1985 Portuguese Grand Prix

Senna’s rain dance creates a storm
Eyewitness: Mike Doodson

Nobody will ever dare to argue about the significance of Ayrton Senna’s debut Formula 1 win, in a torrential downpour, in the 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix. It was a milestone both for the 25-year-old Brazilian and for Team Lotus, which had only one win to show from the previous seven seasons and was scratching to restore its fading prestige. After this showing, as team boss Peter Warr ruefully acknowledged, even his bank manager looked on him more kindly.

It happens that Senna had brought along his mum and dad. Swelling a crowd which would have looked sparse at a British club race, Neide and Milton will surely have found more to get excited about than the paying spectators did as their son led all the way until the FIA’s two-hour time limit had mercifully expired and a damp chequer was waved. Barely eight of the 26 starters were classified and only one of them – Ferrari’s Michele Alboreto – was on the same lap.

Afterwards, most of the crowd managed to invade the track. Murray Walker, my colleague in the BBC box, jostled his way to the afternoon’s hero, and got enough coherent words for the Beeb’s post-race purposes. Next morning, Motor Sport’s own Denis Jenkinson did better: he wangled himself into the seat next to Senna on the flight back to London, an experience which turned him into an eternal fan.

I had to wait a bit longer. Fifteen days after the race I was at Thruxton for the Bank Holiday round of the British F3 championship, in my role as press adviser to up-and-coming racer Mauricio Gugelmin. It was Senna who had recommended me for the job, and we watched our friend’s race together from the chicane.

Senna had to remind me that there had been a drama at Estoril during the warm-up when a last-moment gearbox problem forced the mechanics to perform an asbestos-hands engine/gearbox transplant. He got barely a lap’s running on the already wet track.

“On the warming-up laps, when the organisers gave us, I think, 10 minutes extra, I was so, let’s say, lost with the [poor] conditions, because I had no idea how the car would behave on that track with so much water. I was [deliberately] going slow, making sure that I wouldn’t crash before I even got to the start.”

Halfway through the watery torture, after several heart-stopping slithers, Senna had signalled, ineffectively, that it should be stopped. Twelve months earlier, at a soaking-wet Monaco, Alain Prost had successfully gestured for the race to be stopped, to his advantage. Only later was it revealed that he was desperate because his McLaren’s carbon brakes had gone cold and useless. How unfair was that?

“My pure concern was just that the conditions were too bad, even if maybe [that meant that] they would apply only half points,” Senna told me. “I was in a position to push for full points, but the conditions were so bad and I was prepared for half points.”

In a remarkably frank interview conducted in 1990 for Playboy (Brazil), Senna declared that, “daring, speed and making bold decisions are my personal strengths. But in some situations, they can have the opposite effect. My convictions [then] can work against me.”

In Estoril, he hesitated and he was rewarded with full points. But it could so easily have gone the opposite way…

1976 Canadian Grand Prix

Hunt’s fury fires him to his best
Eyewitness: Maurice Hamilton

The setting was dramatic. James Hunt had just been advised that Ferrari’s appeal against his British GP victory a few months before had been upheld. Overnight, Hunt had not only lost nine points but his archrival, Niki Lauda, had gained three. The gap between them had expanded to almost two clear wins. There were three races to go. Including this one at Mosport.

Entertaining hopes of becoming a full-time motor sport writer, I had blagged my way onto the media accreditation list and, to my delight, received a pass with full track access. This was in the days before computers and televised coverage. Local journos advised the high bank overlooking the first corner – a downhill right-hander – was the best place to watch the race and keep a lap chart. How right they were.

From my perch, I could see the starting grid, with Hunt’s McLaren on pole; Lauda’s Ferrari five places behind. If Ferrari believed the Brands Hatch disqualification would be a set-back for Hunt, they were right in one sense – and wrong in another.

There had been words between Lauda and Hunt; a ploy by James to make Niki believe his former pal had freaked out. Lauda realised that Hunt, with his back against the wall, would be at his most menacing. You could see that from the Englishman’s preoccupied look.

