Silverstone hosted the first ever World Championship race in 1950 and has gone on to host the British Grand Prix on almost 60 occasions since. Here are all the facts and statistics you need to know about the Silverstone circuit ahead of the British Grand Prix!
Track length: 5.891km
Race length: 306.198km
Laps: 52
Turns: 18
Circuit opened: 1948
F1 first visited: 1950
Races held: 58
Track Record: 1:24.303, Lewis Hamilton, 2020
Lap Record: 1:27.097, Max Verstappen, 2020
SILVERSTONE RACE WINNERS
59 Formula 1 races have been held at the Silverstone circuit since 1950.
Silverstone has hosted the British Grand Prix 58 times and also hosted the one-off 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, which took place in 2020. During that time, 32 different drivers have won at the track.
Hamilton has the most wins at Silverstone
Lewis Hamilton has more wins at Silverstone than any other driver. He recorded his record-breaking ninth Silverstone victory at the 2024 British Grand Prix.
There are four previous Silverstone winners on the current grid. Lewis Hamilton has the most victories, with nine, Fernando Alonso has won the British Grand Prix twice, Max Verstappen has two wins at the track (the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix and the 2023 British Grand Prix) , while Carlos Sainz claimed his first Formula 1 win at the 2022 British Grand Prix.
Alberto Ascari, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Jacques Villeneuve, David Coulthard and Lewis Hamilton are the eight drivers who have taken back-to-back wins at the circuit.
Hamilton has the most consecutive wins at the circuit, with four victories in a row between 2014 and 2017.
British drivers have over three times more victories at Silverstone than any other nation. The British national anthem has played out for the winning driver 24 times at the track.
The longest streak of different winners at this track came between 2003 and 2010, when there were no repeat winners for eight seasons.
Four Grand Slams have been recorded at Silverstone
Three drivers have recorded a Grand Slam at Silverstone. Nigel Mansell holds the record for most Grand Slams at the track, having taken pole, led every lap and set the fastest lap on his way to victory in both the 1991 British Grand Prix and the 1992 British Grand Prix.
Alberto Ascari and Lewis Hamilton are the other drivers who’ve recorded Grand Slams at Silverstone. Ascari did so in the 1953 British Grand Prix, while Hamilton did so at the 2017 British Grand Prix.
Ferrari have the most wins of any team at Silverstone
Ferrari have more wins than any other team here, with 15. Ferrari-powered cars have also won here more than any other engine, also with 15 wins – one more than Mercedes.
Ferrari hold the record for the most consecutive team wins at Silverstone. They won the event on all six occasions that the British Grand Prix was held at the track between 1951 and 1958.
There have been 12 occasions on which a team has recorded a 1-2 finish at Silverstone. Ferrari have the most 1-2 finishes at the track with four, while Mercedes recorded the most recent 1-2 result at the track in 2019.
Five drivers have won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone by over a lap
The British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been won by over a lap on five occasions. Alberto Ascari was first to finish a lap ahead of everyone else in 1952 and since then Juan Manuel Fangio in 1956, Jackie Stewart in 1969, Emerson Fittipaldi in 1975 and Alain Prost in 1985 have all joined the Italian in completing the feat.
The smallest win margin at Silverstone is 0.765 seconds, which is the amount of time by which Nico Rosberg won the 2013 event.
A race at Silverstone has been won by less than ten seconds on 21 occasions. A race at the track has been won by less than five seconds on 17 occasions, including seven times since the configuration of the track was updated in 2010.
All of the last four British Grands Prix have been won by similar margins, all under four seconds.
From the last ten Grands Prix held at Silverstone, the average win margin is 7.960 seconds.
ON THE PODIUM AT SILVERSTONE
75 different drivers have finished on the podium at Silverstone.
Hamilton holds the record for most British Grand Prix podiums
Lewis Hamilton has the most podium finishes of any driver here, with 15 top three finishes – the most podiums any driver has ever recorded at a single circuit.
There are eight drivers on the current grid who have previously finished on the podium at Silverstone. Aside from Hamilton’s record of 15 top three finishes, Fernando Alonso has six top three finishes at Silverstone, Valtteri Bottas has five podium finishes, Max Verstappen has four and Charles Leclerc has finished on the podium on three occasions. Lando Norris has recorded podium finishes at Silverstone in the last two years while Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz have each finished on the podium once at Silverstone.
Once again, it’s British drivers who dominate the all-time list of podium finishes at Silverstone, with 50 podiums in total – over double the total of nearest rival Germany, who have had 18 top three finishes at the track.
