The British Grand Prix
Built in 1943 midway between Towcester and Brackley, in the middle of England, RAF Silverstone was one of many wartime airfields that dotted the flatter parts of England and were home to bomber command and their fighter support squadrons. Built for Lancasters, Halifaxes, Liberators and Flying Fortresses, when the war ended these places were ideal for motor racing clubs; big open spaces, not being used for much, away from Nimby neighbours, with hard wearing concrete, and plenty of room for spectators. In typical British stoic fashion these spectators could ignore the wind and weather that blew in across the fields and enjoy the show no matter how much drizzle blew into their faces. In a few years after the end of war the old airfield was transformed into the new home of the British Formula 1 Grand Prix, a role it would make it's own by the end of the century.
Silverstone was kept up to date with each era; new pits, new corners, bigger grandstands and sculpted grass viewing banks to raise up the public to see more than concrete and fields. With all these additions the place never quite disguised it's large windswept space, and still does not after yet another revamp in the 21st century. In recent years the circuit's place on the calendar has often come into question - not, it must be said, because of the track, but more because of the facilities. Pressure from the powers that be have added more roads to ease the horrific race day traffic jams that were once endemic as a quarter of a million people tried to get into a former air force base intended for a few thousand. The A43 connecting the M1 with the M40 is now dual carriageway all the way, mostly because of Silverstone. Once in there is plenty of room for the crowds as the site is twice the size would be if it was built from scratch today as a three mile racing circuit. Today the track would loop back in on itself with none of the spirit of adventure and speed that comes with heading off over the horizon to lap the whole perimeter far from the pit lane. Modern commercial demands mean that the old pit garages have now been supplanted by The Wing - a giant new multistorey construction complete with the requisite corporate boxes and conference facilities that are de-rigour in modern F1 venues. Tellingly, there is no tunnel under the track to connect the new edifice with the spectator car parks on the outside of the course. Why would there be after all, ordinary members of the public are not welcome in the Wing during the GP. Despite the encroachment of the bland soulless money-no-object world of modern sponsorship that defines modern motorsport, Silverstone is still a highlight of the year. The drivers love it, and it usually hosts one of - perhaps the best - crowd of the year.
The British GP began with Brooklands, the large concrete speed bowl built in Surrey in 1907. It's huge open infield meant that Brooklands was just as much a Mecca for flyers as drivers and soon the place was the place to be to go fast on the ground and the air. Since racing was not permitted on public roads as it was on the continent and Ireland then Brooklands was the only place that a major British motor race could be held. The first British Grand Prix was held in 1926 at Brooklands and was won by the French Delage team drivers Robert Senechal and Louis Wagner. The next year another Delage won in the hands of Robert Benoist. (Nearly two decades later Benoist was part of the French resistance with Grover-Williams, the first Monaco GP winner, and both eventually paid for their heroic efforts with their lives). The whole Brooklands site was requisitioned during the war and racing never came back when hostilities ceased, instead becoming the home base of the Vickers aircraft company and eventually a part of the banked speedway was removed to allow the Valiant nuclear bombers to take off.
No official British GP was held in the thirties but a de-facto event came to be Donington Park near Derby in the English Midlands. The circuit came be thanks to the efforts of local motorbike racer and garage owner Fred Craner, who established a 2 mile course in the grounds of Donington Hall, an 18th century country house. Once upon a time such an intrusion would have seemed unthinkable to the aristocracy but by the 1930s many country estates were no longer seats of endless untouchable wealth but holes that ate cash for upkeep and staff. So a race meeting was quickly taken up by the owners, first with motorcycles on gravel tracks and then cars on a new tarmac surface. The event scored a major coup with the mighty German cars coming across the channel in 1937. The race was a total rout for the foreigners, but nobody minded too much as the giant Mercedes and Auto Union cars made for a spectacular sight roaring and screaming around the genteel English park. The young genius Bernd Rosemeyer won in 1937 aboard the Auto Union - his last win before his untimely death in January 1938 in a speed record attempt.
By 1938 the awe of the Germans was tempered somewhat by the political situation in Europe. Hitler's armies were threatening to invade Czechoslovakia and the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was engaged in frantic diplomacy to avert all out war. The event was postponed from the start of October but when the PM returned from Munich on September 30th with an appeasement agreement declaring 'Peace in our time' the war clouds seemed to draw back and the German cars again came over to Donington. This time the great Italian Tazio Nuvolari won, again for Auto Union, but of course Hitler had no intention of honouring the peace agreement and by October 1939 the Germans were much more than just teutonic rivals with powerful cars.
During the war Donington became a military camp and training ground but racing did not come back when the war was over. Donington's track was composed from narrow roads around a country estate. It ran through a single track brick arch, between farm houses and along a wooded glade, and already it belonged in the past. When the Royal Automobile Club planned for a revival of the British Grand Prix in 1948 they eyed up the wartime airfields. In time RAFs Thruxton, Snetterton, Castle Combe, Croft and Goodwood all became racing circuits in their own right, some seeing top level Formula One action during the 1950s and '60s. In another history the home of the British Grand Prix would have been RAF Snitterfield, near Stratford-Upon-Avon. Another large site (still a grass airfield used by a gliding club) it was shortlisted, but eventually Silverstone won the day. Funnily enough the place was a home base for Vickers Wellington bombers, designed at first flown at Brooklands.
A course was laid out over the base's perimeter roads; a large crooked rectangle with a sharper triangle hairpin corner. To increase the length and make full use of the space, two V-shaped diversions took drivers down the runways. To solve the obvious problem that drivers on one section would be running face to face with the opposite section they erected a large black curtain suspended on rails. Even by 1940s standards of safety - where the spectators were 'protected' by a rope and the course marked out by stout oil drums filled with sand - this solution to solve the problem by blocking it from the driver's view was seen as less than ideal. For this and other reasons they didn't stick with one of the runway diversions the next year. The runways took the cars far away from the spectators and a speeded up the circuit was thought to be more exciting. Good entries were received in both years, with both races being won by pre war Maserati's in the hands of Luigi Villoresi and Emmanuel de Graffenreid respectively. The shortening of the lap led to the familiar names still in use today. The north west turn was the fastest and widest; Woodcote. Next came Copse at the east. Then Maggotts and the relatively tight triangle at Becketts. The Hangar straight followed along the longest edge into Stowe and then Club. The last challenge was the very fast left at Abbey as they swept past the old farmhouses on the inside and under an access bridge into Woodcote again.