Ronnie Peterson, sharing the front row, got the jump on the McLaren and led into the first corner. Hunt hounded the March for eight laps before finding a way through. Hunt knew that nothing less than maximum points would do.

His plan received a setback when Patrick Depailler moved his six-wheel Tyrrell into second and closed on Hunt. These two had history. A collision at Long Beach had seen Hunt stand on the track and remonstrate furiously each time Depailler came by. The Frenchman scented blood and his first GP victory. He caught the McLaren and began searching for a way though. Hunt’s head-down style seemed more focused than ever as the pair swept through the first turn on the absolute edge. It was a truly mesmerising battle. Then, with a few laps to go, Depailler began to drop back.

He crossed the line 6sec behind Hunt and came to a halt beneath where I sat. Patrick stumbled from the cockpit and collapsed against the barrier. Petrol fumes from a leaking fuel gauge had seeped under his crash helmet. Depailler said it felt as though he was intoxicated. It was a feeling James Hunt would soon have for more acceptable reasons as he celebrated arguably his greatest of 10 GP victories on a blissful autumnal afternoon.

1968 German Grand Prix

Stewart, the new ’Ringmaster
Eyewitness: Denis Jenkinson (from the archive)

With nearly 8000bhp available on the grid and the rain pouring down the start was a moment of truth for grand prix racing, and every one of the 20 drivers excelled. They got away in a solid pack, spray flying in all directions and every reflex working overtime to get maximum acceleration and yet prevent too much wheelspin or any slewing about, for it is doubtful if anyone other than the front row could see anything at all.

When you have witnessed the clueless accidents that other forms of racing have achieved away from a start in perfect conditions with underpowered cars, you realise why the true grand prix drivers are the top of the driving profession, and the start of the 30th Grand Prix of Germany was a superb exhibition of ability.

The two Ferraris had hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Jochen Rindt had anticipated slightly so was off balance, but Graham Hill made a superb start and shot through from the second row to lead the pack on the opening lap. With the rain coming down the choice of tyre was simple, so that everyone was on a more or less equal footing, but Jackie Stewart had a special set of ‘super-wet’ Dunlops on his Matra.

Hill led as far as the exit from the long Schwalbenschwanz bends, when the blue Matra-Cosworth shot by him and disappeared in a cloud of spray, pulling out a 10sec lead in the ensuing few kilometres to the end of the opening lap. The lead that Stewart had at the end of the opening lap caused an audible gasp to be heard from under the mass of umbrellas in the public enclosures. The standing lap by Stewart had been done in 10min 14.8sec which was really impressive in view of the conditions, but there was much more to come from the little Scotsman. At the end of the second lap the Matra was 30sec ahead of Hill’s Lotus and Stewart was looking splendidly confident.

Stewart’s pace was truly phenomenal, or else the pace of all the others was pathetic, but no one lapping at over 80mph in the prevailing conditions could seriously be called pathetic.

Stewart had covered lap six in 9min 41.3sec and was really at grips with the conditions, and was through the ‘pits loop’ and round the North Curve before Hill and Chris Amon could be heard approaching the start-and-finish area.

Lap eight saw Stewart with a new fastest lap of the day in 9min 36.0sec, a time that used to be very respectable in bright sunshine, and he had done it mostly in rain and cloud! By the end of lap nine the Matra was swerving through the woods at Hatzenbach before the second-place Lotus was in sight of the pits.

The magnificent Stewart drove on to one of his finest victories, his second for Matra this season, and both of them in the wet, but never has the Nürburgring thrown out a challenge like it had done this time, and the drivers, whether they had finished first or last, had risen to the occasion and fought back with every ounce of skill they possessed. It was miserable but magnificent.

1987 British Grand Prix

Mansell sells his dummy
Eyewitness: Damien Smith

If I close my eyes, I can still picture the sight of it all unravelling, in a 190mph flash from my perfect vantage point near the end of Hangar Straight. The cars shooting out from Chapel Curve almost as one; the violent vibrations of speed as they blasted towards us; the attacker dummying; the defender’s responding jink; and then the aggressor’s glorious swoop to the inside. Through the turn the Canon-liveried rear wings were side by side, almost touching. But the lead had changed, and the race was won – on lap 63 of 65. We roared in unison, as if it was a cup final goal. A moment of pure sporting joy.

