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This will be the 64th edition of the British Grand Prix. Many times during the past 63 years there have been disputes as to who should host the Grand Prix or to be more precise why Silverstone shouldn’t. The problem Silverstone has had from the beginning is the absence of support from the British government and that puts full responsibility on the owners BRDC’s shoulders.
Specifically because of this reason, the circuit owners and the sport’s governing body have not been on equal terms regarding the improvement of the facilities to the level of other tracks which has resulted in repeated threats from Bernie Ecclestone of taking the race away from Silverstone or even scrapping the British Grand Prix altogether. That will most probably never happen because this is the country where the sport had its origins.
Now, we shall take a look at these disputes in a bit more detail along with some other very controversial racing incidents which didn’t go down well with anybody:-
The contentious 1984 race
Before even the teams set up their garages at Brands Hatch, the Tyrrell team was in huge trouble. It all started during the previous race weekend in Dallas. After the race, the organising authorities sensed something fishy with the Tyrrell 012 and when they delved into the details they found impurities within the water tank used for the injection system. The team was hauled up before the International Court of Appeal which was to hear the case around a month after the British GP. Somehow Ken Tyrrell was able to line up his cars on the grid at Brands Hatch after a successful London High Court Injunction against FISA and RAC MSA.
The drama didn’t end there. First, at the start, there was a huge accident at Bottom Bend which forced a red flag and a restart. Where it became controversial was who would be at the front at the restart. Both Niki Lauda and Alain Prost had overtaken Nelson Piquet before the restart but then FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre ruled that Piquet would line up in pole position at the restart because the position two laps before the accident would be taken into account. No wonder Prost was very angry and he couldn’t control his words against Balestre.
Brands Hatch, Red flags, Controversy- yet again!
This time we have to go eight years back to 1976. The situation was even more confusing this time around. Like in 1984, this time too there was a huge accident early on which brought out the red flag. James Hunt had damaged his car. Now teams started preparing spare cars for their drivers but they had to abandon their plans because the stewards announced that only drivers who had completed the first lap of the race in their initial car would be allowed to restart. Hunt later won the race ahead of arch-rival Niki Lauda.
To cut the long story short, Hunt didn’t complete the first lap but was in his original car. After the race, Ferrari went to the stewards, then to the RAC and finally to the FIA where the decision was finally ruled in Ferrari’s favour and Hunt was disqualified for having used ‘external assistance’ to start the car before the red flag.
Michael Schumacher of Ferrari, British GP 1998.
Winning while serving a penalty!
Who would forget the infamous finish to the 1998 British Grand Prix where Michael Schumacher entered the pit lane on the last lap- to serve his stop-go penalty- and crossed the finish line (extending into the pits) before 2nd placed Mika Hakkinen reached the actual finish line. Schumacher’s win stood even after an appeal from McLaren because the stewards had exceeded the 25-minute window for handing the penalty and also the writing was not clear as to what kind of a penalty it was.
Stowe takes away the championship from Schumacher
Schumacher’s Ferrari teammate Eddie Ervine finished just two points behind Mika Hakkinen in the 1999 championship. Add to that, the absence of Schumacher for six races in between due to a huge shunt at the Stowe corner which resulted in him breaking a leg. It is very clear that had he not had that crash, most probably the championship was his for the taking. More so because he was already six points ahead of his teammate Ervine before the British Grand Prix.
No race on British soil
Two times in the last decade such a situation has arisen but for different reasons. First in 2004, owners BRDC refused to pay the race fee demanded by Bernie Ecclestone. Result: As is customary, Ecclestone struck the race off the 2005 calendar. But after a long period of talks, a deal was finally struck to keep the race at Silverstone till 2009.
Now who would host the race 2010 onwards? Ecclestone was not happy with the below-standard facilities at the venue and hence he made the decision to switch the race to Donington Park- ironically, a British track which had hosted only one grand prix before and that too not the British Grand Prix. But later it emerged that Donington Park themselves didn’t have the funding to renovate the track and the area around it. The fears of no race in the country for the first time in 60 years started gathering momentum. Fortunately, all doubts were put to bed very soon when Silverstone signed a contract to host the race till 2026.
Rain plays spoilsport
The claim of F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone that Silverstone was not up to the standards was proved true to an extent during the 2000 and 2012 race weekends. Although the governing body could be partly blamed for the 2000 fiasco, what happened in 2012 was completely due to the negligence of the organising authorities. Thirteen years ago, the shifting of the date of the race to April was never a sensible decision as the weather is always wet during that time. The rain gods didn’t care. There was striking similarity between what happened during the two weekends- traffic jams extending several kilometers from the entrance, forcing the spectators to walk, car parks and sitting areas waterlogged. To prevent the race from being marred, last year, the organizers requested the spectators to not come for qualifying so that the race could be held without any problems.
No off-throttle blowing please!
Ferrari won only one race in 2011- quite fittingly at the 60th anniversary of the team’s first grand prix win, coincidentally at Silversotone, courtesy José Froilán González. But the true secret behind their win was the FIA banning off-throttle blowing of the diffuser which Red Bull had exploited so cleverly earlier during the reason, resulting in complete dominance from Sebastian Vettel. There were heated discussions as to why such major rule changes should be made mid-season throughout the weekend. Amongst all of that, Ferrari kept quiet and when it mattered, took full advantage of the situation and completely dominated the race via Fernando Alonso. In fact, the effect of the ban was so major that Ferrari had won on a track demanding strong aerodynamic performance by over 15 seconds- a margin by which they couldn’t even dream of finishing behind the Red Bulls at other similar tracks.
With this we come to an end to the list of most memorable moments of the British Grand Prix weekends. Let’s hope we have more of such incidents (preferably similar to those in Part 1) this year which can continue the legend that is Silverstone.