May 13th 1950. The first round of the new World Drivers Championship and Silverstone had the honour of hosting - perhaps because the previous two years had shown that a very healthy crowd could be guaranteed. Ironically the entry was a few cars short of the 1949 race, even though the greater prize was now there. The race was boosted by a few British hopefuls. Among the British racers who gathered that day to start were hillclimber Joe Fry, Sheffield garage owner Cuthbert 'TC' Harrison, Scottish accountant David Murray (founder of the Ecurie Ecosse team later to win the Le Mans 24 Hours with Jaguar), furniture builder Geoffrey Crossley, English Racing Automobiles owner and sports car regular Leslie Johnson, and David Hampshire, who had first seen top level racing action in 1939 just as the racing kept to a stop. The lineup also featured an Irish motor and property trader named Joe Kelly.
What a different world it was in 1950. England was a place of rationing and bomb damaged cities. The world was without television sets, jet airliners, rock'n'roll, birth control pills, credit cards, or Sputnik. The train traveller sat behind a steam locomotive, and the car driver did not drive to London via a motorway. The foreigners in their red cars were exotic outsiders, and in the shadow of wartime ruin, often people to treat with suspicion. Patriotism was high in the crowd, and still a thing that most people took for granted. Royalty were on the way to the race and it was only five years since many of the Italians and Germans would have been thrown in prisoner of war camps rather than welcomed to the races. The King, the Queen mother, and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, travelled to rural Northamptonshire by train and then limousine, which took a sedate lap of the circuit before delivering the party to a special podium - one of several - where they could watch the race.
As well as royalty another big draw for the multitudes was the promise of catching a sight of the new BRM car. British Racing Motors - given the country's previous record in the field, not a name to inspire much expectation. The two Donington Grands Prix had been spectacular but also a massacre of the home grown entries and their pride. The early years of racing after the war had been an Italian benefit as for obvious reasons the dominant German cars of the 1930s were nowhere to be seen (Through a couple made their way to the Indianapolis 500 in private hands). British enthusiasts were used to playing catch up to Maseratis and Alfas, but of the stories coming from RAF Folkingham (BRM's home base) were true then, in theory at least, the BRM had them licked.
The front running 'Alfetta' 158 dated to 1938, even with a new supercharger adding power it was a fundamentally dated car. Taking after the pre war Mercedes and Auto Unions, the BRM approach was to be brute force. A V16 engine promised 600 horsepower, much of the oomph coming from a Rolls Royce supercharger. What sounded so good on paper was a little harder to get to work on the race track. The supercharger- being a aeroplane-derived model - simply kept shoving as the engine gained speed. The driver had power- too much power. The thin tyres could not keep with the engine and spun away the grip even at terrifyingly high speeds. 'Teething troubles' the BRM people thought, and the car would not be racing at the event, merely doing a demonstration.
Meanwhile there were some British cars to cheer, even in, in the words of recollection years later of driver Reg Parnell the 'race' was more a case of starting at the same time as the Alfas and driving around behind them. At least there were four 158s to provide a bit of a race between them, including a guest spot for Parnell, a top British driver of the time, (would that there could be as many cars from one team today when one car is dominant). The battle at the front was between Juan Manuel Fangio and Giuseppe Farina, the two undoubted top drivers in the Alfas. They traded the lead several times during the race until Fangio's oil line sprung a leak and he coasted to a smoky halt at the pitwall with eight laps to go. Farina won after just over two hours of racing, Luigi Fagioli and Parnell rounded out the top three in their 158s. TC Harrison, David Hampshire and Joe Fry all finished in the top ten - and technically they could all claim to have 'beaten' the retired Fangio.
The BRM V16 would be back to conquer all at the International Trophy race in August. One of the curiosities of the earlier decades of the World Championship is how many non-championship races there remained (and championship races tended to be called
Grandes Epreueves by the cognoscenti to distinguish them from the ordinary races). Back when travel wasn't quite so effortless and many entrants worked on a shoestring budget there could never be a large calendar of races that counted for the points without simply handing the trophies to whomever turned up for all the races. The entry for the 1950 Silverstone International Trophy was just as good as for the Grand Prix, (and included a young lad named Stirling Moss who finished 6th) and the race again fell to Farina. Two of the V16 BRMs arrived in Northamptonshire but only one started in one of the heat races. The official race programme, perhaps anticipating disappointment, reassured the public that temperamental problems were to be expected during the development of such an ambitious thoroughbred. In the hands of French driver Raymond Sommer the V16 bellowed an almighty mechanical racket from its cackling exhausts as it sat on the start line. Sommer, in his forties, had years of racing experience, but none of it was required as the BRM promptly went nowhere as the flag dropped. The transmission had broken. The sight of the 'pride of British engineering' lasting a few noisy feet of 'racing' was perhaps a precursor to the lingering disappointments that the ever more sluggish and complicated British car industry's efforts would bring in the coming thirty years. But by contrast the species of dark green British racing car that seemed so hopeless in 1950 would soon complete a remarkable turnaround and forever banish the embarrassment most of the crowd in 1950 must have felt at seeing such a fiasco.
That time was still in the future. Farina and his red car won another two championship races, as did Fangio but three race retirements counted against the latter, so Farina won the title 30 points to 27. A year later another, different, Italian thoroughbred won the British GP - the Ferrari 375. The Ferrari team had skipped the race the year before - forever spoiling the team's claim in having raced in the championship since the very beginning - but had been unable to catch the Alfas in the meantime. Nowadays Ferrari is as much a part of the furniture as the chequered flag and drivers moaning that another driver cut them off, but then it was the upstart, the one time Alfa team manager's own company, established after the end of the war. In the seat (and spilling over some if it) was Jose Frolian Gonzales, the 'Pampas Bull'. His heavyset frame aged the Argentine beyond his 29 years, but he could run with the best of them, and scored the first of Ferrari's championship victories by almost a minute over Fangio. Thus began the British fan's love/hate relationship with Ferrari; the Brits get drawn in by the aura and mystique of it all like everyone else, and many in the crowd will always root for the red cars, but only one British driver has won at home in a Ferrari, thus giving the team a feeling of being the perennial rivals to 'our boys'.
