All Info You Want to See Before the 2024 British F1 GP Starts

After a controversial finish to the previous race, Formula 1 is back this weekend to complete the first triple-header of the season. The 2024 British Grand Prix will be the 12th race of the 2024 F1 season and will bring us closer to the summer break.

Will Tension and Rivalries Build?

It will also be a tense weekend, coming off the crash between championship leader Max Verstappen (Red Bull) and Lando Norris (McLaren) at the Austrian Grand Prix. Verstappen was at fault for the accident, which saw Norris retire from the event. However, the driver and the Red Bull camp have been adamant in deflecting the blame and attributing it to hard racing, which won't change from the Dutchman, as explained by Team Principal Christian Horner.

Norris is second in the World Drivers' Championship, 81 points behind Verstappen, but saw the chance of winning his second-ever F1 race taken from him after Verstappen's crash.

George Russell ended up winning the event for Mercedes and the British Grand Prix might be the perfect event for Russell to celebrate his win and continue performing nicely.

Lando Norris and Max Verstappen

Verstappen won the British Grand Prix last year and would love to repeat this season in what is expected to be a hostile environment for the Dutchman after the Norris clash. He remains comfortable in the lead of the WDC with 237 points, 81 points clear of his closest competitor, and having won seven of the first 11 races.

Red Bull, among teams, leads the World Constructors' Championship easily with 355 points. Ferrari (Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz) follow with 291 points, while McLaren (Norris and Oscar Piastri) is third with 268 points.

Mercedes (Russell and Lewis Hamilton) has been consistent lately with three consecutive podium finishes and a win. The German outfit is fourth in the WCC with 196 points.

Kick Sauber (Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu) remains the only team in the grid without points scored in 2024.

2024 British GP Facts & Figures

Sunday’s Grand Prix will be the 75th British Grand Prix since the creation of the Formula 1 World Championship of Drivers. The event is one of the most iconic in the Formula 1 world and has been part of each championship since 1950 when Silverstone hosted the first-ever F1 race.

British drivers lead the table in terms of the World Champions by country, with 10 racers winning 20 titles for the UK. Multiple World Champions are British, such as Sir Lewis Hamilton, Sir Jackie Stewart, and Jim Clark. It is, therefore, not a surprise to see Hamilton and Clark as the most successful competitors in the British Grand Prix.

Sir Lewis won his home Grand Prix a record eight times, while Clark did it five times. Nigel Mansell —the 1992 F1 champion— (4), Sir Stirling Moss (2), three-time champion Jackie Stewart (2), and David Coulthard (2) are the other British drivers to win at home multiple times.

Before the inception of the World Championship, the British Grand Prix was held four times. The first two British Grand Prix occurred in 1926 under the regulations of the AIACR World Manufacturers’ Championship. French drivers Robert Sénéchal and Louis Wagner won the first race after a 463-kilometer-long event at Brooklands, while Robert Benoist won in 1927 after taking 125 laps at the same 4.21-kilometer circuit of Brooklands.

The other two non-championship British Grands Prix were held in 1948 and 1949 at Silverstone, both won by Maserati drivers: Italian Luigi Villoresi and Swiss driver Emmanuel de Graffenried.

The British Grand Prix has been held at Brooklands, Silverstone, Aintree, and Brands Hatch with only the last three circuits hosting World Championship races. Aintree hosted the 1955, 1957, 1959, 1961, and 1962 editions of the British GP, while Brands Hatch hosted 12 races between 1964 and 1986, alternating with Silverstone, which has hosted the event uninterruptedly since 1987.

Silverstone Circuit Track Info

Silverstone received the first-ever Formula 1 race on 13 May 1950 and will be hosting its 58th British Grand Prix on Sunday (the track also held the 2020 70th Anniversary GP).

The track’s nature has always been the same: a power track with sweeping corners that demand a lot of bravery from the drivers. Though the layout has been changed quite significantly since the first time this former World War II Royal Airforce Station received a Grand Prix, its essence remains.

The current layout, which has not had significant tweaks since 2011, is 5.891 km long and is constructed with 18 corners, with around 10 of those turns being high-speed turns.