I was just 13 years old when by luck I found myself in the perfect spot to witness one of the greatest overtaking moves of them all. It was the best race I’d seen up that point, after a childhood spent watching all sorts at Brands and Silverstone, with the odd visit to Thruxton thrown in for good measure. Is it still the best race I’ve seen, all these years and hundreds of races later? Yes, probably. It’s a tough one to top.

I’d been counting down the gap, lap by lap, after Nigel Mansell – the ‘true grit, true Brit’ hero of the masses – had been forced to pit for new Goodyears thanks to vibrations from a tyre imbalance. Before the days of pitlane speed limits, he’d charged in and out in a fury – and was now refusing to accept defeat in front of his adoring ‘barmy army’. The partisan element to the British GP crowd was of a stronger flavour in 1991 and ’92 – but ‘Mansell mania’ was already close to full swing by July 1987.

Despite the best efforts of Alain Prost at the start, Nelson Piquet and Mansell had already crushed the opposition in the Silverstone sun, Honda power and their brilliant Williams FW11Bs a cut above the rest. With an eye on tyre wear and fuel consumption, they still left the rest of the field for dead.

The gap after Mansell’s stop had been around half a minute. We’d all thought it was over. But now the tension built as Mansell closed in on the enemy within – the team-mate he couldn’t stand. We didn’t need the snatches of commentary from the useless speakers to tell us what was possible. We could see, as lap records tumbled.

It had been all or nothing, ‘Red Five’ running out of fuel after the flag. We swamped the track in celebration – then dutifully climbed back over the sleepers in time to see the winner riding pillion on a police motorcycle. The copper pulled up in front of us, Mansell climbed off – and kissed the track, Pontiff-style, at the point opposite me where he’d sold his dummy. Blessed was he that day.

At Club Corner, unknown future colleagues and friends cursed Piquet’s luck, having already seen through Mansell’s pantomime histrionics. But remember, I was 13. Cynicism had yet to take hold. He’d defeated Piquet at Brands in 1986, and would win here again in crushing fashion in the future. But 1987 was something else.

2000 Japanese Grand Prix

Schumacher’s first Ferrari title
Eyewitness: Mark Hughes

This was my first visit to Japan and the wondrously surreal Suzuka. One of the most foreboding and demanding of tracks ever devised sharing the plot with a fairground, misty air dampening even the shrill shriek of V10s. What a place – and just to add to the dream-like quality it was potentially the world title-decider, Michael Schumacher vs Mika Häkkinen, Ferrari vs McLaren.

It was a long time since Schumacher had won his last title, even longer for Ferrari. It seems odd from the perspective of now, decades after Ferrari and Schumacher together rewrote the record books, but back then McLaren and Häkkinen were the gold standard, with Ferrari/Schumacher the challengers. Ron Dennis’s McLaren had changed the scale of what an F1 team was and everyone – including Ferrari – was still scrabbling to keep up. McLaren had Mercedes power, Adrian Newey and Mika, a driver who troubled Schumacher like no other before or after.

Years later, I was interviewing Jock Clear for a piece I was writing about Schumacher. Jock was by then at Mercedes and working with Lewis Hamilton, having spent the previous three years with Schumacher in his comeback years. Jock was making the distinction between Hamilton’s rock solid certainty he was the fastest and Schumacher’s doubt that he ever was. “Michael told me that even when he was winning titles he did not believe he could drive a car as fast as Mika Häkkinen,” recalled Jock, “and therefore he had to do everything in his power to stack everything else in his favour – and he used that to fuel himself and to forge that incredible work ethic.”

Who is to say, but the fact that Michael believed this is to underline just what an incredible force Häkkinen – at the time gunning for his third straight world title – was. His early retirement has left him under-appreciated today but he is one of the fastest men ever to have climbed into a racing car. If I had to bet my house on it, with everyone at their peak and in cars perfectly suited to them, over one lap of a fast track I’d put him up against anyone on the current grid. He absolutely shared Schumacher’s belief about who was the fastest, though he wore that certainty lightly. I’d known him since he was 19, when he was racing in Vauxhall-Lotus. Years before he was in F1 I’d asked him would he be faster than Ayrton Senna over a lap in the same car. He looked at me like he was puzzled I’d even asked. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.” A few years later he’d prove it.