The rise of GP racing at Silverstone did not go unnoticed by others. The Aintree racecourse, home of the Grand National muscled in on the British GP for 1955. There were some advantages to the place; it had all the facilities to accommodate thousands of racegoers already, the whole of Liverpool was on the doorstep and the rest of the country was able to get there via the train station next door. The circuit they built was fairly basic, and necessarily flat, starting at the foot the main grandstand, running clockwise (opposite to the horses) around the outside of the racecourse, ducking across into some slower corners in the infield, before sweeping back around running alongside the steeplechase jumps. The only hair-raising part was the quick chicane at the end of the lap to get back to the outside of the racecourse.
Everything was ready for the new venue's debut, when everything changed. A few weeks before the scheduled British Grand prix date over eighty spectators were killed at the Le Mans 24 Hours when one of the Mercedes cars was launched into a grandstand and disintegrated. The fallout was immediate - the Frenchh, German, Swiss and Spanish Grands Prix were all cancelled. The British officials were confident that spectators were safe in the big racecourse stands, next to a slow section of track, and the British GP went ahead, along with the Dutch and Italian races in a severely curtailed season of just six races. The Aintree management were also presumably reluctant to let their investment in several miles of tarmac go to waste, and they got their reward when the race was won by the 25 year old boy wonder Stirling Moss, the first home winner of the GP. Moss was driving a Mercedes, so the patriotic flags weren't flying entirely. The driver himself always suspected that teammate Fangio, title all but won with all the cancelled races, had not been trying too hard and had let him win. Fangio, ever the class act, never commented.
The Grand Prix was to be shared bi-annually with Silverstone, and in 1956 the British crowd had to watch Fangio motor home first aboard a Ferrari. Despite the withdrawal of Mercedes after the 1955 season creating an opening at the top there still were no British cars at the front. BRM were under new management, their V16 consigned to the museum. but they were still struggling. One of their cars nearly managed to kill driver Tony Brooks during the 1956 GP. Brooks was other rising British star of the time and had managed to win the non-championship Syracuse GP in Sicily aboard a Connaught. The win was the first for a British car since the 1920s, and put Brooks' star on the ascendancy, but it didn't end the drought in championship races. Connaught didn't have the resources to build a powerful engine- the one thing the BRM could offer. Going back to a basic 4 cylinder engine the BRM P25 could provide 270 horsepower but the chassis was useless. Brooks threaded the needle in his erratic car through Silverstone's quick corners until the throttle got stuck, he smashed into a bank and was thrown out. Bruised and battered he watched his steed go up in flames without much regret.
The next year both he and Moss headed to Liverpool with much greater promise of a good result aboard the new Vanwall car. A truly collaborative and scientific effort, it was bankrolled and built by renowned industrialist Tony Vandervell, with a chassis by the up-and-coming designer Colin Chapman, and an aerodynamically tested body by aeroplane engineer Frank Costin. Though it's drivers never warmed to the handling of the big green car like they did to a Maserati or Ferrari it was an effective weapon indeed. All of the old wartime airfields around England were providing useful proving grounds for tuning car performance, especially in chassis and suspension design. Added to that, in light of the Le Mans disaster and another deadly calamity involving spectator deaths on the Mille Miglia race in Italy, organisers were increasingly turning to safer venues away from the traditional rough public road circuits of continental Europe. The British model was being copied, and British cars were to benefit.
Moss started the 1957 British GP from pole position and soon led after fending off an early challenge from Jean Behra's Maserati. After twenty two laps of British racing green in front, things went wrong when Moss pulled in with a misfire. Rather than try and repair the car, the team took an option that would not be allowed in later years - they pulled in the other Vanwall of Tony Brooks and handed it over to Moss. Brooks, a fine racer, but driving injured after a crash at the Le Mans 24 hours was only too happy to swap for the greater good. Moss rejoined in Brooks' car in ninth, but attrition gradually promoted him up to fourth. For once, luck was on Moss's side as Behra's clutch exploded with eleven laps to go, and Hawthorn's Ferrari picked up a puncture on the debris. Moss demoted the third Vanwall of Stuart Lewis-Evans and came home for a historic victory for a British car in a championship race.
Never again would British cars go a year without GP victory, though the win at Silverstone in 1958 went to the dashing Peter Collins aboard the voluptuous Ferrari 246 - the solo win for a Briton in a Ferrari in the British GP. Next time the Grand Prix came around, and despite it's appearance on the cover of the programme, the Vanwall team was gone. When the team's third driver Lewis-Evans had died from burns after a crash in the Morocco GP, the ageing patriarch Vandervell lost his appetite for racing and retired the team. Also gone was the defending winner Collins - established as a firm favourite of Mr Ferrari. Only two weeks after winning at home, he slid wide and crashed fatally in Germany while chasing Brooks Vanwall.
The next two British GPs were won by the Cooper T51 of Australian emigree Jack Brabham. This new name among the frontrunning cars was an old hand in the British club racing scene. The Coopers - father and son - started out with motorcycle engines and spare Fiat chassis building small single seaters for junior racing meetings. They hit upon a mid-engine arrangement because it was simpler to get the motorcycle chain drive to work, but they stuck with it because there were many other benefits. A car with a rear drive axle but an engine in front of the driver - as all Grand Prix cars were - needed a driveshaft. The Cooper did not, the engine drove the rear axle directly. The car was lower, the driver sat out of the wind, the engine and gearbox in the middle maximised weight within the wheels improving handling. The whole construction was simpler and less stressed, meaning less weight, and chassis flexing under power. There was more potential for different suspension setups on different courses and far less tyre wear. The British approach was also aided by safety-minded rule changes that banned exotic fuel additives like nitromethane, blunting the engine performance of Ferrari, and reduced the length of races from up to three hours down closer to two.
