FORMULA 1 BRITISH GRAND PRIX

The British Grand Prix is four days at Silverstone, in Northamptonshire, at the start of July: a concert on the Thursday, practice on the Friday, qualifying on the Saturday and the race on the Sunday afternoon, fifty-two laps of a circuit made from a wartime airfield. In 2026 more than half a million people came over the four days, more than to any Formula One race before.

The first race of the World Championship was run here, on 13 May 1950, before the King and Queen. No reigning monarch has been to a motor race in Britain before or since.

The Airfield

RAF Silverstone trained bomber crews in Wellingtons from 1943. Its three runways lie in a triangle, as wartime runways did, inside the line of the present track.

In September 1947 a party of friends raced on the empty airfield. One of them hit a sheep, and the day was remembered as the Mutton Grand Prix. The next year the Royal Automobile Club, wanting a Grand Prix in a country with no major circuit but plenty of airfields, leased Silverstone from the Air Ministry. The course was laid out in under two months with oil drums and straw bales, along the runways and the perimeter road, and on 2 October 1948 some hundred thousand people watched Luigi Villoresi win in a Maserati from the back of the grid. From the next year the track kept to the perimeter road.

The first British Grand Prix had been run at Brooklands, in Surrey, in 1926. From 1955 the race moved between Silverstone and Aintree, and later Brands Hatch, and it has been at Silverstone alone since 1987. That July Nigel Mansell, twenty-nine seconds behind his team-mate with twenty-eight laps left, caught him and passed him into Stowe two laps from the end, and the crowd ran onto the track.

The pits and paddock moved in 2011 to the Wing, a new building between Club and Abbey. The straight in front of it was named in 2020 for Lewis Hamilton, who won here for the ninth time, a record, in 2024.

The Four Days

The Thursday is for the crowd: the fan zone by day and a concert at night. Robbie Williams opens the weekend in 2027.

Friday is practice and sprint qualifying; Saturday the sprint and qualifying for the Grand Prix, a format raced here in 2021 and again since 2026. The Grand Prix starts at three on the Sunday, after the drivers’ parade, the anthem and the Red Arrows overhead, and Formula 2 and Formula 3 race in between all weekend.

There are more than twenty grandstands round the circuit. Copse is taken at about 180 miles an hour, and the cars reach two hundred on the Hangar Straight before Stowe.

In 2026, on 5 July, Charles Leclerc won for Ferrari, his first win at Silverstone, and Hamilton was third, his sixteenth time on the podium here. 564,000 people came over the four days.

What to Know

It runs from the Thursday to the Sunday at the start of July: in 2027, from 1 to 4 July.

Grandstand seats are reserved from Friday to Sunday. The circuit’s own advice: Club and Village for overtaking, Becketts for the sweep of Maggotts and Becketts, and the Hamilton Straight for the start, the finish and the podium. Its hospitality, over the pit lane, the start or Woodcote, sells out for the Saturday and Sunday well ahead.

Silverstone asks for smart casual in its hospitality, and comfortable shoes. A jacket for the evening; it is England.

Trains go to Milton Keynes and Northampton, and shuttle buses run from both to the gates. A helicopter shuttle runs from Turweston, fifteen minutes away. Whittlebury Park, four miles off, is among the nearest hotels.

The mistake is to drive in on the Sunday morning. Parking is short, the roads fill, and some car parks are half an hour’s walk from the gates; Silverstone tells its visitors to allow at least an extra hour.

The Court

The British Grand Prix is not the Court’s own. Grandstand seats, or a table in the circuit’s hospitality, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, by road or by helicopter, where to stay, and the table afterward. Henley Royal Regatta ends the same weekend.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.