Simply the best

Another year, and another 10 contenders - or pretenders - line up for Britain's Best Driver's Car honours. Just don't mention the weather...

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Pastures new beckoned for this year's Britain's Best Driver's Car shootout - and that isn't something we've been able to say very often.

There are few UK motorsport circuits that BBDC hasn't visited before - mostly because this annual gathering of the year's best new enthusiast's cars, for a hedonistic few days of road and track driving, has such a long history.

Since the first running of 'Handling Day' in 1989 at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, we've been from Goodwood to Oulton Park, from Brands Hatch to Cadwell Park, west to Anglesey and north to Croft. Few corners of our sceptred isle have escaped a good hooning at our hands in one year or another.

It's not often, then, that there's a new circuit on which to descend. But even in these straitjacketed modern times, this year bore new fruit. And the tip of the cap for that goes to one Malcolm Wilson OBE, who made his M-Sport concern's excellent 2.5km track - the MS-EC, as its proprietors call it, open since 2022 at Dovenby Hall, Cumbria, our base.

Our well-practised formula played out.

We invited the year's 10 greatest driver's cars along with last year's defending champion, although one of the pretenders to the throne, the Morgan Supersport, was damaged prior to delivery, and regrettably couldn't take part.

Five judges spent a day on the Lake District's winding and scenic roads and then another day on track, after which they voted to decide Britain's Best Driver's Car 2025.

As it happened, some excessively autumnal weather impacted a little on how it all transpired. None of Cockermouth's residents was surprised to see heavy rain in October, but at least there were no floods. But a bit of mist and rain couldn't dampen the mood or prevent the glowing qualities of our field of contenders from shining through.