It wasn't as though nobody had ever considered the advantages of the compact mid engine car before - the Auto Union that won at Donington Park in 1937 and 38 was just that - but the benefits of the layout were never so clear as when the 4 cylinder Cooper started winning with at least a fifty horsepower deficit to the big Ferrari V6. There was some respite for the Italians in 1961 when the contentious drop to a 1.5 litre engine formula caught the British with their technical trousers down and Ferrari's first mid engine car, the famous little 'Sharknose' won most of the races, including at Aintree. It was a brief pause though, and after Von Trips Ferrari took the chequered flag in '61 it took until 1976 for the team to win in Britain again (While it was thirty seven years later that Michael Schumacher put a German driver back on top of the podium).
Von Trips was dead by the time the race returned, again at Aintree in 1962, and the sole Ferrari of World Champion Phil Hill started twelfth. The Formula 1 world had moved on apace in one year. Leading from flag to flag was the quiet Scottish Borders farmer Jim Clark, driving the Lotus 25. Colin Chapman, having served his apprenticeship at Vanwall, was now a constructor in his own right, and the Lotus 25 was his team's masterstroke. Having first entered Grands Prix with conventional front-engine cars - albeit with ingenious suspension and other chassis wizardry - Lotus followed the lead of Cooper, and very quickly were overtaking them. The 25 did away with the web of chassis tubes, panels and fasteners that Formula 1 cars had been made from. Instead the chassis was a shallow aluminium box - a monocoque - with a thin cowling forming the cockpit surround. Incredibly thin and sleek, half the weight but much stiffer than its immediate Lotus predecessor, in the hands of the gifted young Scot the car disappeared into the distance that day, as it would many more times to come.
The Lotus Achilles heel was fragility - as such the greatly improved BRM of Graham Hill - a one time Lotus mechanic turned driver - won the 1962 championship with better consistency. Hill never won his home Grand Prix, though, as Jim Clark made the race his own in the 'sixties. (And, by coincidence, while Graham became the maestro of the Monaco GP, Clark in turn was always thwarted in that race). Hill had chances; in 1960 he started second and overtook Brabham for the lead before fading brakes caused him to spin off with only five laps to go. Hill missed out by only three seconds from catching Clark in 1965 when the Lotus' engine went sour in the late stages. Even 2nd place at home wasn't assured in 1963 when the BRM ran out of fuel on the last lap, dropping Hill back to 3rd.
Aintree, which had seemed so safe and suitable in 1955 after the Le Mans disaster, was looking less and less suitable as the sleek new cars of the sixties went ever quicker. Because the track ran so close to the racecourse there was little run off space or room for permanent garages in the pits. At one point the track was bordered by large gate posts and there was no barrier separating the long straight from the jumps at all. The deal breaker was the planned sale of the whole site for redevelopment. That never happened of course, "The National" is still held as it always was - with fewer grimy chimneys and smoke haze on the Liverpudlian horizon - but the Grand Prix never came back. Most of the paving is still there, and used as the service road for the horses, and a local motorcycle club uses a shortened half section of track for events. Because so little has been changed much of the track is still a time capsule of the days when the Grand Prix ran there.
The focus of Formula One shifted in the 1960s to Brands Hatch, South East of Greater London in northern Kent, a few miles from what would one day be the M25 London orbital motorway. Brands began as a kidney bowl-shaped dirt track for motorcyclists in the thirties. The area of the track was held in a natural bowl, with good viewing from all sides. Cycle and cross country clubs had been the first to see the appeal of the site in the twenties and the motorbikes followed, laying down the more permanent track, but it took until after the war for the circuit to be paved. Car races began in 1950 a month before the first championship F1 race at Silverstone - these were more modest affairs but still drew crowds. Eventually the east end was extended into an uphill hairpin and the direction of racing reversed to clockwise.
In 1960 a whole new out-and-back section was built looping off in large a P-shape from the original bowl. The new back straight ran behind the hairpin down a dip into the very fast Hawthorn corner (named for the late 1958 World Champion), another quick right Westfield, back up over the hill into a third right, leading straight into a left, onto the home straight into the bowl again. It was very thrilling for the drivers, with gradients, an overtaking spot at the hairpin, and a flow to the sequence of curves and straights that few other circuits matched. The 1964 British GP was the first at the full length Brands, though the change of location did not change the result, as Clark won in the Lotus 25, from Graham Hill's BRM and Surtees in the Ferrari.
The two very different circuits would share the race for the next two decades. The compact dimensions of Brands could fit inside Silverstone's infield with room to spare, but as far as the drivers were concerns, the former offered a greater drivers challenge. In a dangerous time the British GP seemed a oasis of civility. Nobody had ever been killed at the British Grand Prix (and they still haven't). Increasing speeds and rudimentary safety measures caught up all the same. American Harry Schell (the first American to race in Formula 1), died at the 1960 International Trophy event at Silverstone, killed instantly in his Cooper when he crashed at Abbey, and the privateer Bob Anderson died testing his Brabham in the summer of 1967 after crashing in the rain. As for the tighter confines of Brands Hatch, a non championship "World Championship Victory race" in honour of Jackie Stewart's second title at the end of 1971 claimed the life of Jo Siffert when his BRM snapped left on the fast descent towards Hawthorns and flipped over after hitting the bank. Tragically but inevitably it immediately went up in flames, and there was little for the rescuers to but unhappily deal with the scene with as much dignity as they could muster - it was the sixth fatality of an active F1 driver in just over a year.
Two years later the racers assembled again at Silverstone. Big tyres, big wings and agile chassis meant that the wide turns were getting close to flat out. Most spectacular was the sight at the finish line as the cars, having run flat out from the far end, strained through Woodcote corner at 150 mph, sitting down hard on the left hand springs, bouncing and twitching all the way. All that awaited any errant driver was the same large bank, faced with old railway sleepers that had sat there for years.
After two laps of the race something finally gave as Jody Scheckter- future world champion but then an unproven 23 year old upstart - dipped his left wheels onto the grass on the exit of Woodcote. In an instant he was gone, smacking hard into the pit lane wall - only a recent addition, only a few summers earlier he would have sent mechanics on the counter scattering, or worse - and sliding backwards across the path of the following pack.
