The 10 best British Grands Prix

In his book Against All Odds, Hunt described the extraordinary sight: “I was able to enjoy it for half a second because it was wonderful, extremely funny, for me to see the Ferrari drivers take each other off the road. But it quickly became obvious that I was in it too…”

James clipped Regazzoni’s rear wheel, and the M23 was flicked into the air before thudding back down. He crawled away from the scene, and only the damaged cars of Regazzoni and Jacques Laffite were left behind. Nevertheless, the race was stopped.

Rounding Druids, Hunt saw the signals and pulled into the back of the pits. As the teams prepared for the restart, the fun started. The rules were not as clear-cut as they are now, but the FIA ‘yellow book’ did say that ‘… all runners at the time of stopping will be allowed to take the restart’.

As the spares of Hunt, Regazzoni and Laffite were pushed onto the grid, the debate began. Had Hunt been running or not? No, was the initial answer, and when that was announced, the baying, sun-baked spectators made their feelings known. Missiles were thrown onto the track, and alarmists were talking in terms of a full-scale riot.

As the arguments raged, McLaren successfully repaired Hunt’s original race car, strengthening his case. “The left-front corner ofJames’s car was damaged,” says team boss Teddy Mayer. “We took it all off, put another one on and lined it up. Alastair Caldwell [team manager] did it while I played politics. The guys did a great job; in the end the car was all right and was ready for the restart.”

Hunt was eventually allowed to take the restart in his original car. He chased Lauda and passed him on lap 45 to score a hugely popular victory. However, it was not over, and later Mayer and Ferrari team manager Daniele Audetto argued their cases.

“It’s not easy to fight with Teddy, because he’s a lawyer,” says Audetto. “Even if, morally, the problem was generated by Ferrari, I had to do my job. James didn’t complete the lap and made repairs, and that was against the rules.” Lauda, who had by then been injured at the ‘Ring, was awarded the win in September. But Hunt’s charge from there was relentless, and a title awaited. AC
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Did you know?

• The 1976 British Grand Prix was the first time that Brands Hatch’s all-new central paddock and pits were used; all agreed they were “very spacious”. How times change.

• The lapsing F1 career of the brilliant Jacky Ickx hit its nadir at Brands. Unable to qualify the Wolf-Williams for the fourth time that year, the Belgian split from the team.

• At the FIA’s September hearing over the British GP, Ferrari paraded in Niki Lauda as its star witness, and re-bandaged his burns especially to engender sympathy. It worked!

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Aintree 1957
Were you there when Moss finally ended Britain’s GP jinx? Imagine if you had been…

3: Your Dad’s keen: He’d been a spectator at the 1925 French Grand Prix at Montlhéry, and witnessed Caracciola’s last great drive, in the rain and over the cobbles of the 1939 Swiss GP at Berne. He’d made sure, too, that his 1930s business trips abroad coincided with the Dieppe GP. Your mum has more than a passing interest, too, having been bowled over by the Silver Arrows at both Donington grands prix. But it’s your badgering as an impressionable 15-year-old that has persuaded them to climb aboard the Manchester-to-Liverpool train. A short hop on an ‘electric’ from Liverpool Street and you’re there: Aintree, for the 1957 British Grand Prix. Your first GP.

Easing through the turnstiles, you hear revving engines. You’re champing at the bit and your parents are left trailing as you elbow your way towards the front of the crowd overlooking the right-hander at Tatts. Archie Scott-Brown in the green-and-yellow Lister bursts into view, sideways on a damp track. It’s everything you’d expected — and more.

The sun comes out for the main event and the Ferrari mechanics park the 801s on the grid. Four blaring megaphones — what a noise! And quick, there’s Fangio, signing autographs perched on the nose of his Mercedes road car. And there’s the man everyone has come to see: Stir!.