But Schumacher was monstrous, an inexhaustible competitive will and a much fuller understanding of the jigsaw of success. He was powering Ferrari, pushing it along behind the scenes and forming an incredible alliance with Ross Brawn and Jean Todt, a partnership of equals much more so than the boss/favoured employee relationship of Dennis and Häkkinen. That ambition, that relentless will, wasn’t going to stop until it had prevailed. It was just a matter of when.

Schumacher had taken things to final-round shoot-outs in ’97 and ’98 against faster cars – and may well have prevailed in ’99 but for the failed brake line and resultant broken leg at Silverstone. For 2000 Ferrari had finally provided him with a car as good as McLaren’s right from the start of the season. The competitive edge see-sawed between them all year and they arrived at this penultimate round with Schumacher eight points ahead and therefore potentially able to secure the crown regardless of what happened in Malaysia two weeks later. But he had to win here to do that.

They were separated by 0.009sec in qualifying – Schumacher ahead – but were head and shoulders above anyone else, thick end of half a second faster. It was Häkkinen who surged into the lead at the start, Mika then ignoring Schumacher’s trademark swerve towards him and keeping his foot to the floor, his steering straight ahead. It was a murky afternoon but we watched as this pair danced themselves far clear of the pack, Mika totally at ease up front, Michael pushing hard maintaining the pressure. It stayed like this through the first pitstops but as the window for the second approached and Häkkinen pitted to avoid the traffic up ahead, a light drizzle began to fall. Häkkinen just could not get his new tyres up to temperature on the greasy track. Schumacher, his old tyres still hot, stayed out an extra three laps.

“It’s looking good Michael,” said Ross as the Ferrari accelerated down the pitlane. “It’s looking bloody good!” he added as it came out ahead of the McLaren. Like that, a new era of F1 had begun.

1994 Japanese Grand Prix

Hill’s Suzuka surprise for Schumacher
Eyewitness: Adam Cooper

Damon Hill always had to work hard to be regarded as a top-flight contender. However, even his fiercest critics had to accept that his performance at the ’94 Japanese GP was special.

It had been a season of tragedy and controversy, and after the death of team-mate Ayrton Senna at Imola Hill did a brilliant job of motivating Williams. Beating Michael Schumacher and Benetton was another story, but Hill won four times when the German was either disqualified or banned, and was thus in title contention ahead of the penultimate race.

As usual I hung out in Tokyo for a few days with my pal Eddie Irvine before we both headed by train to Suzuka, where we were sharing a room at the Circuit Hotel.

Schumacher took provisional pole on Friday, and it became definitive when rain washed out Saturday’s second qualifying. The rain returned on Sunday, and it was one of those typical Japanese days when it looked like it would never stop as the soaked fans sat patiently in the grandstands.

The start went ahead on schedule, and inevitably there were several early shunts that led to a safety car period. After the action resumed Schumacher began to build a lead on Hill until Martin Brundle spun and struck a hapless marshal, triggering a red flag.

In those days such circumstances meant a two-part aggregate race. Schumacher held a 6.6sec advantage, and in just a handful of laps after the restart he opened the gap to 9.6sec, before he stormed into the pits to refuel. Would he have to stop again? Hill stayed out and put in some fast laps. Meanwhile, with a heavy load, and Mika Häkkinen’s McLaren ahead, Schumacher’s progress stalled.

Damon came in at exactly half-distance, proof that he was on a one-stop strategy, assuming that the track didn’t dry. There was some stress when the right rear jammed, and the team sent him back out with the original still attached, and only three fresh wets.

Schumacher was back in front, but he was indeed committed to pitting again, Benetton’s regular strategy of sprinting between multiple stops having served him well all year.