Much of the world that was to come was fitting into place by then. Most cars now carried sponsors logos, the driver's decorated their helmets with colourful patterns, t shirts, trainers and long hair were replacing sports jackets, brogues and brylcreem in the crowd. The John Player cigarettes Lotus was now purely the 'JPS' to the colour television commentary. But the danger was still right to the fore, and as there unfolded kind of mass pileup that one day in an age of safety would seem like entertainment, few in the crowd would have seen anything like it. Among the smoke and noise and sudden chaos there was surely a fatality. Such was the confusion that as mechanics and officials ran onto the road to assist nobody gave much thought to the leaders still motoring around the track until they arrived again at Woodcote to a sudden flurry of waved arms and warning flags. The race was stopped - whereupon it was found that the worst injury had been a broken ankle. Three of those who had started the race, including the eventual winner Peter Revson, would be killed in action in the next year, but the British GP maintained its charmed existence. A chicane had appeared in the Woodcote corner when F1 came back in 1975, but the weather contrived to make the conditions so wet at the end that the red flag had to come out again as cars spun off left right and centre.
No other F1 event managed to alternate two completely differing venues with such success as the British GP in the 1970s and 80s. The eagerness of the British public to turn out, in all weathers, helped, as did their very democratic enthusiasm for all the drivers. The British crowd, while not as consistently vociferous as the Latins, as partisan as the French or as debauched as some of the more drunken elements in the Watkins Glen 'bearpit' in the USA, was a unique mix of all three. Foreigners would gain stout support if they fought a gallant fight. In 1969 Jochen Rindt battled throughout the race with Jackie Stewart in one of the most competitive battles for any GP lead. Eventually the chronic Lotus build quality revealed a weakness and his rear wing endplate started to fall off, fouling the tyre which signalled its imperiled state with puffs of smoke. Forced to pit he finished fourth, cheered just as much, if not more, than the home grown winner.
The British grow naturally suspicious of any home grown success story who seems a bit too outspoken, confident and polished. With his very public push for improved safety Stewart certainly gained plenty of ridicule and antagonistic words in the motor sporting press, many of whom wished to keep their little world of racing free from the nannying influence of the outside world. Many too still remembered the war and the thousands of young men who went to their deaths in planes, ships and tanks, and deeply resented youngsters who had never known such carnage telling them about safety. Perhaps their often haughty and cruel words rubbed off into the crowd's opinion of the Tyrrell driver sometimes.
After 1973, Stewart retired and the public's focus switched to the new star who had first made his name finishing 4th in the 1973 GP in a March owned by the young aristocrat Lord Hesketh - James Hunt. Hunt was everything the crowd in the 1970s loved to see in a racing driver- tall, laid back, charming, erudite, stylish, and a terminal party animal and womaniser. Paired up with the Hooray Henry's of the Hesketh team the public loved the image of the champagne soaked party bus of a team racing against the po-faced 'serious' teams. Unfortunately, and despite a win in the Dutch GP, Old Money couldn't fund a Formula 1 car forever without sponsors, and Hunt was let go at the end of 1975. He landed on his feet at McLaren the year after and became Ferrari's main challenger by the time Brands came around in the scorching summer.
The first corner at Brands, Paddock Hill bend, presented one of the most exciting challenges in Formula 1 as the cars flew around the fast right hander while simultaneously dropping down a big drop in height. One the first lap in 1976 the two Ferraris, Lauda and Regazzoni, banged wheels, spinning the latter around, blocking the field, and sending Hunt bouncing up into the air on two wheels. The race was stopped for a sweep up and here the confusion began. It seemed as though Hunt might not take the restart. The rules stated that cars had to be mobile and they had to complete a lap of the track and return to the start line in order to restart. The McLaren had hobbled around to the back of the pits and driven into the pits through an access road, thus driving into an uncomfortable grey area in the rules. Clearly the car was not terminally damaged but by the letter of the law couldn't restart. Things got more uncomfortable as the massed ranks of the crowd began to sense something was up as the Marlboro car still did not appear on the grid. Handclaps began, boos echoed, beer cans clattered onto the tarmac. In case the message wasn't clear, a "We want Hunt!" chant accompanied the upset. Under pressure, the officials on the ground relented and allowed everyone to restart. This did not impress several other teams, and especially not Ferrari as Hunt went on to pass Lauda and drive off to win. Months later the protests were upheld and Hunt disqualified.
A year later at Silverstone, now the world champion, the Englishman took a British GP win that stuck. It was an momentous race meeting as both the turbocharged Renault and Gilles Villeneuve made their debuts (though not together). The French-Canadian would be the main cause of excitement in Formula 1 during in his short life driving for Ferrari, though his debut actually came in a McLaren, a team who changed the course of racing history by deciding against signing Villeneuve despite his speed at Silverstone that weekend. The Renault "yellow teapot" caused much merriment with its lack of performance, mirth that would turn to concern after two years of development by the French. Those who simply plugged the Ford Cosworth V8 into the backs of the their cars and went racing could see the dawn of a new age as the big car manufacturers lined up to supply engines.
Almost symbolically the 1977 meeting also saw the end of one of the last true independent grafters. Nine years after the ill fated Siffert had taken the victory in the Rob Walker team Lotus at Brands- the same circuit that claimed him three years later- and chalked up the final win for a customer team (ie a team that bought in a whole car to race) the colourful former paratrooper David Purley was attempting to qualify his LEC-Cosworth. 'Lec' was, and still is, a refrigerator manufacturer, founded by Purley's father. Purley had been around the F1 scene for a few years and was best remembered as the driver who attempted to save countryman Roger Williamson from a blazing overturned car at the Dutch GP in 1973, only a few weeks after the eventful race at Silverstone. Coming into the triangular Becketts corner (the slowest on the course bar the chicane) his throttle stuck wide open. Disaster staring him in the face the driver slammed the brakes on and tried to steer into the grass and hit the catch fencing before the impact. Purley smashed head on into the sleepers on the outside of Becketts at 110 mph and came to a halt instantly. The Lec was oblitered all the way back to the engine bulkhead. Purley's legs, and pelvis were smashed and his F1 career was over in an instant, but he did receive a measure of notoriety when the compilers of the Guinness Book of Records decided that nowhere else on record could they find mention of anyone surviving a harder hit - 179G was calculated.
