Having seen 200,000 visitors attend its festive Lap Land event last year, Silverstone will open up to the public once again in December to enable visitors to not only drive a lap of the Grand Prix Circuit and enjoy a festive light show on the way, but also ice skate in areas including the Formula One pit lane.

Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle told Access that the Lap Land event was one of the high points of an otherwise difficult pandemic period last year, and that it will be repeated in December with the aim of attracting around 500,000 people.

The event will be rebranded Lap Of Lights and will run from 1 December to 3 January. Pringle said that having had 53,000 cars at the event last year he expects around 85,000 cars to be driven around the circuit during this year’s festive period. He also expects the additional entertainment to prove popular.

“We’re planning on putting in ice skating rinks so people can I skate down the Formula One pit lane and through the Formula One garages. We’re going to create an Alpine chalet-style hospitality offering in the paddock club space, where we hope will be hosting a lot of people.”

Lap of Lights is currently being planned as a full capacity event without social distancing but Pringle said the event had already proven hugely successful with mitigation measures in place: “The fall back position is if Covid bounces back and the country gets shutdown again we know we can run it in a Covid compliant manner, so at the very least it will be as we ran it last year.”