BRDC Classic

Silverstone sits on a flat former airfield on the Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire border, its criss-cross service roads still betraying the wartime bomber base underneath. It hosted the first Formula 1 World Championship race in 1950 and has been a fixture of British motorsport ever since. For one weekend in late July it hands the Grand Prix circuit over to the machines that built that history.

The 2026 edition runs from 24 to 26 July and is the inaugural BRDC Classic, the reworked replacement for the long-running Silverstone Classic after CarFest took over the August bank holiday slot. Delivered with the British Racing Drivers' Club, it debuts two new grids, GP Icons for Formula 1 cars from the sixties through the eighties and Endurance Icons for Le Mans-style prototypes, alongside established Motor Racing Legends series covering pre-war sports cars, touring cars and GTs.

The format keeps what made the old Classic worth the trip: open paddocks, wheel-to-wheel racing across every era on the full GP layout, and hundreds of cars on the car club display fields around the infield. Off-track there are driver Q&As and the Silverstone Auction. It is a working race meeting rather than a static show, and the sound of a 1980s turbo F1 car through Maggotts and Becketts is the reason to come.

Approaching from the south, leave the M40 at junction 10 and take the A43 toward Towcester, but the better final run is the back way in via Silverstone village and the B4525, which drops you at the circuit past the old aerodrome perimeter. Come in from the Cotswolds if you have the morning to spare, over the A422 through Banbury and the stone villages of south Northamptonshire.