Since we last met I’ve had the privilege of racing in the Le Mans Classic, driving for Bentley in its own continuation supercharged ‘Blower’, a facsimile recreation of the car Sir Henry Birkin raced here in 1930. There are those who get unbelievably sniffy about such cars because they are new, without perhaps being aware of how common brand new cars are in the world of historic motor sport. But there are two big differences between the continuation Blowers and many other new cars that are effective clones of period racing machines. First, Bentley has never tried to conceal the fact the cars (for there are 12 customer cars as well) are new. Second, the Blowers are to the identical specification of the original. By contrast for many others the motivation to clone stems from being able to race a car with all manner of performance enhancing refinements without having to spoil the originality of their ‘real’ car.