British GP Preview: Facts & Stats

Formula One's annual visit to Silverstone represents a return to where it all started for the world championship.

The British Grand Prix predates the inception of the championship by 24 years. The French duo of Robert Senechal and Louis Wagner took the first British GP win at Brooklands in 1926, at an average speed of less than 116km/h (72mph). Brooklands was again the host in 1927, at a time when the race was also known as the English GP.

Donington Park held the next four races, from 1935 to 1938. Legends such as Bernd Rosemeyer and Tazio Nuvolari were among the winners, but the outbreak of World War II brought motorsport to a grinding halt.

It was at Silverstone, itself used as a WWII airfield, that the British GP was resurrected in 1948, and it was chosen to host the inaugural championship race on May 13th 1950, the first of seven rounds that would decide the first champion driver. In those days, the championship was only contested for the drivers themselves; it wasn't until 1958 that the constructors were given their equivalent competition.

Quite apart from the obvious historical importance, the 1950 British GP was the first round to carry the "European GP" title, a name which rotated around almost every European venue until it was last used in that role, again at Silverstone, in 1977.

That 1950 race was won by Giuseppe Farina, driving for Alfa Romeo, while Reg Parnell made himself the answer to a trivia question by finishing third and becoming the first British driver to score a podium in the F1 World Championship.

Alfa won every championship race until Jose Froilan Gonzalez took Ferrari's maiden win at Silverstone in 1951. Gonzalez, like Maurice Trintignant at Monaco, was to take his only two championship wins at the same track, as he repeated the success in 1954, in a race in which seven drivers shared the point for fastest lap, receiving 0.14 each!

Aintree '55 was the first British GP to be won by a home driver. Juan-Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss were engaged in a race-long duel in the untouchable Mercedes W196 chassis, and folklore has it that Fangio elected not to pass Moss on the run to the line, in order that his teammate receive the plaudits - something that Fangio always denied.

For Moss, it was the first of 16 championship wins, which was to stand as a record for an English driver for 30 years; it wasn't until Nigel Mansell's 1991 French GP win that Moss was finally supplanted in that category. However, Moss also scored 18 non-championship F1 wins. Take those into consideration, and his 34 F1 victories would still rank above Mansell's 31.

Moss was again a part of history two years later at the same track, when he piloted the Vanwall VW4 home to score the first ever win for a British constructor, breaking seven years of dominance by Italian and German marques. Having taken over from Tony Brooks at mid-distance, it would be one of three shared victories in F1 history. Perhaps most significant of all was that it was the first F1 win for 29-year-old Colin Chapman, who was credited as the co-designer of the Vanwall alongside Frank Costin.

After later giving Cooper their first F1 success, Moss piloted a Chapman-designed Lotus 18 to the constructor's first win at the 1960 Monaco GP. To this day, only Moss and Dan Gurney (Porsche, Brabham, Eagle) have taken the maiden wins for three different constructors.

In 1958, the British GP headed back to Silverstone, and it was there that Peter Collins strolled to victory, leading every lap to beat Ferrari teammate Mike Hawthorn by over twenty seconds. Only two weeks later he crashed to his death at the Nurburgring. A similar fate would befall 1961 winner Wolfgang von Trips, who died later that year in the last round shootout at Monza.

Jim Clark (Lotus-Climax 24) leads the 1962 British Grand Prix at Aintree © LAT

The first of Jim Clark's five British GP wins came in 1962, the last time the race was held at Aintree, a venue now better known as the home of the English Grand National horse race.

Showing typical dominance, all of Clark's wins were from pole, and after taking the lead on lap 4 of the 1963 race, he didn't lose it again until the first lap of the 1966 event! Only he and Jack Brabham have won the race at all three championship venues (Aintree, Silverstone and Brands Hatch). From 1963 until 1986, the race alternated between Silverstone in odd-numbered years and Brands in the even-numbered ones, until Silverstone became the full-time host in 1987.

Switzerland's first F1 triumph came at the 1968 race, when Jo Siffert took the win. It was the last time privateer Lotus entrant Rob Walker would taste victory as an F1 team owner. The 1969 and 1970 races were classics, with Stewart and Rindt disputing victory in the '69 edition, before victory fell to the Scot, while Rindt was able to avenge his loss to some degree a year later, when he was the benefactor of race leader Jack Brabham running out of fuel on the final lap.

Few opening laps are as notorious as that which opened the 1973 British GP. The crowd came to see Jackie Stewart take another step toward his third title, and he was leading at the end of lap 1 - no mean feat, as he had qualified fourth in an era when the front row contained three cars.

At the exit of the fearsome Woodcote corner, Jody Scheckter, making only his fourth Grand Prix start, ran wide and spun his McLaren into the pit-wall. The subsequent chain reaction crash led to the first red flag in the history of the World Championship. In the restarted race, Stewart tangled with Ronnie Peterson at Stowe and ended his afternoon tenth, while Scheckter's teammate Peter Revson took his first career win.

Ironically, Scheckter would be the winner 12 months later at Brands Hatch, in a bizarre finish. Niki Lauda led the first 69 of 75 laps but required a late pitstop. He then found his exit blocked, relegating him to ninth by the finish. A protest by Ferrari led to him being credited as being a lap down on Scheckter, good enough for fifth place.

Silverstone '75 provided all sorts of statistical fodder. Welshman Tom Pryce scored his only career pole but crashed out of the lead on lap 21. An action-packed race descended into chaos when it started to rain on lap 50, and after 13 of the 19 remaining cars went off, the decision was made to stop the race, with winner Emerson Fittipaldi being the only one of the classified top 5 to be still circulating. The race featured seven different leaders, to this day a number only beaten by the 1971 Italian GP.

