Classic Days Magny-Cours

The Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours sits in the quiet farmland of the Nièvre, in southern Burgundy, a long way from anywhere in particular. It hosted the French Grand Prix from 1991 to 2008, a fast, technical circuit dropped into the middle of rural France, and outside of race weekends the surrounding country stays empty and green.

The Classic Days take over the circuit on 24 and 25 April 2027. The format is the draw: this is a driving festival, not a static show, with free roulage sessions that put owners' own cars onto the Grand Prix track, grouped into plateaux by age and type, across the full weekend. Around two thousand collector cars fill the paddock and the Classic Park, and recent editions have run grids of historic Formula 1 and Le Mans prototypes alongside the amateur sessions.

What sets the tone here is access. The ticket includes the pit lane, the cars are out being used rather than polished and roped off, and the whole thing is pitched at families and budgets rather than collectors with chequebooks. It is not Le Mans Classic and makes no claim to be. The pleasure is in watching ordinary enthusiasts lap a real Grand Prix circuit in cars they actually drive, which is a rarer thing than it sounds.

The Nièvre rewards the drive in. East of the circuit the roads climb into the Morvan, a forested upland of empty D-roads and long sightlines that is among the best quiet driving in central France, with the loop up to Mont Beuvray a good morning's target. West, the Loire runs past Sancerre and Pouilly, and the river roads through the vineyards make an easy, slower counterpoint.