Here are all the facts and statistics you need to know about the Silverstone circuit ahead of the 2019 British Grand Prix!
?? RACE WINNERS
52 Formula One races have been held at the Silverstone circuit since 1950. During that time, thirty different drivers have won a British Grand Prix at the track.
Alain Prost and Lewis Hamilton are currently tied for the most wins at the circuit, with five each. Hamilton could set an outright record of six Silverstone victories this weekend.
Ferrari have more wins than any other team here, with fourteen. Ferrari-powered cars have also won here more than any other engine, also with fourteen wins.
British drivers have over three times more victories at Silverstone than any other nation. The British national anthem has played out twenty times at the track.
There are three previous winners of the British Grand Prix on the 2019 grid. Lewis Hamilton has the most victories, with five, Sebastian Vettel has won here twice, while Kimi Raikkonen won at Silverstone in 2007.
The longest streak of different winners at this track came between 2003 and 2010, when there were no repeat winners for eight seasons.
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 Nico Rosberg won the 2013 event by.
A race at this track has been won by less than five seconds on thirteen occasions, including four times since the configuration of the track was updated in 2010.
From the last ten British Grands Prix, the average win margin at Silverstone has been 10.255 seconds.
?? ON THE PODIUM
72 different drivers have finished on the podium at Silverstone. Lewis Hamilton has the most podium finishes of any driver here, with eight top three finishes.
Once again, it’s British drivers who dominate the all-time list of podium finishes at Silverstone, with 41 podiums in total – over double the total of nearest rival Germany, who have had eighteen top three finishes at the track.
There are six drivers on the 2019 grid who have previously finished on the British Grand Prix podium. Aside from Hamilton’s record of eight top three finishes, Kimi Raikkonen has finished on the podium seven times, Sebastian Vettel has enjoyed five top three finishes here and Valtteri Bottas has finished on the podium twice. Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen each have one podium appearance at the British Grand Prix.
Ferrari are the team with the most podium finishes at the track. They’ve finished in the top three 43 times. McLaren are next on the list with 27 top three appearances.
From the 52 races at the track, the polesitter has finished on the podium thirty 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 thirty-car field.
There have been nine 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.
There have been four races at this circuit where none of the top three qualifiers have finished on the podium. It has happened in 1979, 1981, 2008 and 2014.
The driver starting from second on the grid has finished on the podium on more occasions than the driver starting from pole at Silverstone.
?? POLESITTERS
33 different drivers have taken pole position at Silverstone. Lewis Hamilton is the driver with the most poles at the track, having set the Saturday pace six times, including five times in the past six years.
Williams and Ferrari are currently tied for the most team poles at the track with eleven each. In the battle of the nations, British drivers have taken almost four times more poles than any other nation at Silverstone. British drivers have nineteen poles, their nearest rivals Finland have five.
There are three previous British Grand Prix polesitters on the 2019 grid. Lewis Hamilton has six pole positions here, Sebastian Vettel has two and Kimi Raikkonen has been on pole once at Silverstone.
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. He’s currently on a streak of four pole positions.
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 Nino 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’.
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 twelve qualifying sessions at Silverstone where pole has been decided by less than a tenth of a second.
From the last ten races at Silverstone, the average pole margin for the British Grand Prix has been 0.3664 seconds – though without Nico Rosberg’s anomaly in 2014, the average margin drops to 0.189 seconds.
?? SATURDAY TO SUNDAY
Nineteen British Grands Prix at Silverstone have been won from pole position. 34 races at the track have been won from the front row of the grid.
There have been twelve occasions where the polesitter has finished on the podium here without winning the race.
Eighteen races at this track have been won from third on the grid or lower. The furthest back win came back in 1975, when Emerson Fittipaldi won for McLaren from seventh on the grid.
?? SUNDAY STATS
There have been ten 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 eighteen, which happened in 2013, thanks to multiple Safety Car periods.
Since 1998, the Safety Car has made an appearance in thirteen British Grands Prix, including in every race since 2013.
The highest number of Safety Car appearances in a single race here is two, which has happened in 2003, 2013 and 2018.
Ten Silverstone races have been affected by rain.
Nigel Mansell has set the most fastest laps in a Grand Prix at Silverstone. He’s set the Sunday pace on six occasions.
The least number of cars to finish a Formula One race at Silverstone is six. This happened in 1975, in a race which was ended prematurely due to a heavy hail storm. The most 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 in 2005 when nineteen of the twenty cars which started the race reached the chequered flag.
In total, 1,206 cars have started a British Grand Prix at Silverstone. From those, 715 cars have reached the end of the race. That gives an overall finish rate of 59.29%.
Four races at Silverstone have been red-flagged.
In total, there have been 3,393 Grand Prix racing laps completed at Silverstone. The seventh lap of the 2019 British Grand Prix will be Silverstone’s 3,400th Grand Prix racing lap.
?? CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY
There has never been a World Champion crowned at Silverstone.
The winner of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has gone on to win the title in the same year on 24 occasions.
The leader of the championship after a race at Silverstone has gone on to win the title 38 times in the 52 years in which a race has been held at the track.