Round 09 | GREAT BRITAIN

"There is more performance coming soon""There is more performance coming soon"

GRAND PRIX REACTION

Our home race weekend concluded with Fernando finishing in P18 and Lance in P19 in Sunday's race.

Read on for all the reaction from the team trackside as we took to Silverstone Circuit for the British Grand Prix.

For lights out, Fernando was set to start from P21, with Lance in P22, after a 10-place grid penalty had been applied to Lance for a battery change on his car.
However, Fernando's car came to a halt on the formation lap. While he got the AMR26 moving again, he had to take to the pit lane for the beginning of the race.
Both took the start on the Medium compound tyre.
Lance made his first stop of the race on lap 18, swapping his Medium tyres for a set of Hards.
Two laps later, Fernando made the same switch,
A late Safety Car period saw both drivers pit for a second time, as they took on Soft tyres.
At the chequered flag, Fernando crossed the line in P18, while Lance came home in P19.
Another tough weekend for our team, but the hard work continues. Thank you for your incredible, enduring support.

THE LATEST FROM THE TRACK

Make yourself at home

We have a lot of home races: Suzuka for Honda; Montréal for Lance; Fernando has two this year, but the British Grand Prix takes place in our backyard… figuratively. Actually, it's over the road. The British Grand Prix at Silverstone is a massive event for us, and for F1. A truly vast crowd will descend on the village of Silverstone for an event that often feels more like a music festival than a Grand Prix, with campsites ringing the circuit, and the party starting on Wednesday and running all the way through to Monday.

And Silverstone packs the bill, with the full array of series. We'll have Mari Boya in action in F2, hoping to bounce back from a challenging week in Austria, at the circuit where he won the F3 Feature Race last year, on debut as a member of our Driver Academy. We'll also have F1 ACADEMY back in action for Races Six and Seven of the Championship. Mathilda Paatz took her maiden F1 ACADEMY victory last time out in Montréal, and comes to Silverstone hungry for more.

We're also celebrating all the places fans call home this week. We're spotlighting the communities that define modern F1 fandom and the connections that make the sport meaningful, recognising that belonging can take many forms, and that every fan's journey into F1 is different yet all are united by the same feeling. Because wherever you belong, feels like home.

RACE STARTS IN:

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Maggotts and Becketts. What an incredible series of corners, especially in something high downforce like a Formula One car. It still blows my mind what's possible.

Jessica Hawkins – Driver Ambassador & Head of F1 ACADEMY

Number of corners
18
Number of laps
52
Race distance
306.198km

NEED TO KNOW: BRITISH GP

THE CIRCUIT

THE GRAND PRIX

THE STRATEGY

THE FACTS

THE TRAVEL GUIDE

LAST TIME OUT IN SILVERSTONE

THE CIRCUIT

Everything is big at Silverstone. It's a long track, with a perimeter layout that covers an enormous acreage, and a sequence of dizzying full-throttle, high-speed corners – but since the introduction of the Arena layout, it's a little more nuanced than the old Bridge Circuit, with the section around Village and The Loop introducing lower-speed elements that Silverstone former flat-out, heavy metal layout didn't have – and because there's more time to be gained or lost in a low-speed corner, you need a car to cope.

Mostly though, Silverstone's reputation (if not its lap-time) is still about flinging a car very rapidly through high-speed corners. The run from Luffield (T7) through to Vale (T16) doesn't require the brakes, with everything taken in the higher gears with occasional feathering. The lack of braking has created a few problems for energy management in the hybrid era – and is going to be very intriguing indeed this year.

Since a recent resurfacing, the track has become almost universally smooth, with very little warp or camber… but still some problematic bumps. The smoothness encourages teams to run their cars very stiff, to cope with the fast corners and high-speed changes of direction – but the faster the car goes, the more it's smashed into the surface where those bumps, particularly running into Copse, can be very destabilising. Less of a problem this year with the cars riding a little higher – but still an issue.

Wind direction feeds into this too. Silverstone is on a plateau and very exposed (which made it a good location for an airfield). If it's blowing from the south, then everywhere from Copse, through the hugely fast Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel section and into Stowe has a lot more downforce, and becomes all about power delivery – but a wind from the north, and the cars will be on the very limit of grip through those sections. Of course, it's not a problem if the wind is blowing the same way every day – but when does the weather at Silverstone ever do what anyone wants?

THE GRAND PRIX

In terms of audience numbers, there are a couple of races vying to be number one, but Silverstone took top spot in 2024 with a brain-melting 480,000 tickets sold across the four days. The track retained top spot in 2025 with 500,000… and is going larger this year.

It feels busy, rather than crowded, however, because it's a big circuit, on a sizeable property (and unlike – for example – Spa, it's all useable fields rather than forest). Access can be tricky so it's always been a race for campsites, which turns the British Grand Prix into a week-long party, with the larger, official campsites having stages, driver appearances, celebrity guests and bands. The official stage within the circuit has David Guetta, Richard Ashcroft, Chase and Status, and James Arthur headlining across the four days, supported by Anne-Marie, Alex James, and DJ sets from Jazzy and Vikkstar.

But despite the shows, displays and merchandise village, the British Grand Prix really is all about the cars, and this is a very spectator-friendly circuit. Quite which is the best view depends on what you're most interested in. The view from Becketts shows off F1 cars at their absolute best, going through the fast corners there at boggling speed. The Woodcote A grandstand shows overtaking at the end of the Wellington Straight and the tussles that follow through Brooklands and Luffield, while Club corner gives you a view of the pit lane and the podium.

What is nice – and unusual – is that every corner at Silverstone can be seen from one of the general admission zones. It might be a little distant, and the view not quite as elevated as from the grandstand, but for anyone prepared to cover the distance, you can see a lot of track with the cheapest ticket (a camp chair is handy).