There’s an energy about the place, an expectancy: today is going to be a Vanwall day, surely? Tony Brooks’s 1955 Connaught victory at Syracuse had whetted the appetite, and Stirling’s International Trophy win in ’56 had proved that the oddly shaped Vanwall has the speed to succeed at this level. But ‘proper’ grands prix are few and far between, and the country is still waiting for the ‘big one’.

Which is why a groan rolls along the grandstand as Moss, comfortably in the lead after 20 laps or so, misfires his way along the start/finish straight. GAV calls the injured Brooks in and Moss, ever the athlete, hops onto the rear tyre and springs into his second Vanwall cockpit of the day. It’s not over.

From your terraced viewpoint you can see directly into his cockpit as Moss flies around the track. Okay, so he’s not going to win, but the excitement is building as the PA barks out another lap record for the crowd’s hero. And another. And another. Hey, maybe he can get third. Perhaps second. And then it happens. So quickly. Jean Behra’s clutch goes bang and Mike Hawthorn punctures on the debris. Moss is leading: a British driver in a British car at the home GP. The crowd hardly dares breathe lest it adversely affect the teardrop car in green.

The last few laps take an eternity. But when the wait is over the crowd exhales onto the track, sweeping you with it. Earl Howe says a few words. Stirl is interviewed. The throng listens intently. Then claps and cheers itself silly.

Still euphoric, it’s back across the road and onto the Liverpool-bound ‘electric’. The excited chitchat is ‘Stirling this, Moss that’. And by the time you arrive back in Manchester, it’s sunk in: a new era has dawned. Your dad says he thought he’d never see the day. But you have.

And how can I, born 10 years after the event, be sure of the details? Simple, I asked my dad. Like all fathers, he was 15 once. PF
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Did you know?

• This win was the third and last time that a winning car was shared by two drivers. The others were: Fagioli/Fangio (France, 1951) and Musso/Fangio (Argentina, ’56).

• Behra’s 47 laps in the lead at Aintree were the most he ever managed in a single world championship race. Prior to this he’d led just two races (for nine laps in total) since 1952.

• Moss’s fastest lap – 1min 59.2sec on lap 53 – was the first 90mph lap of Aintree’s Grand Prix layout. His Vanwall’s exact average speed was 90.604mph.

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Silverstone 1969
Jackie Stewart recalls an on-the-limit dice with his fiercest, most trusted competitor

2: Two close friends. Two intense rivals. The two best drivers in the world: one the fastest, the other the most complete. One at the wheel of the fastest racing car of its era: Lotus 49B; the other in the most complete: Matra MS80.

Without question, Stewart and Rindt were head and shoulders better than the rest. But there was a major disparity between the two: results. JYS was seven wins into an F1 career that would bring him 27 victories; Rindt was yet to get off the mark — the pressure was starting to build. He had the speed, did he have the nous? His F2 record suggested he did. In the two-and-a-half years of the 1600cc formula that preceded this British GP, he had won (including heats) on 29 occasions; Stewart had won on 11.

“Jochen was a very polished driver,” says Stewart, “but he was very aggressive at that time. I don’t think he’d yet learned how to win without going flat out. I’d discovered the key to that in 1968.” And how. Stewart’s Matra had won four of the first five GPs of ’69. In doing so, he had spent 248 laps in the lead; Rindt had led for 33 laps in the same period.

Lotus was in disarray; Rindt and Chapman were at daggers drawn. ‘Chunky’ was adamant that the 4WD 63 was the way to go; Rindt vehemently disagreed. In contrast, Tyrrell was in control: Stewart was first man out in practice (Lotus arrived late), and he and Ken Tyrrell were on the same wavelength. Even when a loose kerb burst Jackie’s right-rear and rotated him into the sleepers, he calmly climbed into Jean-Pierre Beltoise’s car to qualify it second behind Rindt. There was no chance of repairing the damage for the race, so he would have to race this car, too. But there was no panic. Ken even decided not to swap engines. This continuity meant JYS would be 600rpm down with a 1968-spec DFV.

