Every Decibel of Your Motorsport Love: a Memory of a Three-day Racing Festival (Estoril Classics)

“Ton of fun.” – At ZBrownCEO

18 Months

It’s hard to believe but it’s been 18 months since we last visited a proper race track, in that sense Estoril Classics by Peter Auto represented a great opportunity to smell petrol again and you know, do the thing.

I mean nothing beats the thrill of a loud, nasty, smelly race car from the 1970s. My word, are those batmobile BMWs (BMW 3.0 CSL 1974) and Capris loud or what?! When you can’t hold a conversation in the pits, that’s a good sign. It was some kind of napalm for the ears.

This poor quality video footage is purely illustrative & for educational purposes only; we do not own rights to this footage. Yesterday we found delivered on our doorstep a USB pen containing mysterious (not McLaren) MP4 video files with a note (written in ancient Greek) attached to it saying, “Please, kind Sir, we beg thee to accept this gift. Feel free to post it on social media and suchlike. Whatever.”

Gurney Moment

Now I’m not comparing myself with the legend, far from it, but I did have a Gurney moment at the track – not spraying Ford execs with champagne, but rather when a man’s got to go he’s got to go. I’ve no idea what was it that I drank the night before but I literally had to stop the car and go 100 metres away from the tunnel access, there’s a nice green space there with vegetation and trees (will please any eco-activist), occasionally there’s a cow or two trying to attack you – not kidding.

Led Foot

Our main interest lay in the Heritage Touring Cup and we found ourselves just the perfect spot to watch from the Team TFT Racing garage – thanks for all your hospitality, you guys rock. Merci bien.

The #114 BMW 635 CSi 1983, Group A, driven by Jean-Lou RIHON and Nick PADMORE reminded us about how cool BMWs used to look, none of these monstrous supersized kidneys. Not a fan of BMW’s new design language, they don’t speak my language, for sure.

When Padmore gets involved you can expect only one thing – P1 across the board and that’s exactly what the boys did, finishing inside the top 10 of the main TC2 category and lapping at a demon pace. Huge congrats once again. That BMW produces so much noise and fumes, it makes you wanna drink racing fuel – I feel you, Esteban Ocon. Simply loved it.

All in all, I’d say Estoril Classics is one of those unmissable events for every age. Sometimes you need to let go of blooming smartphones and enjoy the moment. I think not having the Classics in 2020 in its traditional sense with the fans and proper atmosphere (because they raced behind closed doors) made everyone realize how much we’ve missed old-fashioned motor racing. Tweet what you wish about going digital and whatnot, I hope we can keep going like this for a few decades before the Nanny State kills off our access to excitement.

There was theatre, there was drama in the Heritage Touring Cup: a car stalled on the grid, Brundle takes the lead around the outside with a ballsy move in a damn expensive car, they’re wrecking on the main straight, Padmore breaks into the top 10, Zak Brown makes a daring pass for P5 on the last lap, last corner pretty much, getting all squirrelly. Ton of fun indeed.

Please check out our full gallery from this event by clicking this link.