The second stop handed a 14.5sec lead to Hill. When Schumacher brought the gap down to 2.1sec with two laps to go a change seemed inevitable. However, Hill was driving superbly, and despite having to nurse his ageing right rear he found an extra gear over those two laps – and he was safe by 3.3sec at the flag. The title battle would go to the Australian GP finale.

That evening I bumped into Hill at the Circuit Hotel’s Italian restaurant.

“I know I drove well today,” he told me. “And I know that I actually beat Michael on the track without any interference from black flags and stuff like that. That’s not only done me a lot of good, but it’s also probably hurt him. Especially as he called me a second-rater…”

After enjoying some pasta Damon went to the karaoke bar in the hotel where he and his entourage sang late into the night. Adelaide would ultimately bring frustration – however in Japan Hill had made his point. The title would come at the same venue two years later.

1965 British Grand Prix

Clark’s close-run thing
Eyewitness: Denis Jenkinson (from the archive)

The flag fell and it was a magnificent start, with the Lotus of Jim Clark and Richie Ginther’s Honda surging ahead. As they went under the bridge at the end of the pits the Honda was two lengths in front of the Lotus. They went into Copse corner side by side, with the Lotus being squeezed against the wall on the inside. Ginther held his place and for once Clark did not get the lead on the first corner, and, in fact, it was not until Hangar Straight that Clark got ahead. Once in front he gave it all he had and finished the opening lap well in the lead, with his left-hand rear wheel on the grass out of Woodcote.

At 20 laps, Clark and Graham Hill had outdistanced everyone else, but the Lotus was firmly in the lead and all Hill could do was keep going and hope the Lotus might fail.

After 50 laps Clark’s Climax engine began to develop a small misfire, which developed into a definite ‘ploppling’ as if the fuel injection pump pressure was not the full 100lb/sq in. This did not affect his lap times unduly, but it encouraged the BRM pit, who transmitted the information to Hill. All eyes were on the slightly sick sounding Lotus and the healthy BRM, but there was nearly half a lap distance between them. Slowly but surely the gap began to close.

Clark had lapped all the cars he was going to lap, and the situation between the Lotus and the BRM began to get tense, for in addition to the misfiring, the Climax engine had been losing oil and the level in the tank was now so low that it was surging away from the feed pipe on corners. With a loss of oil pressure, Clark was coasting round the corners and only using the power on the straights while he had pressure in the oil gauge. All the time Hill was driving harder and the two of them were driving on pit signals giving them the gap in seconds as it diminished steadily. With 10 laps still to go Clark was slowing and the BRM supporters were urging Hill on his way, while Lotus supporters were keeping their fingers crossed.

In the last laps Clark was driving as hard as he dare. As he started his last lap Hill had him in sight, and as the Lotus went into Copse corner Clark could see the BRM in his mirrors, but he obviously had command of the situation for when he finished the 80th lap he was virtually still the same distance ahead of the BRM, which was officially 3.2sec.

It had been a close thing and had Clark not driven with such determination in the first half of the race he may not have been able to nurse the Lotus to the finish ahead of Hill. It was his fourth-consecutive British Grand Prix victory.

2012 European Grand Prix

Alonso’s street-fighter charge
Eyewitness: Mark Hughes

Valencia was a bit of an oddball addition to the calendar back in 2009. A really nice city and with its own purpose-built race track a few miles out of town, a circuit which many times hosted pre-season testing. But the race wasn’t there. It was a street circuit cobbled together from public roads around a dilapidated part of the port, derelict old warehouses overlooking parts of a featureless track, big old cranes silently rusting.

The 2012 European Grand Prix was the fifth and final race there. It hadn’t really worked, the local authorities weren’t prepared to sink any more money into the event, which had only come to life as Spain felt it could accommodate a second grand prix thanks to the inspirational exploits of Fernando Alonso – then at Ferrari.

It was a pitilessly sweltering day and a big crowd had for once turned up – albeit too late to save the event. That crowd would have been disappointed to note that Alonso had qualified only 11th, Ferrari having misjudged things in believing it wouldn’t need to use a second set of new tyres to graduate to Q3.