The circuit’s current records were established in 2020. Hamilton’s Pole lap for the 2020 British GP is the current outright record (1:24.303 min) and Verstappen’s Fastest Lap during the 2020 British GP of 1:27.097 min is the official Fastest Lap.

The track was mostly unchanged from 1948 to 1990, with the exception of some tweaks to prevent high speeds that were becoming too dangerous for the drivers. Still, the track is one of the most iconic sites in the Grand Prix world and it maintains its most iconic sections such as Copse and the Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel section.

Amongst drivers, Hamilton is the most successful with eight victories and Ferrari leads McLaren in the teams’ standings, having won 16 races to the British team’s 14.

Legendary teams Ferrari and Williams both achieved their first-ever F1 win in a British GP event. Ferrari won in 1951 with José Froilán González and Williams did it with Clay Regazzoni in 1979.

Also, Williams achieved their 100th Grand Prix win in the 1997 British Grand Prix, with a victory for Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 F1 champion.

Memorable scenes from F1's British Grand Prix

Michael Schumacher driving the Ferrari 166 F2 (1950)

Of course, the British Grand Prix has given us amazing memories throughout Formula 1's rich history. From Giuseppe Farina’s win in the first-ever Grand Prix to the battle between the Silver Arrows of Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss in 1955. From Nigel Mansell beating his Williams "teammate" Nelson Piquet in 1987 after a beautiful dummy heading into Stowe to Michael Schumacher winning in 1998 by serving a drive-through penalty in the final lap or a man entering the track in 2003 with the cars flying by his side at unbelievable speeds, Silverstone circuit has delivered lots of action.

More recently, we saw Hamilton’s amazing victory in the wet 2008 race with more than a minute over the second-placed car and lapping every car that finished outside the podium. Also, in 2014 there was a fantastic wheel-to-wheel battle between two-time F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso and his Ferrari and four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull.

In 2020, the race was quite normal until the last few laps, as the Mercedes of Hamilton and Bottas suffered tyre failures while running 1-2. Hamilton managed to win the race with three wheels on his car as Max Verstappen was desperately trying to catch him right at the flag.

The 2021 race saw a huge first-lap crash between Hamilton and Max Verstappen, with the Dutchman ending up in the wall after both cars collided at Turn 9 (Copse). The pair had been battling throughout the entire first lap, with Hamilton trying to overtake but the Dutchman closing the door on every area of the circuit.

It was a legendary battle until the crash occurred, and there were mixed reactions about it, with many defining it as a racing incident and putting the blame on both drivers. The Red Bull camp went against Hamilton in full force, claiming bad sportsmanship from the seven-time championship and more.

Nevertheless, Carlos Sainz took his maiden F1 win in 2022 for Ferrari after a crazy race which included huge on-track battles between the likes of Sainz, Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Sergio Pérez, and Hamilton, with the last two accompanying Sainz on the podium.

Verstappen won the 2023 edition ahead of Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton.

2024 British Grand Prix - Tyres

The dry tyres for the 2024 British Grand Prix will be the C1 as P Zero White hard, C2 as P Zero Yellow Medium, and C3 as P Zero Red soft.

Pirelli's press release for the race explained the matters for the weekend: “The British Grand Prix marks the midpoint of the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship and round 12 of 24 takes place where it all began 74 years ago. In 1942, a Royal Air Force airfield was established in Silverstone, Northamptonshire and on 13 May 1950 it hosted the first of the 1112 rounds that have taken place to date. The winner back then was Nino Farina, driving an Alfa Romeo fitted with Pirelli tyres.

5.861 kilometres long, the track is the fifth longest on the calendar after Spa-Francorchamps (7.004 km), Jeddah (6.175 km), Las Vegas (6.120 km) and Baku (6.003 km). It features 18 corners and is one of the most exciting and also one of the most demanding for the car-tyre package.