He lost the clutch at the start, too, as Rindt got the jump. Into Stowe for the sixth time, though, JYS lanced down the inside. Ten laps later Rindt outfumbled him as they lapped backmarkers. “Not only were we racing each other,” explains Stewart, “we also knew what to do in order to pull away from the others; it never crossed our minds to block. What was special was that we were both going flat out and not making mistakes.”

On lap 50 of 84, Jochen led by 3sec — the biggest gap yet. Jackie responded with two fastest laps.

“There would have been some push and shove in the later laps,” chuckles Stewart. Unfortunately, we were denied it. “That Lotus was fast but fragile, and a rear-wing endplate came loose and started to rub on a tyre. I got alongside Jochen and warned him.” The resultant pitstop cost Rindt 34sec. He then ran out of fuel on lap 76, and the resulant splash-n-dash dropped him down to fifth, which he converted to a disappointing fourth on the last lap.

The Matra ‘fluffed’ towards the end, too, but JYS coolly switched over to his reserve tank. He had all the bases covered. He had driven flat out for 62 laps, and kept up the pressure on a car that was running (unexpectedly) light on fuel — so perhaps he was the fastest as well as the most complete. PF
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Did you know?

• Four 4WD cars started this race: two Lotus 63s (John Miles and Jo Bonnier), a Matra MS84 (Beltoise) and a McLaren M9A (Derek Bell). Beltoise and Miles were ninth and 10th.

• There should have been a fifth 4WD car, but the Cosworih was withdrawn before the meeting had started. Trevor Taylor was its listed driver.

• Pedro Rodriguez was having his first GP with Ferrari since Mexico in 1965. He lined up seventh on the grid but retired with engine failure after 61 laps.

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Silverstone 1987
Patrick Head explains how finishing 1-2, one lap ahead of the rest, can be very stressful

1: This Grand Prix is best remembered for Nigel Mansell’s successful pursuit of Nelson Piquet. Not just because it was a no-quarter contest between two great drivers, but because the Englishman was the local superstar, the Brazilian his nemesis. As these Williams team-mates battled for the lead with a little over two laps to go, the reaction from the partisan crowd momentarily drowned the sound of the engines.

When Mansell and Piquet first came together at Williams in 1986 they were never going to be friends — they just about tolerated each other’s presence.

“Their relationship was always pretty frosty,” recalls Williams technical director, Patrick Head. “When Frank finalised the deal with Nelson, which I think was at Austria in 1985, Nigel hadn’t won a race, or even shown that such a thing was likely to happen. Then, all of a sudden, he came on really strong when the car made progress towards the end of that season. So when Nelson came into the team, Nigel had already won a couple of grands prix and was raring to go, ready to go out and win the world championship.

“Frank had been telling Nelson, ‘You’ll be number one, Nigel will back you up’, and all this sort of stuff. And, of course, when Nelson arrived it wasn’t like that at all! Meanwhile, Frank had had his accident at the beginning of ’86, so he wasn’t there to referee and sort it out. And I had not been made party to any of the conversations that had been held between Frank and Nelson. I looked in both their contracts and it didn’t say that one would play second fiddle to the other. Frank was almost on his deathbed and I just ran the team according to what was written down on paper.”

The rivalry between Piquet and Mansell slowly developed during 1986. Nigel gave his home fans something to cheer when he beat Nelson in that year’s British GP at Brands Hatch, but despite the pair’s dominance of the results, the title went to McLaren’s Alain Prost

Boosted by his Adelaide tyre failure, the British driver’s popularity was continuing to grow and, by Silverstone in 1987, Mansellmania was gathering momentum, although it hadn’t reached the levels of ’92.

“He was enormously supported,” says Head, “but it felt uncomfortable, because it was a blind adulation. I didn’t like that aspect of it.”