Ten years later the Formula 1 game had moved on, though Silverstone had changed little. The Turbo Era that began there in 1977 had seen the rise and fall of Renault, and a horsepower arms race among the likes of BMW, Porsche, and Honda. James Hunt was now in the commentary box, watching Nigel Mansell win one of the most spectacular victories in the race. The perennial nearly man, Mansell had been around since 1980 without standing on the top step of the podium. Now into his thirties Mansell had landed on his feet with the Williams Honda in 1985, finally scoring a first win, and at home in front of the Brands Hatch crowd at that. That year - an odd numbered one - meant the British GP was held at Silverstone, but the cancellation of a proposed New York City street race meant there was a gap in the schedule and Brands Hatch was added as a 'European GP'. Non championship meetings like the Race of Champions had disappeared for the last time after the 1983 race at Brands. The demands of television contracts and ever inflating budgets meant that days of informal 'friendlies' attracting whomever showed up with an F1 car were numbered. Every race counted now, and everyone had to bring their cars.
Frank Williams' team had won their first race at Silverstone in 1979 with one time Ferrari front runner turned journeyman Clay Regazzoni taking a very popular win. Frank had been around F1 running various projects for ten years without much success, but his alliance with the young engineer Patrick Head to form Williams GP Engineering in 1977 finally got his ball rolling. Williams tidy FW07 took the ground effects aerodynamic concept first pioneered by Lotus in 1977 and ran with it, moving the downforce game along further through detail improvements, and becoming the car to beat once reliability problems had been ironed out. In 1985 Keke Rosberg's Williams Honda had powered around Silverstone in 1 minute 5 seconds, with an average speed of 160.9 mph. This included the chicane at Woodcote; a chicane that Rosberg barely seemed to slow down for at all. Despite the outlawing of ground effect aerodynamics and the consequent loss of cornering speeds, the ever increasing power outputs meant that F1 cars were outgrowing the circuits of old. A larger chicane was placed Woodcote for 1987 and Rosberg' speed record held until 2002 until broken at Monza.
Off the track too the paddock and garages of the Brands Hatches of the world were no longer large enough to contain the money now sloshing around the sport. After twenty years of alternating from 1987 the British GP was to be henceforth held at Silverstone every year. Mansell beat his Williams teammate Piquet at Brands in 1986, igniting a rivalry that would fizz throughout the next two seasons as Piquet, the double champion, struggled to cope with the thought that his journeyman teammate was now beating him fair and square. Mansell, with a winning car at last, seemed to have come alive, driving with a daring panache that had not been seen from a British driver since Hunt.
The two Williams Honda drivers had managed to lose the 1986 championship to Alain Prost but the teams car superiority continued into the next year and by the time Silverstone rolled around it was a two horse race - not that the crowd minded, 100,000 spectators piled into the airfield to cheer on 'Nige'. In the mid eighties tyre stops had become a new accepted strategy in races. Where once changing tyres had only been done with a puncture or rain, the tactical advantages of tyre changes were becoming clear if the time lost in the pitstop was more than offset by the performance gain of the new rubber. The Williams team in 1987 agreed with the drivers that if they needed to stop it would be just past half way in the 65 lap race. For Mansell the question of whether or not to stop was made for him when one of the wheels developed a worrying vibration. He decided he would slow down slightly, maintain a gap to Piquet and wait for the performance gain of the new wheels. It was a tactical choice that would become the bread and butter of F1, (and most of other motor racing) in the future. Unfortunately for Mansell it seemed as though his pitstop - done in 9.2 seconds (a time that would seem an eternity a few years later) - was a waste of time. His tyres were not badly worn down, ergo neither were the other Williams', and he was now half a minute down.
Had it been any other race that might have been that, but Mansell always carried along with by adrenaline with his heart on his sleeve felt the energy from the crowd and began to carve up the gap. In the earliest days of computer engine controls there was not the myriad of modes - all monitored from the pitwall - that there would come to be. Williams number 5 had its turbo boost dial turned up to the maximum and to hell with the consequences. The gap shrunk dramatically as the laps ticked down, with the leaders taking no prisoners with the backmarkers. A six second gap vanished in as many laps and the leaders were nose to tail with three laps to go. Mansell closed up Piquet's tail running down the Hangar straight, threw a move to the outside and then immediately dived down the inside as Piquet went to cover the outside leaving the door wide open. The roar of the crowd drowned out the engines, and the massed ranks of Union flag waving fans mobbed the winning car as it cruised around the slow down lap. It hadn't run out of fuel as might be expected with such a high boost run, but instead had a completely cooked engine - Mansell had flirted closely with an embarrassing disaster by being so eager with the boost dial, but nobody minded as he mimicked a papal kiss on the British tarmac on his lap of honour.
Behind the scenes the erstwhile number one driver was not impressed with what he saw as the teams inability to order Mansell to stay behind. Even though Piquet won that years championship he stulked off to Lotus taking the Honda engine supply with him. Williams had the last laugh - the loss of Honda meant a year running in limbo without a manufacturer deal before Renault signed on. Mansell's next two British GP wins, in 1991 and 1992 were far more dominant than any before. The Williams Renault FW14B with its computer control active suspension and highly efficient aerodynamics led every single lap of both races - to rapturous adoration from the crowds, who again flocked onto the track to greet their hero. Silverstone had changed greatly over the winter of 1990 with additions adding thirteen seconds to the lap time. Becketts went from a basic triangle to a fast double-S section. The back short straight was moved in to allow a chicane at club corner, and the final chicane became a switchback sequence of of corners adding an extra hairpin to the circuit.
No longer was the track one of the most simple and fast in world, but it did become more suitable for changing expectations over safety standards. In 1994 another chicane was added on the Abbey corner to further slow the speeds and some of the corners pulled back to increase the run off areas. Without the alterations the late 1990s generation of F1 cars would probably be able to lap the circuit almost flat out. Mansell's victory parade in 1992 was his last appearance in an F1 car at home. He went missing in 1993 after Williams first signed Alain Prost and then refused to meet Mansell's salary demands. Mansell waltzed off to America to race Indycars and the crowd turned its attentions to Damon Hill, promoted up to be the backup man to Alain Prost in the Williams. They had two occasions to see the F1 cars in action in 1993 thanks to the addition of an circuit that had once known Grand Prix cars, but long before the World Championship was created.
