Birthdays, if they are to be properly observed, ought to involve petrol, history and at least a hint of Grand Prix theatre. This year, mine did. My wife presented me with a ticket to the Silverstone Museum and a session on its Formula 1 simulator; a thoughtful combination that neatly joined nostalgia with speed. Silverstone’s museum has long been on my list, and to remove the indignity of a pre-dawn start, she also booked me into the nearest Travelodge to the circuit. Civilisation, in other words, would prevail before the racing fantasies began.
Rather than make a simple dash for Northamptonshire, I elected to turn the weekend into a small motoring pilgrimage. Setting off late on Friday morning, I broke the journey at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, one of my favourite stopping places and, not least, a familiar home for the Jaguar Breakfast Club and the Jaguar Heritage Collection. The run south was agreeably unhurried: the M6 and M6 Toll dispatched with ease, the inevitable disorder of the M42 endured, and then at last the M40 opened out ahead with that rare and welcome sense of road, space and possibility.
The signs for ‘Historic Warwick’, then Stratford-upon-Avon, came and went before Gaydon announced itself. The museum sits beside Jaguar Land Rover’s vast engineering complex – a modern centre of design, research and development, complete with proving facilities and all the apparatus required to shape the company’s future machinery. Yet the ground itself belongs as much to Britain’s past as its industrial present, for this was once RAF Gaydon, a V-bomber station whose purpose was of a sterner kind altogether. Nearby, Aston Martin also keeps a foothold, so the area feels steeped in that particularly British mixture of invention, ambition and mechanical seriousness.
After parking outside, I climbed to the first-floor café for lunch before descending into the exhibits. One of the quiet virtues of the British Motor Museum is that it never feels static; the display evolves, so each visit offers something fresh. On a previous trip, the wonderful absurdity of FAB 1 – created by Ford for the 2004 live-action Thunderbirds film – had shared space with other cinematic curiosities, including the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine and Judge Dredd’s Land Rover City Cab. This time, I only caught a glimpse of FAB 1 tucked away in the workshop, presumably undergoing the sort of routine attention even fantasy machinery occasionally requires. The museum was pleasingly quiet, which made it ideal for an unhurried wander among the exhibits, camera in hand, stopping to study the showcards and the details that so often reward a second look. I also spent half an hour in the vintage cinema watching a contemporary film about the 1958 Monte Carlo Rally – a reminder that rallying, once upon a time, could appear almost gentlemanly, even if the competition beneath the surface was every bit as real as in today’s flat-out WRC era.
From there, I wandered across to the Jaguar Heritage building, where a conversation with one of the volunteers drifted pleasantly through the subject of Jaguar design across the decades. Then came a small moment of recognition: an original 1960s S-Type in Frost Blue, looking for all the world like Jasper Junior’s grandfather. Encounters such as that are among the quiet pleasures of places like Gaydon – the sense that motor cars are not merely exhibits, but members of a sprawling and characterful family tree.
After that, it was only a short hop to the Travelodge, where I turned in for the night with Silverstone waiting for me in the morning.
Saturday arrived bright and clear. After checking out, I made the brief 10-minute run to Silverstone and its museum – to one of the great names in British motor sport, and to the next chapter of a thoroughly satisfactory birthday weekend.
For all its modern development, arrival at Silverstone still carries a distinct sense of occasion. The place sits at the heart of what the world now knows as Motorsport Valley, that dense and remarkable concentration of racing talent spread across Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. Turning left at the roundabout for the museum, I passed the Formula 1 strongholds of McLaren and Aston Martin, while from beyond the buildings came the unmistakable hard-edged sound of competition machinery at full cry. Having parked, I made my way inside and, after my ticket was scanned, went upstairs to begin the visit. The first room was staged like a starting grid, markings laid out on the floor beneath dimming lights. A short film traced racing cars and bikes through the decades and, when the automatic doors finally parted at the far end, it felt less like entering a museum than being waved forward into the sport’s own slipstream.
