Why Silverstone Festival is perfect setting to celebrate Senna

It’s a fabulous race meeting. But as is the trend these days, such an event is also so much more: a classic car gathering, a food festival, and a pop concert featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Busted, and Olly Murs.

Perhaps not aimed solely at those who know their Ralts from their Reynards, then.

Even so, just as he did in life, Senna will steal the limelight. Following a cool on-track demo at the Grand Prix de Monaco Historique in May and inevitably emotional tributes at Imola during the Emilia-Romagna GP, the Silverstone gathering will cap a summer of remembrance, focusing not on the tragedy but on what Senna brought to the world.

It was in June 1981 that he made his Silverstone debut. His reputation from karting – a period of his life that will also be represented in the Silverstone Festival collection – was already formidable. But hardened FF1600 racer Rick Morris was never going to be intimidated.

He jumped the old Woodcote chicane on the last lap after a classic Silverstone slipstreamer to defeat the upstart.

The next year, Senna raced at Silverstone three times in his bewinged Dennis Rushen-run Van Diemen FF2000 – and won each time. Then in 1983, in a Dick Bennetts-run Ralt, he tore through British Formula 3 (although plucky Martin Brundle gave him a run for his money in the second half of the year).

Back then, the F3 schedule was incessant. Senna racked up six victories at Silverstone alone.

The Van Diemens and his F3 Ralt are all promised for the Festival. Then we get to the F1 cars. In 1983, Senna was hot stuff for F1 teams. He tested for McLaren, Brabham and most famously Williams, driving an FW08C at Donington Park.

That very car will be in the Silverstone lineup. But like the other big teams, Williams passed on signing Senna for 1984 – d’oh! – which is why he ended up in a Toleman.

It was at Silverstone in the autumn of 1983 that Senna sampled the British minnow’s TG183B, immediately gelling with mercurial designer Rory Byrne, who urged his team chief, Alex Hawkridge, to snap up the young man.

After a tortuous contract negotiation – even then Senna knew his own worth – Senna made his F1 debut for Toleman in 1984. At his second race, in South Africa, he scored his first world championship point, finishing sixth despite losing his car’s nose and having to be lifted from the cockpit, such was his dehydrated state of exhaustion. Both the Silverstone test chassis and his first F1 race car are on the Silverstone Festival list.

As you would expect, a grand lineup of Dayglo and white McLarens and mid-1980s Lotus turbos will cap the display and some of them are expected to take part in on-track parades on the Saturday and Sunday.