing, which we were able to enjoy from whichever vantage point we chose, and we did try several including a couple of the grandstands, and, thanks to Piers’ connections from a hospitality suite with a glass of Pimms in hand.

There were several races with variety from Formula 1 cars from the 70s, to Group C Jags and Porsches, “saloon” cars from the 60s, and then some really classic 30s machinery. Although there were quite a few people there, you really could wander just about everywhere, including into most of the pit-lane garages………. which, of course we did. Apart from retracing our steps to get something to eat at lunchtime – a delicious and apparently genuine Cornish Pasty no less (note well, Capt’n!), we roamed around different exhibits and part of the track all day and still probably did not see everything. To round it all off, we managed to meet up with Sticky328, my namesake, for a very congenial chat over a couple of drinks and an excellent Thai green chicken curry. I took 200 photos.

Group C/GTP Cars lined up, ready for action:

.Into the pits:

.Tucked away behind the hospitality suites, we came across this:

.Some of the competitors, pausing for breath:

.Lots of Ferraris to see………. just about every model type produced in the last 35 years were there. More than 12 Dino’s, and plenty of others. There were crowds around the F40 earlier on, but later, when there was an Enzo there, it became the star attraction.

.There were even more Porsches than you could imagine, including 2 different Carrera GTs. A large number headed off at lunchtime to parade around the track, but the display area was still well populated.

.Good range of Maserati, too. Not sure about the Quattroporte in marker-pen yellow!

.Several classic Alfas, including a very rare Van.

.A few Lancias, too, including a sizeable gathering of the legendary Stratos.

.Completing the Italian theme were a couple of Iso’s, a Lele and a Rivolta Fidia. Very rare, both of these:

.BMWs were there, too. I am sure there will be far more pictures to come from next weekend’s festival at Gaydon, but here is a taster:

.A few Alpina’s, too, including a very rare E38 based B12 6.0 of which only 94 were produced, just 6 of them in RHD.

.A special showing of Kraft’s favourite car, the Citroen SM

.Nice to see a good showing from AC, especially since not all the cars were the Cobra. Here are some:

.Not to be outdone in the supercar stakes, there was a Jag XJ220 on display:

.A lot of the Astons that were present were competing, but some interesting static display cars, too, such as these:

.Other British classics were of course much in evidence. For some reason, I don’t seem to have captured any of the 30 or so early Lotus Elites, but there were plenty of other Lotus that I did photograph: