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Silverstone hosted, in the vicinity of hangars that once housed fighter airplanes, the first Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix in 1950 and, over the years, has established itself as ’The Home of the British Motorsport’. Last weekend, this homey feeling was in the rain-dampened air as Silverstone welcomed hundreds upon hundreds of historic racing cars that arrived for the annual celebration of vintage motorsport that is the Silverstone Classic. We were there to see it all unfold and we’re already making arrangements for next year – and you should be close behind!
If you are keen to browse through the classifieds in automotive magazines from 40 or so years ago, you’ll find plenty of interesting racing cars selling for nothing or close to nothing, while those same cars are out of the reach for most of us mortals. You could, for instance, buy an unlovedFerrari 250 GTO (yes, that GTO) for the equivalent of $51,000 in the late ’60s. Likewise, four or five decades ago, historic racing was seen as a weird way to spend your weekends. Who’d want to waste their time trying to bring back to running order some old, outdated race cars when new ones were the talk of the town? But, as it happens, people started appreciating these old cars more and more and, by the early ’80s, historic racing started to become a thing.
It’s been over three decades since then and now, historic motorsport events are some of the most popular in the world with venues such as Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca, Daytona International Speedway, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps or, indeed, Japan’s Fuji circuit, all hosting race meetings reserved for cars of a certain vintage. It’s big business nowadays and the cars are maintained to the highest standards, just like modern ones are, and they’re also safer than ever – to ensure that you can actually push them to their limits without fearing (that much) for your life, as you would’ve back in the day. Among European historic racing events, the Silverstone Classic is considered to be the biggest, attracting thousands of fans and cars every year for over
20 years, so we had to be there to see it all for ourselves – and to report it back to you.
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