This 2012 season was a bit of an odd one. A new Pirelli construction had left teams totally baffled in trying to understand the rubber. You either stumbled into the right set-up for the weekend or you didn’t. It had nothing to do with merit. In the previous seven races there had been seven different winners, comprising Alonso, the McLarens of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes, Pastor Maldonado’s Williams and the Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.

The tyre could not withstand the loads the cars were placing upon it. It was saturated by the downforce and would overheat, melting everyone down to a very similar pace. I’d chatted earlier in the season with a Pirelli engineer, someone who saw the loads the cars were (briefly) applying to the tyres before they surrendered. “The Red Bulls are in a different league,” he said. “If we had open competition tyres they’d be winning by a lap.”

But you can only play the hand you’re dealt. This was a fantastic opportunity for that great opportunist Alonso. The Ferrari was an OK car. Not a great one, certainly not in Red Bull’s league. But as good as anything else. There was a title here to be stolen.

But he’d surely have his work cut out on this day. A great start got him up to eighth as Vettel sprinted away to lead Hamilton’s McLaren, Lewis with his hands full fending off Romain Grosjean’s Lotus. Alonso picked off Nico Hülkenberg’s Force India to go seventh and the tyre-troubled Williams of Maldonado soon after. The crowd roared with each place he made up and it was as if the waves were parting for him when Kamui Kobayashi and Kimi Räikkönen suffered slow pitstops, allowing him to overcut them both.

By now Vettel had a big lead over Grosjean, who had passed Hamilton with a beautifully judged move into the chicane. After picking off Paul di Resta, Alonso was up to fourth and closing on Hamilton. A safety car wiped out Vettel’s big lead and compressed the field. Everyone pitted. Hamilton suffered a jack problem, putting Alonso third in the safety car queue.

On the restart Alonso pounced on Grosjean to go second. As this was happening Vettel’s alternator failed. He was out, putting Alonso in the lead to the football stadium-like roar of the fans. Grosjean came back at Alonso but couldn’t get by – then retired with the same alternator failure as Vettel. Alonso had pulled off a most unlikely victory.

He stopped several times on his slow-down lap to acknowledge the crowd. It was magical but had come too late to save the race. That corner of the docks would be left to resume its slow dereliction after its brief moment in the spotlight.

1957 German Grand Prix

Fangio’s last – and finest
Eyewitness: Denis Jenkinson (from the archive)

As Mike Hawthorn’s standing lap had been in 9min 42.5sec it was obvious that this was to be a full-blooded grand prix and not an endurance run, and when he came by after lap two he had set up a new record in 9min 37.9sec, but it lasted only a few seconds for Juan Manuel Fangio was nibbling at Peter Collins’s tail and had done 9min 34.6sec.

From then on there was only one man on the Nürburgring, for Fangio improved on the lap record on every lap, passed Collins at the beginning of lap three and had overtaken Hawthorn on the descent to Adenau, so that by the end of the third lap the world champion was 5sec ahead of Collins, who was just ahead of Hawthorn.

Fangio was in his element with so many fast corners and descents and increased his lead by 7sec a lap from Hawthorn and Collins, who were in close formation. By lap eight he was 28sec in front and had set the lap record at 9min 30.8sec; the two Lancia/Ferraris were still close together.

Finishing lap 12 Fangio drew into the pits, got out of the car, and two mechanics took 52sec to change rear wheels and refuel, a disgustingly long time by grand prix standards. Fangio had arrived with 28sec lead, but slowing down and starting off again after being 52sec at the pits put him over three-quarters of a minute behind the two Lancia/Ferraris, which went by while he was stationary. Collins was credited with a new lap record of 9min 28.9sec and he and Hawthorn took turns at leading the race, passing the pits with one hand on the steering wheel and the other shading their eyes from the lowering sun.

For three laps, while his tyres were new and the tanks heavy with fuel, Fangio made no impression on the two Lancia/Ferraris, but lap 16 saw the gap reduced to 33sec and the next time round it was 25.5sec. The Ferrari pit became frantic and urged the two Englishmen to greater things but there was nothing they could do, and Fangio was smiling happily to himself as he first of all lowered the lap record to 9min 28.5sec, then to 9min 25.3sec. On lap 19 he did 9min. 23.4sec and the gap was only 13.5sec, and Hawthorn and Collins knew their race was run, for when ‘the old man’ gets in a record-breaking groove there is no one to stop him, especially on the Nürburgring.

