What to look out for at the 2025 Silverstone Festival

The Silverstone Festival, formerly known as the Classic, is one of the highlights of the international historic racing calendar.

The event has grown hugely over the past three decades and now encompasses many attractions, from music shows to multiple classic car club displays, but the on-track action remains at its heart.

The focus of the 2025 edition, which takes place across 22-24 August, will be 75 years of the world championship for drivers, but there are plenty of other things to look out for. Here are our likely highlights.

Celebrating F1 at 75

It is 75 years since the inaugural round of the Formula 1 world championship ran at Silverstone in May 1950 and a celebration of those seasons will be a central pivot of this weekend’s Festival.

A car from the career of each of the 34 world champions to date will be on show within a unique display in the international paddock.

The display will take the F1 story from Giuseppe Farina to Max Verstappen via the greatest names in the sport, and a fabulous line-up will show just how grand prix racing has evolved across three quarters of a century.

The World Champions Collection will be an unrivalled gathering of cars to trace the careers of many of the sport’s greats.

PLUS: The F1 extravaganza at Silverstone’s very special celebration

500cc Formula 3

The sole support race for the 1950 British Grand Prix was a race for 500cc Formula 3 cars, some of the earliest race cars to become active after the Second World War. And the diminutive machines also featured on Autosport magazine’s inaugural cover in August that year!

As part of the world championship celebrations, the 500 F3 movement joins the race line-up for the first time with what is thought to be a record grid for these quirky but fascinating early single-seaters.

A capacity grid of 54 cars plus eight reserves will make an incredible spectacle, although with only a single 15-minute race on Sunday they won’t get too many racing laps. Inevitably, Coopers dominate numerically but a wild and wonderful array of cars, including some one-offs, will give a real flavour of how racing got going again in the immediate post-war years.

The return of Group C

Back on the Festival schedule after a gap of several years is a race for Group C cars under the wing of Masters Historic Racing. This is the start of a bold initiative by Masters to recreate a viable race series for these evocative 1980s sports-racing cars and the rather slender grid represents a modest start compared to the 30-car grids that once graced the Saturday evening slot at the Festival.

Notable entries include former F1 racer Thierry Boutsen in a Rondeau M382 and all-rounder Allard Kalff, who shares the Spice SE92 of fellow Dutchman Michiel Campagne.

Sadly, Porsche, Jaguar and Sauber are all absent from the grid at this point but these are early days in the bid to coax these cars back into competition.

Jan Magnussen – Van Diemen RF78

Photo by: JEP

A busy Jan Magnussen

Danish racer Jan Magnussen has quite an affinity with Silverstone and will be back this weekend to drive three very different cars during the Festival weekend.

Magnussen cut his teeth in British Formula Ford and Formula 3, before two seasons of F1 and then a long career in GTs and touring cars.

He even made a return to Formula Ford last November to take part in the Walter Hayes trophy at Silverstone.

The 52-year-old, who raced a Turner GT at last year’s event, will show his versatility by racing a seven-litre Ford Galaxy from 1963, a Group C2 Tiga GC286 and a thundering Lola T70 Mk3B. The 1969 Lola gives him his best chance of victory, as he shares with the talented historics racer Chris Ward.

Tin-top stars in heavy metal

The race for Masters pre-1966 touring cars under the Transatlantic Trophy banner has a star-studded line-up, including former Olympian Chris Hoy, who shares Marco Attard’s Ford Falcon, and Chris Harris and Marino Franchitti in a Ford Mustang.

Three-time British Touring Car champion Matt Neal partners his son Henry in their Lotus Cortina, while category regulars Sam Tordoff (Ford Falcon Sprint) and Guy Smith (Lotus Cortina) are two likely contenders for victory. Max Chilton joins the fray in a Lotus Cortina and Aimee Watts, daughter of former touring car star Patrick, is one of a gaggle of Mini Cooper S drivers.

The 16-strong Lotus Cortina squadron will be glorious to watch but American muscle will surely seize the upper-hand on Silverstone’s wide open spaces.

Peugeot 908

Photo by: JEP

Modern ‘historic’ machinery

A growing feature of the Festival is the races for more recent sports, prototype and GT cars – and the package grows further this year with the addition of the new Motor Racing Legends GT3 contest.

The dedicated GT3 race joins two grids from Masters as the Endurance Legends contest takes in prototypes as well as GT cars and the Masters GT Trophy caters for recent GT4 machinery. In total, four of the weekend’s races will be for cars from the current millennium, reflecting a growing trend within historic and classic racing.

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The Endurance Legends grid is a headliner, with a stunning array of prototypes, including the Audi R18 of Nicky Pastorelli, the Peugeot 908 of Steve Brooks and several Pescarolos.

These prototypes make a tremendous spectacle, headlights ablaze, on a circuit that allows them to really stretch their legs. Can anyone break Tim da Silva’s lap record of 1m44.057s (125.9mph), set in an OAK-Pescarolo in 2023?

Lotus on show

As may be expected, Lotus features prominently in the display of F1 across 75 years cars, with four examples of the design genius of Colin Chapman.

The earliest Lotus on show is the 1963 25 chassis R4 in which Jim Clark dominated the 1963 season, including winning at Silverstone, on his way to his first world crown.

Two iconic Lotus 72s in Gold Leaf and John Player liveries honour the titles of Jochen Rindt (1970) and Emerson Fittipaldi (1972), while Mario Andretti’s 1978 title-winning Lotus 78 represents the start of F1’s first ground-effect era.

Emerson Fittipaldi, Lotus 72D Ford

Photo by: Rainer Schlegelmilch / Getty Images

Top 10: Lotus F1 cars

There will, of course, be plenty of Lotus machinery battling it out in various races across the weekend. It all adds up to a fitting tribute to a man who influenced grand prix car development across more than two decades. Although it is 43 years since the death of Colin Chapman, his legacy lives on.

V8 thunder in the Derek Bell Trophy

Back on the Festival schedule after sitting out last season is a pair of races for the Derek Bell Trophy, a catch-all series for powerful single-seaters of the 1970s and early-1980s.

The Formula 5000s are the headliners and a gaggle of them will chase regular race winner Michael Lyons in his Lola T400. F2, Formula Atlantic, F3 and even Formula Ford 2000 cars pack out the 30-strong grid.

Mark Charters in his March 782 should lead the charge from the under two-litre brigade and Alex Kapadia will be in the mix in his March 762, as will Graham Ridgway in his earlier 742. All three Marches are F2 cars.

Notable Formula Atlantics, which will struggle for outright pace with only 1600cc on tap, include the March 74B of the under-rated Tom Smith, who spends most of his time preparing cars for customers rather than racing.

The versatile Jake Hill

Current British Touring Car champion Jake Hill is one of the UK’s top national racing drivers but also has an affinity with the sport’s past and is a regular in historic racing whenever his schedule allows.

Hill’s pace and ability to adjust to more fragile racing cars than the current BTCC tools make him a popular choice as a co-driver and he has three slots this weekend alongside car owners.

Jake Hill, Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport BMW 330i M Sport

Photo by: JEP

In the pre-1966 Touring Car contest he will share the Ford Mustang of Colin Sowter and will be a significant contender. In the GT Trophy Hill is out in an Aston Martin Vantage GT2 and then switches to a Nissan GT1 for the Masters Endurance Legends contest.

Hill loves the chance to race anything and these three cars are real career stand-outs.

Rouse award

Touring car legend Andy Rouse will be celebrated at the Festival with the award of the Andy Rouse Trophy for the highest-placed Ford Sierra in Sunday’s MRL Historic Touring Car Challenge race.

This year marks 50 years since Rouse’s first British Saloon Car title and 40 years since the first appearance of the Sierra in what is now known as the British Touring Car Championship.

The Historic Touring Car grid will be another of the weekend’s highlights, with more than 40 cars spanning the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. At least five Sierra Cosworth RS500s will chase the special award, including the car shipped from New Zealand for the occasion by Scott O’Donnell.

Paul Mensley and Michael Lyons will share Mensley’s car and make a very strong pairing, while Julian Thomas is likely to go solo in his example and will be right in the mix.

PLUS: The top 10 touring cars of the Group A era