Donington Park was rescued from obscurity in the 1970 by local real estate millionaire Tom Wheatcroft (who had been there to see the Silver Arrows in the 1930s, and sponsored the ill-fated Roger Williamson). Donington was completely renovated to become a modern racing circuit - the old course through the arched bridge and the farmhouses became the perimeter road. The long run down the hill to a hairpin where the German cars had once leapt skywards over a steep brow became a car park behind a new pits. With the British GP tied up by Silverstone and Brands Hatch the circuit had to be content with hosting Formula 3000, national series and motorbikes. In the late '80s Donington came into frame to become a third venue to join the rotation. It certainly seemed more suitable than Brands Hatch, and sitting next door to the East Midlands Airport and the M1 motorway there were no problems with access or noise restrictions. But then the sports governing body decided that each GP was to have only one venue, and that was that.
The track's chance at a race came in 1993 as, again, a European GP had to be drafted in to replace a cancelled race (this time a second round in Japan). Unfortunately for circuit owner Wheatcroft the realisation of his dream to see Grand Prix cars again at Donington came with a hefty price tag as barely half the gate that was usual at Silverstone turned up on Easter Sunday to watch. With no Mansell to draw the crowd the promotion lent heavily on Damon Hill to try and sell the race. Japanese videogame maker Sega - at the height of its Sonic The Hedgehog glory days - was the sponsor, stepping into a spot usually occupied by Shell Oils, Fosters lager, Marlboro, John Player, and, in 1971, Woolmark. The weather may have had something to do with the disappointing attendance. In those pre-internet days when race tickets were still something that could be bought on the gate, the gloomy drizzle and rain didn't encourage great crowds. They were fools to themselves those who stayed away, as Ayrton Senna gave a masterclass in wet weather driving to annihilate the two Williams and in the process drive one of the most famous laps anyone has ever driven at a race track.
After three world titles (and a British GP win in 1988) Senna came into 1993 on the back foot driving a McLaren that was miles behind the Williams. In qualifying at Donington the Brazilian was 1.5 seconds slower than Prost on pole. But then came the clouds and the showers and with it something Senna could work with - a slippery track. From the off he dropped a position into the first corner, but then proceeded to sail wide off line down the Craner curves. He was using a old kart racing trick - on a slightly wet track sometimes the build-up of rubber 'marbles' gives a counterintuitive grippy line away from the more slick racing line. And taking wider lines in the wet makes the steering inputs less harsh and the car does not lose momentum scrabbling for grip. Senna passed both Michael Schumacher and Karl Wendlinger in one go before reaching the next right, whereupon he set about Damon Hill. With the first Williams dispatched like a sharpshooter almost as soon as he had it sighted, only Prost was left. Britain hadn't seen much of the great rivalry between the two over the preceding years - technical problems had blighted one or the other during their time at McLaren, Prost had missed 1992 altogether while Senna rolled to a halt on the last lap in 1991 and famously took a ride home on Mansell's winning Williams. Senna had won the previous round in Brazil, also in the rain, and a would be leading the chase if he won at Donington, but he also knew that it was unlikely that he could resist the Williams for the entire year. So he dove to the inside of Prost confident that his old adversary would be minded to let him go. He did, and the McLaren marched off into the distance and a famous win.
The rain, as is usual on a spring day in England, couldn't quite decide if it fancied a light shower or a full downpour, keeping the teams on their toes. Senna made five pitstops, switching back and forth between wet and dry tyres in seconds, while Prost made seven, as if summoned in each time like a holidaymaker on the beach making for shelter. The first lap would go into he annals of F1 lore, and though Donington would never host a repeat performance, it had its a day in the sun (figuratively if not literally). A few months later Damon Hill endeared himself to the crowd at Silverstone by having the measure of Prost before his engine expired with seventeen laps left.
The next year with Prost retired, Mansell still racing in America, and Senna tragically no longer present, Hill took the unexpected centre stage along with Michael Schumacher. The German, driving the Benetton, was leading championship but made a fool of himself by twice overtaking Hill on the parade lap before the race. When the officials assessed a pitstop penalty for the infraction the Benetton stayed out until finally the black flag next to Schumacher's number came out. DSQ was the result next to the German's name and the controversy rolled on until the decision was appealed and the punishment increased, leading to Schumacher being barred from competing in two races later in the year, allowing Hill a chance to challenge for the title while his rival was away.
British drivers still saw success into the 21st century races, but there were no repeats of 'Mansell Mania'. Increased security and larger safety fences prevented 1980s-style unauthorised mass track invasions. Other British winners of the 1990s did not court tabloid attentions as assiduously as the outspoken Mansell and his endless on and off track dramas. Damon Hill was polite and diligent. Johnny Herbert cheerful and optimistic, David Coulthard young and resolutely apolitical. They also never lined up their British GP wins with a championship year like Mansell. After the Schumacher penalty Hill went on in 1994 to do what his father Graham never could - win the British GP. Herbert took advantage of Hill and Schumacher tangling in the twisty turns at the end of the lap to win in 1995 - a popular win after six years of F1 for a driver who should have been a champion but for having his legs smashed in a horrible crash in Formula 3000 at Brands Hatch in 1988. Coulthard was squeezed out of the Williams for McLaren in 1996 but had the last laugh as the two teams swapped competitiveness levels in the end of decade, and added more Scottish success after Clark and Stewart. But he never put together a championship despite wins in 1999 and 2000. Even Jenson Button couldn't take the Brawn BGP001 which had dominated the first half of 2009 to victory at home.
The 2000 British GP had been held in April for the first time ever, with predictable results vis a vis the weather. The choice seemed inexplicable- why move a race in central England from July (reasonable chance of rain) to April (almost guaranteed chance of a soaking). Unless there was an underhand political reason for doing so... The circuit and it's owners, the British Racing Drivers Club, were subject to almost endless antagonism by the sport's commercial manager Bernie Ecclestone. Some of it was somewhat justified. The rains of 2000 exposed how basic and unprepared much of the surrounding fields were for car parking as they turned into swamps. In 1998 Michael Schumacher managed to win the GP while sitting in the pit lane. This bizarre situation came about when the officials penalised the Ferrari for passing while a yellow caution flag was being displayed. Ferrari argued back that the rules stated that any penalty had to be communicated to the team within a certain amount of time and that the officials had waited too long. Since their pit was past location of the starting line they opted to serve the penalty on the last lap - thus obeying the instruction, after the race had finished.
