Silverstone, July 20th
Amidst a veritable feast of racing and circus stunts, that went on for a long and full day, the B.R.D.C. were able to organise the British Grand Prix that ranked as a Grande Epreuve, and they offered some 115,000 spectators more than their money's worth. With two and a half weeks since the last Formula One race the Grand Prix teams not only had plenty of time to prepare their cars, but also time to put in some serious track testing, with the result that nearly the whole entry was ready to start practice when the first session opened on Thursday at midday.
The B.R.M. team-drivers Hill and Ginther were both using the old-type cars, with 1962 chassis, 1963 engine and 1963 gearboxes with 6 speeds, the new stressed-skin car not being sufficiently developed to be competitive on the Silverstone airfield. Both cars had orange bands around the radiator air intakes, for recognition purposes, and the colour also matched the overalls worn by the team mechanics this season. A third B.R.M. was being run by the factory for the Centro-Sud team and driven by Bandini, this being the 1962 car he drove at Reims, now painted completely red once more, as it had been at Silverstone in May. Although the car was ready it missed the first practice as Bandini had not arrived.