Some corner combinations, such as those from 10 to 14 – Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel – are taken at high speed and generate lateral forces on the tyres and drivers of over 5g: the average figure at Silverstone is similar to that seen at Spa and Suzuka. This, along with other technical aspects, means that as is always the case here, the compounds chosen for this round are the hardest in the range, the C1 as P Zero hard, the C2 as P Zero medium and the C3 as P Zero soft. The front axle comes under the greatest strain and the prevalence of right hand turns means that the left front is the tyre that wears the most.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB19, leads Lando Norris, McLaren MCL60, and Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL60 during the British GP at Silverstone Circuit on Sunday July 09, 2023 in Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. (Photo by James Sutton / LAT Images)

The weather in England in the summer can always be very changeable, a further factor to be taken into consideration, especially as conditions can change very rapidly. Last year the entire race was run in the dry, with the Soft a somewhat surprising protagonist, with only two teams not using it.

However, the most used compound was the Medium, which was used to complete half the overall mileage. The great majority of drivers went for a one-stop strategy, even if in the past, a two-stop had been a popular choice.

At this race last year, Pirelli introduced a new tyre construction to deal with the increase in loads seen over the first few races of the season, as these forces exceeded the average figures seen from simulations provided by the teams over the previous winter.

Without changing tyre performance in any way, the construction proved its worth and will be used up to the end of the 2024 season, even though there has been an increase of around 10% in the loads generated by this year’s cars compared to figures seen at the end of last season.

Only two Grands Prix have been permanent fixtures on the Formula 1 calendar, this one and the Italian Grand Prix. Silverstone therefore hosts the 75th British Grand Prix this weekend, the 58th to be held at this track. The race has also been run twelve times at Brands Hatch and five at Aintree. In 2020, Silverstone hosted an additional round, celebrating the championship’s 70th anniversary.

Despite the fact that the majority of Formula 1 teams, past and present, had or have their headquarters in England, the most successful team at this Grand Prix is Scuderia Ferrari with 18 wins to its name. Then come McLaren on 14 and Williams on 10. With 16 pole positions, Ferrari also tops this list, as it does for fastest race laps (20) and podium finishes (59).

The most successful driver in the UK is Sir Lewis Hamilton who has won eight of his home Grands Prix, while next up are Jim Clark and Alain Prost with five wins apiece. The seven-time world champion Mercedes driver also has the most poles (7) and podium finishes (13) while fellow countryman Nigel Mansell tops the list for fastest race laps in this event with seven."

The minimum starting pressures for the tyres for the 2024 British Grand Prix will be 26.5 PSI (front) and 23.5 PSI (rear).

2024 British Grand Prix Weather Forecast

Friday, July 5th - FP1 & FP2
Conditions: Scattered showers
Max. temperature: 20°C
Chance of rain: 50%

Saturday, July 6th - FP3 & Qualifying
Conditions: Scattered showers
Max. temperature: 16°C
Chance of rain: 50%

Sunday, July 7th - Race
Conditions: Showers
Max. temperature: 17°C
Chance of rain:70%

Who will be on the 2024 British Grand Prix Podium?

Race winner Max Verstappen, second placed Lando Norris and third placed Lewis Hamilton celebrate on the podium during the 2023 F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain

The Red Bull RB20 looked mighty around the fast corners of the Red Bull Ring last weekend and that trend could continue in the upcoming 2024 British Grand Prix. However, there could be big challenges from the defiant McLaren car.

Moreover, Mercedes and Ferrari could join the party in one of the most well-known venues for every team.

Silverstone has given us some thrilling races throughout F1 history; recent years have not changed that trend. With tension between Red Bull and McLaren and Verstappen and Norris, the race could be an awesome one.

If more than two teams and two drivers can get into the mix for the victory, Sunday in Silverstone could have the best race of 2024 so far.

Max Verstappen's 62nd is definitely in the cards, while Lando Norris and George Russell will look for their second and third wins of their careers. On the other side, Lewis Hamilton could be on his way to establish a new record for most victories at the same Grand Prix with a ninth triumph around Silverstone

The prediction for the Top 3 at the 2024 British Grand Prix is: 1. Lando Norris, 2. George Russell, 3. Max Verstappen.

✅ Check out more posts with related topics: