STUART PRINGLE
Silverstone’s boss speaks out
As Silverstone celebrates its 70th anniversary the future of the British Grand Prix remains in doubt beyond 2019, but the British Racing Drivers’ Club is determined to make it financially viable. Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle explains the plan
70 years ago on a cool October day, prewar racing hero Luigi Villoresi and his protégé Alberto Ascari brought a touch of Latin exoticism to the Northamptonshire countryside, guiding their rosso corsa Maseratis to a one-two finish in the Royal Automobile Club Grand Prix ahead of Bob Gerard in an ERA. Other luminaries in the field included Louis Chiron, one of the architects of the Monaco GP, and the Olympic sailor Prince Birabongse Bhanudej Bhanubandh (better known simply as Prince Bira). An 18-year-old Stirling Moss raced in the 500cc support event.
The RAC Grand Prix was a hit, drawing massive crowds the following year when its date shifted to a more climactically convivial month of May, and emboldening the RAC to promote the opening round of the new Formula 1 world championship in May 1950. The British Grand Prix has been a fixture on the calendar ever since, although not always at Silverstone. The former RAF bomber base had been operating as a pig farm when the RAC hosted the 1948 grand prix on a course demarcated by ropes, oil drums and hay bales; it’s changed beyond recognition over the past seven decades and will continue to do so as its owners reshape the business for the 21st century economic landscape.
“In the British Racing Drivers’ Club, Silverstone has the most sympathetic and supportive owners,” says Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle. “They couldn’t be more enthusiastic. My brief is to keep the best racing we can afford at Silverstone – it follows, therefore, that we need to rebuild the business such that it can afford to keep motor racing.
“In being reliant on one major event, we’d got to the point where the risk of a bad one was so great that we couldn’t afford that risk. What we’d not successfully done over the years is extract the amazing value – the brand equity – that the Silverstone name has built up. What we need to do is not just extract the value of the investment in F1 over three days in the summer, we need to be extracting it 365 days a year.
“The winter months, when motor racing is asleep, have historically been very difficult in terms of cashflow. And yet not a week goes by without visitors coming to see the facility. Until recently when they got there and asked ‘What can we do?’ the answer was ‘Er, nothing’. But that’s going to change in less than a year.”
WE HAVE AN ONGOING DIALOGUE, WHICH IS WHY IT’S BEST TO KEEP IT BETWEEN US. THEY ARE ON THE RECORD AS SAYING THEY WANT TO KEEP THE BRITISH GRAND PRIX, AND WE’RE ON THE RECORD AS SAYING THAT ABSOLUTELY WE WANT TO KEEP IT
In layman’s terms that involves a raft of new developments for which the BRDC have recently obtained planning consent, including a new hotel, a further 60 short-stay accommodation units, and a £20million educational visitor attraction called the Silverstone Experience.
“It’s going to be big,” says Pringle. “500,000 square feet. It’s in the last remaining World War II hangar and renovation is already under way. It’s going to tell the story of Silverstone, the history of the sport and its innovations in the UK. There’s going to be an educational angle majoring on science, technology, engineering and maths – because inspiring young people to get involved in those subjects, in highperformance engineering, is vital to the future of the sport. But it’s going to be interactive, much more like Harry Potter World or Titanic Belfast than Beaulieu Motor Museum.
“It will tie in to the Silverstone University Technical College, one of the things we haven’t made a big enough noise about in the past. 460 children between 14 and 18 come to Silverstone every day of the week for their education. We want children to be inspired by engineering and to consider a career in it.”
So the essence of the vision is to make Silverstone a year-round destination for those not partaking of track activity, although there is the prospect of hosting more cycling and running events in summer evenings and weekends. Other possibilities include growing the portfolio of high-performance car ownership experiences beyond the Porsche one already on site.
“The track is quite busy between March and November,” says Pringle, “so there was little headroom to grow our existing business and it was peaky in terms of cashflow. We need stronger, more reliable revenue streams to give us a base to keep the cherry on top, as it were.”
Last year the BRDC exercised a break clause in the British GP contract, saying that the five per cent annual rise in the sanctioning fee written into the contract (which was agreed with Bernie Ecclestone in 2010) would make the event unaffordable. It already sustains losses running into millions of pounds. So as it stands the 2019 event will be the last, and although the BRDC is negotiating with F1’s new owners, Liberty Media, to find a compromise, Pringle makes it plain that he is respecting Liberty’s wishes not to conduct such negotiations in public, via the media.
“The door is 100 per cent not shut,” he says. “We have an ongoing dialogue, which is why it’s best to keep it between us. They are on the record as saying they want to keep the British Grand Prix, and we’re on the record as saying that absolutely we want to keep it.”
It certainly helps that F1’s commercial rights holders are much more aligned with Silverstone’s outlook than in the past, setting a clear mandate to improve the on-event experience at every GP.
“I wouldn’t be so grandiose to say we invented the fan zone,” says Pringle, “but we’ve had something like it for the past 15 years because we recognise the need to provide value for money – we acknowledge that the tickets are expensive.”
Expectations have certainly moved on during Silverstone’s seven decades in the business. Just two disappointments awaited visitors to the inaugural world championship race in 1950: Ferrari’s non-appearance (Enzo felt the ‘start money’ on offer didn’t reflect his team’s value) and the failure of the new BRM F1 car, a British prestige project, to do more than a handful of demonstration laps. History records the BRM as a humiliating flop but modern engineering has made the car a runner. It will now play its part
in an eclectic daily parade of historic machinery during the British Grand Prix this July, alongside a recreation of the Ferrari Dino 246 Mike Hawthorn drove to world title glory 60 years ago, Jackie Stewart in his 1969 championshipwinning Matra MS80, and many more.
“We’re trying to gather the elements that we know the British fans love for the 70th celebrations,” says Pringle. “The British fanbase is different to many other rounds because they’re very invested in the sport, they know its history – they haven’t just stumbled across it in a city centre. They’ve made an effort to be there and the vast majority of them are staying nearby.
“We have a regular audience of 100,000 happy, smiling fans, allowing their four-time world champion hero to surf on them. That’s what F1 wants nowadays and that is what the sport is in this country. There are other circuits in the world that have hosted more grands prix than us; there are circuits that have 70 years of history or maybe more; there are circuits that attract slightly bigger crowds than us; and there are other circuits that allow you to drive in the wheeltracks of your heroes day in, day out.
“But there’s no other circuit that has all of those in one package like Silverstone does.”