THE STRATEGY

The last two rounds have seen high ambient track temperatures and multi-stop pushing races. It's going to be hot again at Silverstone – but perhaps not hot enough to keep the pit crews on their toes all afternoon.

Usually, Barcelona is a good guide to what may happen at Silverstone, but this year Pirelli moved that race down the tyre range, whereas the British Grand Prix retains the three hardest compounds available. The only other race so far this year with C1, C2 and C3 was the Japanese Grand Prix, in which the first 17 cars home all did a Medium-Hard single-stop race.

Another nod in the direction of a one-stop at Silverstone is recent(ish) history. While 2024 and 2025 were both wet races, 2023, our last dry British Grand Prix, produced a one-stop race, in which the leaders all started on a Medium tyre, and kept going until a Safety Car came out with 19 laps remaining. At that point they were split between Medium-Hard and Medium-Soft strategies, with Medium-Soft winning.

It's therefore reasonable to assume we'll have another one-stop race – though the potential for all three compounds to be good race tyres means there's plenty of scope for an interesting strategic battle.

THE FACTS

1 | This is the 77th FIA World Championship British Grand Prix, it is one of only two ever-present events on the World Championship calendar, the other being the Italian Grand Prix.

2 | Silverstone has hosted 59 of the previous 76 British Grands Prix, including the first F1 World Championship event, on May 13th, 1950 (a Saturday). It also hosted the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, in 2020, when the demands of the ad-hoc Covid calendar required Silverstone to host back-to-back races.

3 | Three circuits have hosted the British Grand Prix during the World Championship era. The other two are Liverpool's Aintree Circuit, which was used in 1955, 1957, 1959, 1961-2, and Brands Hatch in Kent, which was used in even-numbered years from 1964-1986.

4 | Lewis Hamilton has the start-finish straight named in his honour. He has nine victories – the most of any driver at any single grand prix (Michael Schumacher won eight French Grands Prix at Magny-Cours). Lewis' wins came in 2008, 2014-2017, 2019-2021 and 2024.

5 | Fernando has a victory here, winning the race in 2006 on his way to winning the Drivers' Championship for a second time.

6 | Fernando also started his 300th Grand Prix at this circuit… all the way back in 2018.

7 | What do Nino Farina (1950), José Froilán González (1951), Stirling Moss (1955), Tony Brooks (1957), Jo Siffert (1968), Peter Revson (1973), Johnny Herbert (1995) and Carlos Sainz (2022) have in common? All of them took their debut F1 victory at the British Grand Prix.

8 | An interesting quirk of F1 history is that Ferrari have 18 British Grand Prix victories as an entrant but only 17 as a constructor. Juan Manuel Fangio's victory in the 1956 British Grand Prix came in one of the Lancia chassis acquired by Ferrari.

9 | Much of the Silverstone circuit dates back to the hastily-converted airfield perimeter track used for the 1948 (pre-Championship) British Grand Prix. It has, however, gone through many iterations, with the current 5.891km 'Arena' version of the circuit used since 2011 (2010 used a similar track but 10m longer and with the old pit lane between Woodcote and Copse corners).

10 | Of the 16 British Grands Prix using this Arena layout, the driver starting on pole has won six times, with only Fernando (P3), Lando Norris (P3) and Hamilton (P6) winning from the front row.

THE TRAVEL GUIDE

While the climate in Britain isn't quite as grim as people love to make out, there is a tendency to concentrate a lot of outdoor activity into a narrow summer window, which in turn means there's plenty going on at the same time of the Grand Prix. While F1 is at Silverstone, Wimbledon and the Henley Regatta are underway. It's also the time of year for outdoor music, which could mean anything from classical music Glyndebourne to a bewildering array of festivals to suit all tastes.

Staying a little closer to Silverstone, we're just a few miles away from Stowe House and its world-famous Capability Brown gardens and landscapes, which have been attracting tourists for more than 300 years. Rather less well known until recently is Bletchley Park, now a fascinating museum but formerly the home of the Government Code and Cypher School and the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer.

Further west is the city of Oxford. With the academic term ending, many of the colleges offer tours – but even without, the city has superb museums, grand buildings, ancient libraries and punts for hire. For those who want something quieter, there are 790 square miles of the idyllic Cotswolds beyond Oxford.

LAST TIME OUT IN SILVERSTONE

Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby had an excellent qualifying session for the 1959 British Grand Prix at Aintree, getting both DBR4s onto the front two rows. Salvadori started P2 and Shelby P6 (the grid was three cars wide) but sadly neither recorded a point. Salvadori came home P6 (only the top five scored), while Selby suffered an ignition problem and retired six laps from home. Things went downhill in 1960, with Salvadori a DNF and Maurice Trintignant qualifying P21 to come home P11 in what would be our final F1 Grand Prix for a while...

Salvadori's 1959 result remains our best at the British Grand Prix, but we have thankfully scored points at each race since returning to F1 in 2021. Lance bagged our first points, with eighth place in 2021, Seb was ninth in 2022 and Fernando seventh in 2023. 2024 was the first time we've managed to get both cars home in the points, with Lance seventh and Fernando eighth, having started eighth and tenth respectively, negotiating their way through a couple of tricky periods when the rain started to fall, and last year was a near carbon-copy, with Lance coming home P7 and Fernando P9 in a wet-dry-wet-dry race interrupted by Safety Car and VSCs.

UNDERCUT

Adrian Newey will see you now

In the latest exclusive UNDERCUT interview, Adrian opens the door to an honest conversation about hard truths, difficult decisions and the challenge of turning the team's fortunes around.