Silverstone Festival Review

We weren't massively excited to go Silverstone this year but we had the tickets and we could justify not working on the cars or the house so we decided to head there on the Sunday.

We took the camper van and stayed on the outskirts of the lovely village of Broadway in the Cotswolds on the way, enjoying a great meal “best salad I’ve ever had” at the Broadway Hotel Saturday evening which was very reasonably priced.

We arrived at Silverstone just before lunch time and enjoyed some good weather for the day. Listening to other people talking, the Saturday was a bit of a washout at times with bad weather resulting in part of the schedule getting cancelled.

Last year we filled a day with looking around everything and catching a bit of the racing but this year, we struggled to fill four hours.

We both said that since it’s become “Silverstone Festival” it’s now too much of a festival, with big (ish) names playing the stage in the evenings contributing to overinflated ticket prices.  Don’t get me wrong, it was great to see lots of families about enjoying the event, but it’s gone really commercial, focussing more on ticket sales and not so much the cars and racing… but an event space that big needs filling I guess.

The quality of the vendors in the merchant’s village seems to have gone down a bit and less car related stuff too, giving it a bit of a Sunday market feel… carved garden ornaments, patio furniture and hot tubs didn’t feel like the right vibe for a weekend of motorsport.

Plenty of comments about the big gaps between the events on track and less cars in the paddock this year too.

There was a good variety of food (veggies well catered for) but I heard a few families saying how they thought it was really overpriced compared with previous years… not a cheap weekend when it’s billed as a family friendly event.

Without wanting to sound too down on it all, there were really enjoyable parts…

We sat on the bank in the sun overlooking the people in the F1 Village, watching the Dutch Grand Prix on the big screen, to the backdrop of historic F1 cars on track, which made for a great atmosphere!

The club cars were very well represented; some beautiful Porsches as always in the PCGB area and we took some pics of the large MX5 display to send to my cousin Amy – never seen so many in one place!

A large campsite adjoining Whittlebury Park Hotel & Spa was home for the night after Silverstone where we ventured into the hotel bar for a drink and ended up on a table with a couple from Derbyshire and soon got talking. It turns out we’d spotted Tim’s car on the PCGB stand – a rather rare 924S Le Mans, which had been restored in 2016 as part of the OPC restoration competition, a lovely car and lovely people, will definitely keep in touch!

I think for us, our Silverstone days are over – the smaller motorsport focussed events are where it’s at. However, if a weekend like this gets the next generation interested in cars, then it’s an event worth attending with the family.

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