The museum sensibly begins by reminding visitors that Silverstone’s story did not begin with racing. Among the earliest strands is that of Luffield Priory, founded in the 12th century. Although most of its lands and buildings lay in Buckinghamshire, the church itself stood in Northamptonshire, which meant it was the Archdeacon of Northampton who inducted its priors. The small community of monks lived a life of prayer, husbandry and hospitality, tending crops and offering rest to travellers passing through the district. Then came the Black Death in 1346, which struck the priory as it did so much of Europe, and by the close of the 15th century Luffield had been dissolved. It is a long way, in every sense, from monastic seclusion to Grand Prix thunder, but Silverstone’s ground has been accumulating history for rather longer than its modern fame might suggest.
The modern chapter began during the Second World War, when the Silverstone site was developed as an RAF airfield. It became home to No. 17 Operational Training Unit of No. 92 Group, Bomber Command, where Vickers Wellingtons were used to train bomber crews for the grim business of war. The RAF remained until 1960, but motor racing had arrived well before then. From 1948, the perimeter roads began their second life as a racing circuit and, in 1950, Silverstone staged the world’s first Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix. Giuseppe “Nino” Farina won that race in his Alfa Romeo, with King George VI among those watching; a moment that firmly established Silverstone as a central theatre of British motor sport.
The route through the museum then drops once more into the main exhibition hall, and here Silverstone’s story broadens into a richly varied parade of machinery. A 1980s Rover SD1 touring car stands shoulder to shoulder with a 1960s Lotus Formula 1 car, a 21st-century Oreca Le Mans prototype and the cadet kart once raced by a young Lando Norris — a neat compression of decades of competition into a single room. Around them sits an equally absorbing spread of memorabilia: race suits and helmets worn by celebrated drivers, trophies, programmes from famous meetings, and a strong array of interactive displays. Screens devoted to tyre development, aerodynamics, gearbox design and the long march of safety innovation ensure that the museum does more than present motor racing as spectacle; it explains, clearly and engagingly, how the sport has evolved.
There is also a strong roll-call of Formula 1 machinery driven by some of the sport’s most familiar names: Williams cars associated with Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill, Jenson Button’s 2009 Brawn BGP001, David Coulthard’s 1998 McLaren, and more recent machines raced by Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo. For anyone of a certain disposition, it is the sort of line-up that encourages a slower step and a longer look. Particularly striking was a beautifully executed recreation of Ferrari’s 156 ‘Sharknose’ of 1961, one of the most evocative of early rear-engined Grand Prix cars. The originals, notoriously, were ordered scrapped by Enzo Ferrari in 1962, which lends even a faithful reconstruction a certain ghostly fascination.
At this point I broke for lunch in the museum café, tucked away at the rear of the building and blessed with a fine view over the kart circuit and, beyond it, the main track itself. Silverstone was alive with club racing that afternoon: saloon cars, Caterham Sevens and a handful of Ultima-style machines circulating in the middle distance, their noise providing a most agreeable accompaniment to lunch. It was difficult not to smile at the menu’s inspired offering of a ‘Gerhard Burger’ – the sort of joke that, in such surroundings, feels entirely appropriate.
After another circuit of the displays, the time came to report for my simulator session. Once strapped in and wearing the headset, I elected to use the manual setting rather than leave matters to the automatic mode, which meant a brief reacquaintance with the paddle-shift arrangement: right to change up, left to change down. Anthony Davidson – Formula 1 driver, Le Mans winner and television analyst – guided us onscreen through the controls and read-outs with brisk authority. Then the briefing was over, the virtual pitlane beckoned, and it was time to head out and confront Silverstone for myself.
The first surprise was the weight of the steering. In today’s power-assisted road cars, direction changes can feel almost casual; not so here. Even in simulated form, the effort required gave some small hint of the physicality demanded by a modern Formula 1 machine. There was also the matter of the paddles, which rotate with the wheel and can quickly confuse the uninitiated. More than once, I found myself changing up when I meant to go down. But gradually the rhythm began to come, the circuit started to make sense, and in the end, I recorded a lap of 1min 35.7sec – not the quickest of the day, certainly, but respectable enough to preserve a measure of self-respect.
The route out of the exhibition deposits visitors, as these places so often do, through the gift shop, and after yielding to a few entirely necessary purchases, I turned north for home. By then, the bright spring sunshine had begun to fade; the sky thickened steadily, and the rain finally arrived near Keele Services. It did nothing, however, to dilute the satisfaction of the weekend. Another long-held ‘bucket list’ item had been struck from the list. As for what might follow next year, Le Mans has a rather persuasive ring to it…
