It is hard to imagine that the speed limit was only raised to a heady 20mph in 1903. With no motor sport activity allowed on British roads, Hugh Fortescue Locke King, a very wealthy local Brooklands estate owner, was convinced that the British motor industry was falling behind its European competitors, having no place for high-speed testing. He therefore planned and paid for the world’s first purpose-built banked motor racing circuit. The track opened on June 17, 1907.

It was not until 1926 that Henry Segrave proposed a grand prix in Britain following his victories in both the French and San Sebastián Grands Prix with his Sunbeam car. The race was run on August 7, 1926.

The track had become bumpy by the start of the 1930s. The surface was rough-cast uncoated concrete; the technology to use tarmacadam on the banking was not easily available. Nevertheless, John Cobb set the all-time lap record in 1934 at 143.44 mph.

With sponsorship and encouragement from Motor Sport magazine, Brooklands planned a celebration of the 1926 RAC Grand Prix for August 7, 2026. There were just nine starters for that first grand prix and only three would finish. Those starters were three French Delages, three French Talbots, one driven by Segrave, an Aston Martin, a Halford Special and Malcolm Campbell’s Bugatti. The race was a gruelling affair for the Delage drivers. Each suffered badly burnt feet and most had to stop to bathe their feet in buckets of cold water. Two of the Talbots retired with supercharger problems, the third with a damaged front axle. George Eyston retired the Aston Martin with a blown head gasket and Frank Halford retired his Halford with a broken prop shaft. After four hours the winners were Robert Sénéchal and Louis Wagner in their Delage 15 S 8, with Campbell second in his Bugatti 39A and Robert Benoist and André Dubonnet third in their Delage.

To celebrate the first running of a grand prix race in the UK, Mark Constanduros, Allan Winn and the Brooklands team had gathered more than 100 grand prix machines, from a sister car to the 1926 winning Delage to a 2024 Haas F1 racer. Some of the more modern cars and a few enthusiastic pre-war car owners were let loose on the Mercedes-Benz test track to the delight of all those who made the walk across the Brooklands site. V8s, V10s, V12s and the raucous BRM V16 reminded us what true grand prix cars used to sound like.

Comparisons in size, aerodynamic complexity and obscure sponsors are probably unfair but were obvious. And the spectators arrived – 1000 on the Friday and a sell-out 9000 on the Saturday. Not the tens of thousands seen at pre-war meetings but enough to ensure that this gem of a motor sport museum remains at the heart of racing 100 years after its first grand prix.