Bentley Drivers Club - Silverstone 2026

The Bentleys That Refused to Sit Still

There are certain car events where the cars are there to be admired.

Polished paint. Perfectly presented interiors. Bonnet badges that have probably seen more microfibre cloths than miles.

Then there is the Bentley Drivers Club.

The 78th BDC Silverstone event was rather different.

We sent four of the Flying Spares team for the day, accompanied by a table full of freebies and not much else. No fleet of display cars. No elaborate stand. Just four of us, some coffee and a very good excuse to spend a day watching Bentleys being driven properly.

And that, as it turned out, was rather refreshing.

We're used to seeing these cars in a slightly different environment. At rallies and shows, it's often the finished product that takes centre stage. Perfect paintwork, immaculate interiors and engine bays that look considerably cleaner than most kitchens.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course.

But Silverstone offered a reminder of something that's surprisingly easy to forget when you spend your days surrounded by beautifully preserved Bentleys.

These things were built to move.

And some of them were built to move rather quickly.

The Bentley Blowers were perhaps the most obvious reminder. Born from Sir Tim Birkin's determination to extract more performance from Bentley's 4½ Litre, the supercharged cars became some of the most famous racing Bentleys ever built. They may be almost priceless pieces of automotive history now, but watching them being driven around Silverstone makes it considerably easier to understand what they were actually built for.

Not standing still.

The circuit itself probably needs little introduction. Silverstone began life as an RAF airfield before becoming one of the most important venues in British motorsport, and for one day the 78th BDC event filled it with an unusually broad collection of Bentley machinery.

The day's racing included the W.O. Bentley Duff/Clement Race, the BDC Handicap, Scratch and Pre-War races, and the Bentley Open & Allcomers Race. There were also Morgan races and FISCARs running between the Bentley sessions, but inevitably our attention kept drifting back towards the cars wearing the winged B.

What made it particularly enjoyable was seeing just how different these cars become once they're being driven in anger.

A beautiful Bentley sitting quietly on a show field can almost seem too refined to be a racing machine. Put one on a circuit, give the driver some space and suddenly you're reminded that underneath the leather, walnut and polished chrome is a considerable amount of engineering.

They're mechanical beasts.

And watching skilled drivers push them around Silverstone brought that side of the cars back into focus.

There was plenty of variety, too. From pre-war machinery through to much more modern Bentleys, including Phantom Motor Cars' heavily modified Continental GT race cars. They looked considerably more interested in lap times than concours points, and sounded the part too.

For Flying Spares, the day itself was fairly simple.

Four of us. One table. A selection of freebies.

And, somewhat unexpectedly, free coffee being served from the back of a pink Bentley Bentayga.

We're still not entirely sure how that happened, but we're certainly not complaining.

We caught up with familiar faces, met plenty of new ones and spent most of the day doing what these events are really about: talking about cars.

The BDC event has a slightly different atmosphere from some of the shows we usually attend. There's a very obvious enthusiasm for the cars themselves — not simply how they look, but how they work, how they drive and what they're capable of.

And that was probably what we enjoyed most.

We're used to seeing these cars looking their absolute best.

At Silverstone, we got to see them at their most alive.

For one day, the Bentleys weren't there simply to be admired.

They were there to be driven.

And they looked very much at home.