After a nine month absence from Brands Hatch following Go Japan (which you can read my coverage of here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2020/09/14/go-japan-2020/ ) I was finally back for The Masters Historic Festival!
Of course, Covid remains an issue that we all have to contend with. The team at Brands Hatch are doing a wonderful job making sure that visitors were safe, by limiting the number of people in the venue and closing off certain areas where social distancing would be more difficult. The fans in attendance were also maintaining social distancing and being sensible. Even in popular areas like the inside of Druids, people were leaving a few feet between each other.
Despite the limitations, it was a really, really good day with both an interesting show and shine area and close racing across a number of classes.
We will head to the show and shine area first, where the Porsche club had a fantastic stand with a wide area of cars from across the brand’s history. Here are my personal highlights:
There were also a line of Corvettes from the C1 through to a C7 which arrived later in the day (not pictured):
The Ferrari Owners Club occupied their usual spot. It was nice to see both the stunning dark blue 250 GTE and the 250GT Lusso.
Alfa Romeo also had quite a large stand with vehicles ranging from the 1960s up to present day:
There was a nice line up of Ford GT40s too.
Away from the clubs there were also some superb cars on display. The DeTomaso Pantera for instance:
A stunning 1930s Ford saloon.
Lovely Jaguar SS100.
I’m not exactly sure what this is, but it’s quite unusual!
Lamborghini Diablo.
His and Hers’ Lotuses
R33 Skyline GTR
Finally we have a lovely pre-war Aston Martin.
On track there was a lot of great action. The highlight of the show was of course the historic Formula 1 cars. The six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 was a personal highlight for me, which you can see running here: https://www.tiktok.com/@richardfrancismsfmh/video/6968147222110194949?lang=en&is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v1&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6952843720828126725
The Masters Endurance Legends class was running for the first time at Brands Hatch this year and featured LeMans prototypes and GT cars from 1995-2016. I’ll be honest, I’ve had very little to do with endurance racing of that era, which is why it was such a treat to see the cars going round. It’s always nice to see something a little bit unusual!
Hopefully, once Covid is over and we are back to normal, I’ll be able to get into the paddock to get some close up pictures of these amazing machines!
Another class I really enjoyed was the Historic Sports Cars. There were some really good battles throughout the race! Sadly an accident caused quite a long safety car period, but thankfully the driver was fine.
All in all it was a really good day out. As I’m sure I’ve said when I’ve previously been to this event, Masters is well worth coming too, there are always interesting cars to see both on and off track. Brands Hatch have also been really good with their Covid safety, and if you want to get back to racing I’m sure they would love to see you in the near future! I’m planning to go back several times this year.
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By Richard Francis