At the end of lap 20 Hawthorn led Collins over the line, both straining all they knew how, and then the crowds rose in acclamation for Fangio was right behind them, only 2sec between himself and Hawthorn. Round the Sudkurve he was grinning contentedly at the two young boys and as Collins went into the left-handed Nordkurve Fangio went by him on the inside.

Then came the shattering announcement: ”Fangio has just lapped in 9min 17.4sec!” — an unbelievable record but obviously true for he had gained 11sec on Hawthorn in 14 miles. Before reaching the lowest point of the course, at Breidscheid, Hawthorn had been overtaken and with a lap and a half to go Fangio had made up for his pitstop.

Once overtaken Collins relaxed and dropped right back, partly admissible as his clutch was not working, but Hawthorn refused to give up and was only 3sec behind as Fangio started his last lap. This was the Hawthorn everyone likes to watch, the never-say-die Hawthorn who will fight against overwhelming odds to the bitter end. For that last memorable lap Hawthorn lost only a few yards on Fangio. One slip by the world champion and Hawthorn would have been back in front but it’s because he doesn’t make such slips that Fangio is world champion, and he led the Lancia/Ferrari over the line by barely 4sec.

A great race. Fangio had surpassed himself, secured the world championship for 1957, and put everyone in their place on the toughest circuit in Europe.

2024 British Grand Prix

Hamilton’s drought ends
Eyewitness: Edd Straw

Home grand prix wins are always special. As a journalist, that doesn’t mean ‘your’ race, but any occasion the jubilant local crowd hails the victory they came to see. At Monaco in late May, we experienced that when Charles Leclerc took the first Monegasque victory on the streets for almost a century. Six weeks later, it happened again when Lewis Hamilton won at Silverstone.

It’s far from unusual for him to win the British Grand Prix, something Hamilton had already done eight times. What made it extraordinary was how unexpected it was, coming on a day when two other home heroes – Mercedes team-mate George Russell and McLaren’s Lando Norris – might also have won. It ended the longest win drought of Hamilton’s career, more than two-and-a-half years, and the reaction had much in common with his first.

On that day in 2008, Hamilton produced a virtuoso performance to take one of the great wet-weather wins. This year’s triumph was different, but the outpouring of crowd emotion was just as powerful.

At the end of races, drivers work their way through the TV pen then the written media ‘mixed zone’, as it’s called. So in the closing stages of the race, usually I’ll be waiting  there to interrogate the drivers while following the final laps as well as the available screens and information allow. Hamilton’s moment of victory was therefore largely an aural experience. The mixed zone is at the end of the paddock close to Club Corner, with tens of thousands of fans within earshot. What I will always remember is the incredible noise, already loud as Hamilton blasted his way from Stowe to Vale, slowed for the left-hander then made his way through the long Club right-hander, building to a great crescendo as he took his 104th grand prix victory. A smattering of hardened paddock-dwellers even applauded.

The Mercedes team couldn’t contain its joy either. It ended its drought a week earlier when George Russell won in Austria, but there was such a feeling of joy and also sentimentality at Hamilton winning again. “Oh mate, I have been waiting for this. Jeez…” said race engineer Pete ‘Bono’ Bonnington over the radio, Hamilton’s voice breaking in his response.

Dominance is only ever fleeting in F1. Hamilton was once the king of Silverstone, but not only admitted to having doubts whether he would ever win again after the race, but also showed he knew exactly how long the drought had lasted.

“That’s the longest stint that I’ve not had a win, 945 days,” he said in the post-race press conference. “And the emotion that’s accumulated over that time. So this one feels [like it] could be one of the most special ones for me, if not the most special one.”

At a time when some questioned whether age had taken the edge off, the 39-year-old proved he still had it in him. It was almost a win from another time, one signalling to the home crowd that Hamilton’s not ready to hand the baton over to the next generation just yet.