The celebration of 40 years of motor racing will make the Easter Monday meeting at Thruxton a very special event as the BARC organises a day of racing with a real feeling of nostalgia.

As well as the feature event for the Historic Formula 2 Trophy, other races will put sports-racing cars, saloon cars and single-seaters of the 1960s and 1970s into action in a very special meeting. After qualifying and two races throughout Sunday, racing will run all day on Easter Monday with the first race at 9.10am.

Back on Easter Monday 1968, Thruxton hosted its first major race meeting, focussed around races for the European Formula 2 Championship and it was young Austrian Jochen Rindt who won the main race as his career headed for the World Championship title in 1970. This Easter weekend's major trophy will celebrate Rindt's life and achievements. For more than 15 years, the Easter weekend meant F2 racing at Thruxton and many of the biggest names raced through until the middle 80s. Sadly, the cost of promoting a major international event then became prohibitive, and the F2 history at Thruxton came to a close. That was until Easter 2008, when the superb pan-European Historic F2 Trophy brings F2 cars of the 1960s and 1970s back to the track.

Monday's pair of F2 races will start the Historic F2 season and a fine international 26-car field will take to the high-speed sweeps of Thruxton. Both generations of period F2 cars, 1600cc and 2000cc, will share the grid and the 2-litre cars should be at an advantage, with drivers like Steve Maxted (Lola T360), David Gathercole (Chevron B25) and Swedish ace Bo Warmenius (March 772) heading the field. Maxted's car was a podium finisher in one of the F2 heats at Thruxton back in 1975 when raced by American Ted Wentz. With four Ford GT40s and two Lola T70 Spyders in the entry, the pair of races for the Sports Racing Masters series will be another absolute highlight. Add in the thundering McLaren M1 of Nick Whale and the Ferrari Dino 246S of Nick Adams and it should be a magnificent spectacle. Another mighty field will contest two races for the Top Hat Masters Pre '66 Saloons series. The second round of the Millers Oils Historic Formula Junior Championship is another rare sight at Thruxton as a fine grid of the rapid single-seaters built between 1958 and 1963 contest a race in the category's Golden Jubilee season. Also on an exceptional programme will be a double-header for the BARC Classic Clubmans Championship, a round of the 750MC Formula Vee Championship and the opening rounds of the Universal Racing Services Classic FF2000 and Classic FF1600 Championships, while a race for the excellent Healey Driver International Series completes the line-up.

On Sunday, qualifying starts at 10.45am, with the first of two races at 4.40pm.

On Monday, the first of eleven races is at 9.10am.