SILVERSTONE

FIRST GP 1948 | LAST RACE 2020

The final lap of the 2020 British Grand Prix was one of the most dramatic in the event’s history. Lewis Hamilton had dominated from pole in what was a lifeless race overall, but on the final tour he became the third driver to suffer a left-front tyre blowout. Hamilton urged his hobbled car home, but Max Verstappen was charging. The gap, counted down calmly by Hamilton’s race engineer Peter Bonnington, was 5.9 seconds at the flag when it had been 34.2s the lap before.

But something big was missing. Not just the air in Hamilton’s left-front. It was the roar. The noise, the excitement that should have accompanied the world champion to his seventh Silverstone Formula 1 win in such wild circumstances. But the race necessarily took place behind closed doors in F1’s strict Covid-secure bubble.

Not this weekend. After a painful absence – for Silverstone itself most of all – a full-capacity crowd will attend once again, and it is hoped that the event will“feel normal”, according to Silverstone’s managing director Stuart Pringle.

“As part of the Events Research Programme, the restrictions are disapplied,”he adds, explaining why 140,000 people can visit Silverstone on Sunday alone. This is one day before England’s remaining social restrictions are lifted and comes as one of the last and biggest parts of a pilot scheme the UK government has implemented to“explore ways to enable people to attend a range of events safely”, per its own guidelines, as the pandemic (hopefully) recedes for good.

“We are legally allowed to run a normal looking and feeling event,” says Pringle.“because that’s the purpose of the research – to see what happens, to learn the lessons. What the government is seeking to do is to have a weapon in its armoury that it can deploy later in the year – particularly in the winter, when one might expect a resurgence of a virus – in order to keep sports events running.

“So, it’s entirely logical that they should want to – having done a series of different test events at ever-increasing scale [and] right at the end of the restriction period – trial a large event at full scale. The base point is that this is designed to feel like 2019 and before.”

So F1 fans heading to Silverstone tomorrow should expect all the usual catering and merchandise stands, packed grandstands and entertainment. At the time of writing, it is still unclear what the precise requirements will be regarding mask wearing, with a decision to be issued by the local public health authority. In any case, Pringle reckons nobody has“a problem with understanding that those sort of things might be necessary”.

Fans attending are also set to be part of F1 history, with the championship’s first sprint race taking the‘normal’qualifying slot on Saturday (albeit later in the day and with the knockout session setting the grid for the additional contest on Friday evening). This will set the grid for the grand prix and comes with 3-2-1 points for the top three finishers. Having F1’s first sprint race – with two more planned this year, the next set for Monza – is“another little feather in our cap”for Silverstone.“i am extremely pleased because Silverstone is where things are done first,”pringle adds.“first round from the F1 world championship. We do things first.”