Nigel was on pole five times in the first six GPs of 1987 and won at Imola and, just a week before his home event, at Paul Ricard. Meanwhile, Piquet took a string of second places, but failed to score a victory. Despite the obvious pace of the Honda-powered FW11B, both Ayrton Senna (Lotus) and Prost were ahead of the Williams duo in the points standings as the F1 circus arrived at Silverstone.

In qualifying, Piquet just pipped Mansell to take his maiden pole for Williams, and his sights were firmly set on his first victory of the year. With third qualifier Senna more than a second slower than Mansell, it was clear that the British Grand Prix would be a two-horse race.

And so it proved, apart from a brief moment at the start. In those pre-launch control days both Williams drivers struggled to get their Honda power onto the road, and Prost shot past into the lead. Within a lap, however, he had been demoted to third as Nelson and then Nigel powered back past

The pair then settled down into a rhythm, with Mansell some 3sec behind his rival and looking quite comfortable. After some 12 laps, though, Nigel began to suffer a front wheel vibration. Although it didn’t cost him too much time to the race leader, he soon reasoned that he had little to lose — and everything to gain — by making a pitstop to change to a new set of tyres.

Head: “We didn’t do refuelling in those days, but it was sometimes planned to do one stop for tyres. Nigel fell back in the first stint because, for whatever reason, he had an out-of-balance set of tyres. I cannot remember why — it either threw a balance weight or a tyre shifted on the rim. It was obviously shaking like hell and he dropped reasonably far behind. So he came in early to change his tyres.”

Mansell pitted on lap 35 of 65 and, when he resumed, Piquet was now some 28sec up the road — with 29 laps to go. The maths were easy, and it was not lost on Nigel. With his new rubber, he really began to motor. However, Piquet responded and, initially at least, the gap shrank only slowly. But as the Brazilian’s tyres lost their edge, it came down. With a dozen laps to go, Mansell was 11.6sec behind — and closing.

Head: “I think we were sitting there and thinking, ‘Well, Nelson’s in a good position’. It only became clear later in the race that Nigel was taking great chunks, a second a lap or more, out of Nelson’s lead. Projecting it towards the end indicated to us that he was going to be in a position to challenge Nelson. It was slightly uncomfortable for us, in that he was driving at a phenomenal rate and was breaking the lap record lap after lap after lap. But it was a fantastic drive to watch.”

With just three laps to run, the inspired Mansell closed inexorably onto Piquet’s tail. Wisely, he made the most of his momentum and, rather than wait for a clear chance to pass, he went for it sooner than anyone thought possible, least of all his team-mate. On the rush down the Hanger Straight to Stowe, Mansell darted to the left to look at the outside line. Transfixed by the image in his mirrors, Piquet went the same way. In an instant, Nigel switched to the inside, plunging into the gap his team-mate had presented. There was room.

But only just

Mansell pulled off several unbelievable moves during his career, but this was perhaps the best.

Head: “I just thought, ‘Oh shit, I hope these two don’t take each other off!’ I have to say it was very stressful — for both Frank and I.

“That grand prix at Brands Hatch in 1986 and then also this one at Silverstone produced stunning performances from Mansell and Piquet. It’s not as if Nelson failed to deliver; he finished second in both of those instances, with Nigel the victor, but on each occasion he had driven superbly.

“They lapped everyone — they were just miles ahead.” AC
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Did you know?

• This was the first grand prix at Silverstone to use the new left-right chicane at Woodcote. The alteration extended the lap by 0.037 of a mile and stayed in use only until 1991.

• During his chase of Piquet, Mansell recorded no fewer than 12 laps faster than his teammate’s fastest — and Nelson’s fastest was almost a second quicker than the next best.

• Satoru Nakajima scored his best GP result, fourth, in a Lotus 99T. He equalled this two years later at Adelaide in a Lotus 101-Judd. He set the fastest lap on the latter occasion.

• Piercarlo Ghinzani was thrown out of the meeting for having his stalled LigierJS29C refuelled and bump-started out on the circuit during practice. He was fined $2000, too.