Ferrari have recorded more podiums than any other team at Silverstone
Ferrari are the team with the most podium finishes at the track. They’ve finished in the top three 47 times. McLaren are next on the list with 29 top three appearances.
A podium was recorded at Silverstone from 28th on the grid
From the 59 races at the track, the polesitter has finished on the podium 35 times.
The lowest grid position a podium finish has come from at Silverstone is 28th. This happened at the 1954 British Grand Prix, when Onofre Marimón finished third having started 28th in a 30-car field.
There have been ten F1 races at Silverstone where all the top three qualifiers have gone on to finish on the podium, but there has never been a race at the track where the top three finished in the order in which they started.
Since 1992, 2015 and 2023 are the only time that the top two drivers on the grid have finished in the same order as they started.
There have been four races at this circuit where none of the top three qualifiers have finished on the podium. It happened in 1979, 1981, 2008 and 2014.
SILVERSTONE POLESITTERS
37 different drivers have taken pole position at Silverstone.
Hamilton has more poles at Silverstone than any other driver
Lewis Hamilton is the driver with the most poles at the track, having set the Saturday pace seven times in total, including six times in the past 12 years. Hamilton was also fastest in qualifying in 2021, but this did not give him pole position as Max Verstappen was victorious in F1’s first Sprint Qualifying event.
There are six previous British Grand Prix polesitters on the current grid. Lewis Hamilton has seven pole positions here, Fernando Alonso has three, Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen each have two, while Carlos Sainz and George Russell secured their first poles at the track in 2022 and 2024 respectively.
Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Mika Hakkinen, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton are the eight drivers to have taken pole position at consecutive events at Silverstone.
Hamilton has the most consecutive poles at the track, having set the fastest Saturday time in every year between 2015 and 2018.
In the battle of the nations, British drivers have taken three times more poles than any other nation at Silverstone. British drivers have 21 poles – their nearest rivals Finland have seven.
Ferrari set a new record for most Silverstone poles in 2022
Ferrari have taken the most pole positions of any team at Silverstone, with 12. The Scuderia overtook Williams’ former record in 2022.
No team has taken more consecutive poles at Silverstone than Mercedes, whose run of nine consecutive pole positions at the circuit came to an end at the 2021 British Grand Prix.
There have been 19 occasions on which a team has locked-out the front row at Silverstone. The last team to do so was Mercedes, at the 2024 British Grand Prix.
Rosberg was the last driver to take pole at Silverstone by over a second
Since 1992, pole at Silverstone has been decided by over a second twice. Nigel Mansell holds the record for the largest pole margin at Silverstone, lapping 1.919 seconds faster than any other driver in his championship-winning season. Since then, Nico Rosberg is the only other driver to have been over a second faster than anyone else in qualifying at the track. He did so at the 2014 race, where he was fastest by 1.620 seconds, aided by the changing conditions of the track.
The smallest pole margin at Silverstone is a mere 0.003 seconds, which decided pole in Damon Hill and Rubens Barrichello’s favours in 1994 and 2000 respectively.
There have been 16 qualifying sessions at Silverstone in which pole has been decided by less than a tenth of a second – including in five of the last eight races at the track.
There have been four occasions on which pole has been decided by less than one hundredth of a second. The last time pole was decided by less than a hundredth of a second at the British Grand Prix was in 2019, when Valtteri Bottas was just 0.006 seconds faster than Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
In addition to the 16 qualifying sessions decided by less than a tenth of a second, Lewis Hamilton also set the fastest lap in Friday qualifying for the 2021 British Grand Prix by 0.075 seconds. However, this did not give him pole position due to the introduction of Sprint Qualifying.
From the last ten races at Silverstone, the average pole margin is 0.185 seconds.
The smallest spread of lap times in qualifying came in 2009, when just 2.117 seconds separated Sebastian Vettel’s fastest time in Q2 from Sebastien Buemi’s lap for last on the grid in Q1. Meanwhile, there was a huge 98 second gap between polesitter Giuseppe Farina and last-placed Bill Aston in qualifying at Silverstone in 1952. Aston was a DNS in the race; the reasoning being that his car was ‘too slow’.
SATURDAY TO SUNDAY AT SILVERSTONE
22 British Grands Prix at Silverstone have been won from pole position. 41 races at the track have been won from the front row of the grid.
There have been 14 occasions on which the polesitter has finished on the podium here without winning the race.
18 races at this track have been won from third on the grid or lower. The furthest back win came in 1975, when Emerson Fittipaldi won for McLaren from seventh on the grid.
There have been 23 occasions on which the polesitter has not led at the end of the first lap at Silverstone – including at three of the last four British Grand Prix weekends.
At the 2021 British Grand Prix, Max Verstappen became the first Silverstone polesitter to retire on the first lap of the race.
In 2024, George Russell became the 16th polesitter at Silverstone to fail to finish the race.
SILVERSTONE SUNDAY STATISTICS
In total, there have been 3,757 Grand Prix racing laps completed at Silverstone.
Fernando Alonso is the driver to have raced the most laps at Silverstone in his Formula 1 career. He has raced 1,120 laps here so far, eclipsing Rubens Barrichello’s former record of laps raced at the track during the 2023 British Grand Prix. Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton are the only other driver to have raced over 1,000 laps at the circuit.
1,429 cars have been entered into World Championship races at Silverstone. Of those cars, 1,354 have qualified for races and 1,344 have made the start of the race. Of the 1,344 cars which have started at Silverstone, 835 have crossed the finish line. That gives an overall finish rate of 58%.
The fewest number of cars to finish a Formula 1 race at Silverstone is six. This happened in 1975, in a race which was ended prematurely due to a heavy hail storm.
The highest number of cars to still be running at the end of a race here is 22, in 1952, though the highest finish percentage is 95%, which happened at both the 2005 British Grand Prix and the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, when 19 of the 20 cars which started the race reached the chequered flag.
In total, 49 cars have retired on the first lap of a Grand Prix held at Silverstone. The most cars out on the first lap was ten, in 1973. Three drivers were eliminated on the opening lap in 2022.
There have been 17 F1 races at Silverstone where more than ten drivers have completed every lap of the Grand Prix. The highest number of drivers to finish on the lead lap of the race here is 18, which happened in 2013, thanks to multiple Safety Car periods.
Safety Cars and Red Flags at Silverstone
Since 1998, the Safety Car has made an appearance in 17 Silverstone races. 2024 was the first British Grand Prix since 2013 to not feature a Safety Car outing.
The Virtual Safety Car has also made three appearances – at the 2015 British Grand Prix, the 2016 British Grand Prix and the 2023 British Grand Prix.
The highest number of Safety Car appearances in a single race here is two, which happened in 2003, 2013, 2018, 2020 and 2022.
11 Silverstone races have been affected by rain.
Six races at Silverstone have been red-flagged.
There have been four F1 races at Silverstone which have failed to reach their scheduled distance. It happened in 1975, 1985, 2007 and 2017.
Two Brits share the record for most fastest laps at Silverstone
31 different drivers have set the fastest lap of a race at Silverstone. Nigel Mansell and Lewis Hamilton share the record for most fastest laps at the track, each setting the Sunday pace on six occasions.
Ferrari are the team with the most fastest laps here, having set the fastest lap on 19 occasions – over double the number of any other team.
Hamilton has led the most laps here
The record for most laps led at Silverstone is 367, which is how many laps Lewis Hamilton has led at the venue throughout his career.
In total, 62 drivers have led a lap at Silverstone. Nelson Piquet holds the record for most laps led without ever winning at the track, having spent 67 laps at the front of the field.
There have been ten occasions on which the winner of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has led every lap of the race. It last happened at the 2020 British Grand Prix.
The fewest laps led en-route to victory at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone is three, which has happened twice. Nigel Mansell led three laps on his way to winning the 1987 British Grand Prix, while Lewis Hamilton led three laps on his way to victory in the 2021 British Grand Prix.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BRITISH GRAND PRIX
CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY
There has never been a World Champion crowned at Silverstone, though Cooper won the Constructors’ Championship at the circuit in 1960.
There has never been a dead rubber F1 race held at Silverstone.
The winner of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has gone on to win the title in the same year on 27 occasions. There have been 23 occasions on which the polesitter for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has gone on to win the title in the same season.
The leader of the championship after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has gone on to win the title 43 times in the 57 years in which the event has been held at the track. This has been the case in every year since 2019.
In the last 26 seasons, there have been only four occasions on which the team leading the Constructors’ Championship after the British Grand Prix has failed to win that year’s title. It last happened in 2021, when Red Bull led the way after the Silverstone race.
Read more Silverstone statistics from last year’s British Grand Prix: 2024 British Grand Prix Post Race Statistics