If 1975 weren't bad enough, there was uproar at Brands a year later when the two Ferraris and James Hunt managed to collide at the first corner, again bringing out the red flag. Hunt was allowed to take the spare for the restart, appeasing the fanatical home crowd, and he duly rewarded them with a win. However, Hunt was disqualified after Ferrari protested his use of the spare, promoting Lauda to victory.

Hunt finally took a home win from pole position in the '77 race at Silverstone. More notable was his McLaren team running an old M23 chassis for Formula Atlantic sensation Gilles Villeneuve. After indulging in countless spins throughout practice, he lined up ninth for his debut - two places ahead of teammate Jochen Mass in the latest M26 - but a faulty temperature gauge, causing a lengthy pitstop, ruined his race.

Villeneuve had to pre-qualify for the race, and that session was rocked by David Purley's incredible accident, which generated the highest known g-force survived by man (179.8g). Driving the new LEC CRP1, he decelerated from 173 km/h to zero in just 66 centimetres. He recovered from multiple fractures, but never raced in F1 again.

Frank Williams finally made it to the winners' circle at the 1979 British Grand Prix, when Clay Regazzoni piloted his Williams FW07 to the last win of his career. Their 100th victory was also at Silverstone in 1997, but the strike rate has diminished lately, and they've only added 13 more wins since.

Clay Regazzoni (Williams-Ford FW07) takes the first victory for the team in the 1979 British Grand Prix at Silverstone © LAT

The modern era of F1 chassis design truly arrived in 1981, when John Watson was victorious at Silverstone in the McLaren MP4, the first all-carbon-fibre F1 chassis. It was also Ron Dennis's first win as a team owner, having bought into McLaren ahead of that season.

At the height of the turbo era in the mid-1980s, Silverstone was still in the same configuration as it was in 1950 (barring a chicane at Woodcote). Keke Rosberg became the first man to record a 160mph average lap when he took pole in the damp qualifying session of 1985. It stood as F1's all-time quickest lap until it was beaten by Juan Pablo Montoya's pole speed for the 2002 Italian GP.

Alain Prost's win in the 1985 race also stands as the record speed for a British Grand Prix (235.404 km/h, more than twice the speed of the 1926 race at Brooklands), and thanks in part to the officials mistakenly waving the chequered flag one lap earlier than planned, the race was over in just 78 minutes.

Brands Hatch's last hurrah as an F1 venue came in 1986, and it would be Jacques Laffite's 176th start, tying Graham Hill's all-time record, which had stood since 1975. Sadly, he was involved in a major crash at the start, breaking both legs and ending his F1 career.

The two drivers would hold the record jointly until 1989, when Riccardo Patrese surpassed them at Jacarepagua. Patrese then went on to be the first to make 200 F1 starts at the 1990 British GP - just as Jack Brabham was the first to 100 at the '68 race.

1990 was the last race at Silverstone before the alterations at Becketts, Stowe and Club, as well as the construction of the complex that now ends the lap.

The changes were becoming necessary - Alain Prost's winning average in 1990 was just 2 km/h slower than his 1985 victory, despite the cars having significantly less horsepower in the post-turbo era.

Prost holds the record for most Silverstone wins, with five. In addition to '85 and '90, he also won in 1983 (the last Silverstone race to be held on a Saturday, a tradition to avoid disturbing Sunday church services), 1989 and 1993, when he became the first driver to reach 50 career victories.

Graham Hill never won the British Grand Prix, but the gap in the family trophy cabinet was filled in 1994, when Damon Hill took victory, while Johnny Herbert's first career win came in 1995 for Benetton. In both races, Michael Schumacher was involved in controversy - passing Damon Hill on the parade lap and being black-flagged in 1994, and then being the victim of an over-optimistic move by Hill in the closing stages of the '95 event.

Schumacher went on to achieve a novel first at the 1998 race, becoming the first man to take a race victory in the pits, cleverly serving a stop/go penalty at the end of the last lap.

The strangest occurrence of recent times was the disruption of the 2003 event by Father Neil Horan, who ran up the Hangar Straight and into oncoming traffic, endangering his own life as well as those of the drivers. Rubens Barrichello went on to win, just as he did the previous time a spectator ran on to the track, at the 2000 German Grand Prix.

Man on track during the 2003 British Grand Prix at Silverstone © LAT

Jarno Trulli's enormous shunt at Priory brought out a late safety car at the 2004 event, and by the end less than 25 seconds separated first and tenth place, the closest top-10 finish in F1 history.

No British GP retrospective can be complete without mention of Nigel Mansell. From 1986 to 1992, Mansell won four times, took three poles in a row, and set the fastest lap for seven consecutive years.

His 1987 win has gone down in folklore. After a severe vibration forced him to pit for tyres, he found himself over 28 seconds behind Williams-Honda teammate Nelson Piquet with just 29 laps to go. With the capacity crowd urging him on, he caught and passed Piquet in a daring wheel-to-wheel move at Stowe, just two laps from the end of the race.

In addition, he also finished second in an underpowered Williams-Judd in 1988, having retired from every race up to that point in the season, and survived a puncture on the Hangar Straight to finish second for Ferrari in '89.

He took pole in 1992 by a mind-blowing 1.9 seconds, and then, as if to rub salt to everyone's wounds, lapped 1.8 seconds quicker than the field in the race, which he fittingly led from start to finish, his last appearance in front of his home fans.