British Grand Prix

France won the first British Grand Prix; English soil, French machinery, and a Delage taking the glory at Brooklands in 1926.

On 7 August 1926, the Royal Automobile Club staged the inaugural Grand Prix d'Europe at Brooklands, the banked concrete oval in Surrey. Robert Sénéchal and Louis Wagner won in a Delage 155B, completing 110 laps of the 2.616-mile circuit. It was a distinctly French affair on English soil, with Delage and Bugatti dominating the entry list. The race returned to Brooklands in 1927 before the occasion went dormant. It would be two decades before the British Grand Prix found a permanent home.

Sheep were still being cleared from the circuit when history arrived.

The Royal Automobile Club chose a former RAF Bomber Command station near the Northamptonshire village of Silverstone for the 1948 British Grand Prix. The circuit was laid out on the perimeter roads and runways, with straw bales marking the corners. Luigi Villoresi won in a Maserati, but the real story was the venue itself: flat, fast, and wide open to the Northamptonshire wind. The makeshift track had a raw, improvised quality. Sheep had to be cleared from the circuit before practice. It was hardly glamorous, but it worked.

Royalty in the grandstand, history on the track; Farina's Alfa led every Ferrari nightmare that followed.

On 13 May 1950, Silverstone made history by hosting the first ever round of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were in attendance as Giuseppe Farina won for Alfa Romeo, leading a 1-2-3 for the Italian marque. Twenty-one cars started. The modern era of Grand Prix racing had begun. Farina averaged 90.96 mph over 70 laps. He would go on to win the inaugural World Championship that season, but it was this race at Silverstone that set the whole thing in motion.

Stirling Moss made history at Aintree in 1955; a horse-racing circuit witnessed Britain's first home Grand Prix victory.

From 1955, the British Grand Prix began alternating between Silverstone and Aintree, the Liverpool circuit better known for the Grand National. Stirling Moss won the 1955 race at Aintree in a Mercedes W196, becoming the first British driver to win his home Grand Prix. It was a landmark moment for British motorsport.

Brands Hatch's plunging gradients and amphitheatre bowl made Silverstone's flat acres feel rather tame by comparison.

Aintree's last British Grand Prix was in 1962, and from 1964 the race alternated between Silverstone and Brands Hatch in Kent. The amphitheatre-like Brands Hatch circuit, with its dramatic elevation changes and the famous Paddock Hill Bend, offered a very different spectacle to Silverstone's open expanses. Jim Clark won the first championship British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in 1964.

Silverstone's permanent tenure began in 1987, with Mansell victorious and the old airfield circuit already embarking on its transformation into a modern F1 venue.

After Brands Hatch's final British Grand Prix in 1986, Silverstone secured the race permanently from 1987 onwards. Nigel Mansell won that year's race, and the circuit began a long programme of upgrades to meet modern F1 standards. The old airfield was slowly transforming into a world-class motorsport facility.

Fans were already on the track before Mansell had even crossed the line; that is how dominant 1992 felt.

Nigel Mansell's 1992 victory at Silverstone remains one of the most celebrated moments in British Grand Prix history. Driving the dominant Williams FW14B, Mansell won by 39 seconds in front of an adoring home crowd. Fans invaded the track on the final lap, and Mansell was carried shoulder-high to the podium. He would clinch the World Championship later that season.

A structure shaped like an aircraft wing finally gave Britain's home race the paddock its reputation had long demanded.

Silverstone unveiled its new pit and paddock complex, known as The Wing, in 2011. The striking structure, designed to resemble an aircraft wing in homage to the circuit's RAF heritage, also incorporated a new arena section between Club and Abbey corners. It was the most significant redevelopment in the circuit's history, finally giving Silverstone facilities to match its status.

Seven wins at Silverstone, the last of them completed on three wheels.

Lewis Hamilton won the 2020 British Grand Prix on three wheels, crossing the line with a punctured front-left tyre after a dramatic final lap. It was his seventh victory at Silverstone, surpassing Jim Clark and Alain Prost's shared record of five wins. Hamilton would go on to extend his record to nine British Grand Prix victories by 2024, a tally that may never be matched.

Half a million fans across three days; Silverstone needed no argument for its new decade-long lease on the British Grand Prix.

In 2024, Silverstone confirmed a new long-term deal to host the British Grand Prix through to at least 2034, ending years of speculation about the race's future. Lewis Hamilton won the 2024 race, his ninth and final British Grand Prix victory before his move to Ferrari. The weekend drew a record crowd of over 480,000 across three days, confirming Silverstone's place as one of the best-attended sporting occasions in the world.