The Bentley Drivers Club annual race day at Silverstone promises to be the best yet.

The Bentley Drivers Club traditional annual Silverstone Race Day will take place on Saturday August 1st, with this year’s meeting being the Club’s 66^th consecutive event at the famous Northamptonshire circuit.

Known for its friendly and informal atmosphere, and a great favourite of competitors, marshals and spectators alike, ‘Bentley Silverstone’ has become a celebration of Club racing at its best, where all makes and models compete against each other in a fiercely amicable way.

On-track action for 2015 includes a Bentley Scratch race for pre-1966 cars, the pre-War Team Challenge and the Bentley Handicap race. Other marques will compete in the Aero Morgan Challenge Series, the MG ‘T’ Register, AC & Morgan Race and the Bic Healey Trophy & AC Team Challenge.

FISCAR will be keeping the spirit of Fifties sports car racing alive with a 30-minute pit stop race for one or two drivers, and two All comers races (Fast and Slow) and an Allcomers Scratch race including post-1966 Bentleys complete the programme.

It’s not just all the on-track on track action that makes BDC Silverstone a ‘must-do’ event for any Bentley enthusiast. Hundreds of non-racing Bentleys will also be on display and participating in the always-popular Club parade. This year the parade will mark special Bentley anniversaries for the S1, 60 years and Azure 20 years, and Continental GTs, fresh from their recent Continental Breakfast, will further swell the numbers.

Bentley to restart development on Mulsanne convertible.

Bentley's Mulsanne Convertible Concept is back on track.

Shown by Bentley CEO Wolfgang Duerheimer to a select few customers at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in 2012, the stately convertible was intended for production. But after Duerheimer's departure in 2012, his successor, Wolfgang Schreiber, killed the project.

"We will not do that car," Schreiber said at the Geneva auto show in March 2013, citing "just regional demand" and the lack of a business case.

Duerheimer returned to the Volkswagen Group's Bentley and Bugatti brands in April after less than a year as Audi's r&d chief and a brief stretch coordinating VW's motorsports activities. In February 2011, he had taken the helm at both brands for 19 months before being replaced by Schreiber.

Now that Duerheimer is back at the helm of Bentley, he has wasted no time resurrecting the convertible project.

"When I returned, I was a bit irritated by the fact that no work had been done on this project in two years," he said in Pebble Beach this month. "It is back on track."

A Mulsanne-based convertible, which could be called Azure, would target the upcoming Rolls-Royce Ghost-based convertible and the upcoming convertible version of the Mercedes-Benz S class.

Jens Meiners