Estoril Classics 2025 Coverage & Review – The good is still good, the bad is worse

With another edition of the Estoril Classics under our belt, it’s time to chime in with our very humble editorial two cents about how the event reinvented itself for 2025. It didn’t. In fact, we could just copy paste all our grievances with the Estoril Classics editions of the past four years and be done with it, if it weren’t for the fact that we actually have to add whole new ones this time.

As for the long standing issues, believe us, this is a thoroughly dead horse we’d to love to stop beating, but the thing has been laying on the road and nobody cares to pick it up and finally take the poor bastard to be buried. With that very wonky metaphor, what we mean is that year after year, the same problems keep an interesting event from being an amazing event. Estoril Classics is an exclusive guest affair which, for a fee, just happens to be partially accessible to the general public as well. Because of that very important distinction, it truly feels like the experience of said public at the event becomes entirely irrelevant to the organizers. This has unfortunately been a given, and access to cars and locations has also very much been at the whim and/or goodwill of the teams and their members. This year however, access was even tighter, as even the back of the boxes was closed to all non guests; we have no idea if this was a request from the teams to keep the work areas from being “invaded”, or if it was an option from the organizers to further privilege guests. Whichever the case, it was another loss for the general public and it meant that more people tried catching some of the action from the viewing area above the pit lane. Yet, as we mentioned in the past, this area keeps getting smaller as the guest areas keep being expanded; so what happens? Well, you end up losing all access to the balcony the minute there’s more than 30 or 35 people up there, as there were often 3, 4 rows of members of the public behind the ones actually managing to be in a position to see any racing, just waiting their turn to get to the front. We personally stood for more than an hour in two separate occasions, waiting for other people to leave so we could slowly get close enough to the balcony to actually watch something and take a few pictures. This is ridiculous and unacceptable. More than that, it’s downright offensive. Estoril Classics has always been an all weekend (or at the very least all day) affair for us, and this time we felt like leaving just a couple of hours after we’d arrived. It was that aggravating.

As an alternative, we made our way to a newly opened stand by the track, accessible by a bridge. Now, not being complete dummies we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to be on the bridge itself taking pictures, as everyone would congregate there doing the same thing; but the stairs leading up to it are exceedingly long and wide and there were only a few dozen people around that area anyway, so we stood essentially at the bottom, just five or six steps up, safely far away from the track and any security barriers, trying to get a couple of shots from a very slightly upper position, out of the way and not hindering access or movement in the slightest. That lasted for about 30 seconds before politely being told to leave. And you know what, chuck it up to safety concerns for whatever reason and as such, there was no fuss from us.

So we moved on to the end of the lane behind the boxes, just where the cars which stay at the tent area wait to get on to the track. There were security barriers, we got behind those. But apparently, that was a problem as well. Do you see the issue? If you don’t have VIP access, you’re left with mostly mediocre options and at that point, you might as well not purchase a ticket at all. Just get on to the grand stand which is open for free and in a very baffling turn of events, actually have a better spectator experience there than with your paddock ticket.

Look, it’s never our intention to pooh pooh the event or “woe is us” the thing, as we’re well aware that it is such a unique chance to see rare cars and even with the increasing admittance prices, it’s still cheap compared to other similar european events. However, it pains us that things have declined to this point, as we’re now extremely nostalgic of the way things were a few years ago, especially when the Automóvel Club de Portugal (ACP) was still involved; then, there was a sister event in the form of a stunning Concours d’Elegance, there were meets and greets and autograph signing sessions with very notable drivers, there were demonstrations, clubs which would be granted paddock access and display their cars, even do laps on track, most of the balcony area was accessible…etc, etc, etc. All lost to what’s now, at its core, a pretty bare bones affair.

Is seeing stuff like the 917K, the 512BB LM, the M1 Procar, the 935 and plenty of other legendary cars great? Absolutely, 10 out of 10. Are they worth struggling through all the limitations and being ticked off the whole time you’re looking at them? Perhaps. Perhaps not anymore. Right now, for us, it’s honestly unclear on which side of the question we’ll land for 2026.

As usual, we’ll leave you with some pictures of the race cars, some dealer vehicles on display at the site and the (in our opinion) best visitor’s rides that we came across in the parking lots.