The furore was understandable, but so was the amusement - even Ferrari's biggest critics had to admit it was a cheeky but clever solution to their problem. Eventually the officials relented and admitted that Schumacher hadn't even passed anyone during the yellow flag. A bit bit too late, though, to avoid looking rather foolish. In 2003 a defrocked Irish priest broke out onto the Hangar Straight and ran in the middle of the track towards the oncoming cars carrying a cardboard placard advising the drivers and the watching TV audience to 'Read the Bible'. The safety car had to be deployed as bemused spectators watched a marshal chase down and tackle the intruder to the grass. (Despite his notoriety and garish green outfit the former man of the cloth later managed to make a similar nuisance of himself at the Derby and the Athens Olympics). By coincidence the safety car served to benefit Ferrari's Rubens Batrichello, who also won in 2000 in German when a similar trespass had occurred with a German car worker carrying a protest sign. That incident hadn't reflected well on Hockenheim, and this one didn't on Silverstone.
By this time some of the facilities on the old airfield had been left behind in the 1980s, and Ecclestone was less than impressed when the BRDC decided to build itself a new members clubhouse rather than, to take one example, a new media building. On the flip side the sport that he was running had reached a situation where the sanctioning fees demanded for the running of a Formula 1 event were ballooning out of control, pushing out the 'old' countries I favour of events in places where governments and their subsidy money were easily parted. Even with 100,000 through the gate the British GP couldn't guarantee a profit. Many observers couldn't help wonder if Ecclestone's public disapproval and threats to leave was all a calculated strategy to get the circuit updated. The great irony of all this posturing is that it was Ecclestone who had lobbied In the 1980s for all the races to have one specified venue, thus dumping Brands Hatch and locking out Donington. Already by 1993 he seemed to have misgivings as he picked up the phone to Tom Wheatcroft and asked if he would be able to host a short notice European GP.
Twice the British GP was taken away, and twice it came back to Silverstone without missing a year. In 1999 the owners of Brands Hatch worked out a deal with Ecclestone; they had been trying to buy Silverstone from the BRDC, but in the event that they couldn't then Ecclestone agreed that the race would move back to Kent starting in 2002. The proviso was obvious: the venue had to be brought back to modern standards. And before any of this happened Brands owner, Nicola Foulston, offloaded the whole caboodle to a company called Octagon for £120 million (with a tidy £50m going to herself). The problems with upgrading the place for the 21st century were obvious even to the most misty eyed nostalgic. Nelson Piquet had been on pole position way back in '86 in a time of 1 minute 6.9 seconds. Fast forward sixteen years worth of downforce, suspension, engine and tyre advances and the lap times would be well under a minute. The pit lane had been tight in the 'seventies and the proposal for a new 2002 spec circuit did the inevitable and moved the whole start line and pits to the Hawthorn straight.
Additionally the circuit sits right next door to a residential neighbourhood, so year round testing and other events, normal at Silverstone, would never be on. Former driver Derek Warwick opined that the only way to bring the circuit up to scratch would be with a precision air strike. Sanity eventually prevailed and Ecclestone agreed to keep the GP at Silverstone, but the years later he was at it again. Now the race was going to go the Donington. For real, positive, no going back. In 2010, the track would have raised the £100 million it was estimated was needed to turn it from a touring car circuit and music festival venue into the new home of the British GP (sanctioning fees included). A modified track plan was drawn up, artists impressions drawn, heavy equipment came in, some parts of the tarmac were torn up, and when 2010 rolled around the trucks unloaded the F1 cars at Silverstone. It may have been another game of business poker for Ecclestone But the stakes were high and Donington was left badly short of money, needing to repair the existing track and and in real.danger of closing down. That didn't happen, fortunately, and the British GP survived, but the ever present fiscal rumblings are always in the background in the age of extortionate hosting fees and massive ticket prices.
In 2010 the circuit got a 21st century upgrade. The pits were moved to the straight between Club and Abbey corner and the new Wing pits were built there. A new V-shaped infield was designed, harking back to the earliest days of the venue. Abbey turned from a left chicane back into a fast sweep, but a.right turn now, taking drivers into a tighter switchback deep in the infield before running down a new straight to the Woodcote hairpin section from the 1992 makeover. The new straight became the 'Wellington' straight, after the aircraft the base was built for.
In 2006 the British fans got to see a new future hero on a really big stage. 21 year old Lewis Hamilton had been a winner at every stage of a racing career that began in 1993 in go karts. When he won the GP2 support race it was the moment when the young prodigy from Stevenage went from the kid who had a McLaren development deal when he was thirteen, to a potential new British world Champion. And when he came back the next year he was aboard a McLaren Mercedes, a race winner and in the lead of the championship standings. A little ill fortune denied Hamilton the title in 2007, just as it had for Hill in 1994, Jim Clark in 1962 and Stirling Moss... every year. 2008 was wet and the rain allowed Hamilton put his skills to use after starting a disappointed fourth. Much like his childhood hero Senna, Hamilton's masterclass had much to do with being able to handle a British summer downpour without having to change his tyres. When driving rain hit past mid distance the McLaren danced around on it's intermediate rain tyres while others spun off or dashed for the pits, all the while pulling out a greater and greater lead. It was the kind of virtuoso performance from a home winner the fans had longed for since the days of Moss, Clark and Stewart. Hunt and burned bright but brief. Ulsterman John Watson (winner with McLaren in 1981) never quite had the luck or car to challenge consistently. Mansell bullied his car into submission. Hill and Coulthard were solid but unspectacular. Jenson Button was smooth and effortless but again, the car wasn't there for many years. Hamilton had won like Senna, with exceptional skill and a cool head.
In the years to come Hamilton would win five world championships and another five British Grands Prix, to become the most successful British driver of all. But for a silly spin while racing for the lead on the first lap in 2018 he probably would have run six races on the trot,following in the same wheel tracks as all the other legends of Championship Grand Prix racing, all of whom have faced the challenges of Copse, Maggotts, Becketts, Chapel, Hangar Straight, Stowe, Club, Abbey and Woodcote.
