Take even the briefest interest in the history of the Silverstone circuit and you’ll discover a list of race winners that reads like a who’s who of motorsport royalty. We’ll come back to some of them later, but for now we should start with the reason for this in-depth look at the track, which is the fact that 2023 marks 75 years since the first official race meeting took place. It was an International Grand Prix on October 2, 1948, won by Luigi Villoresi in a Maserati, and from that point on it was on it’s way to becoming one of the most famous racing venues in the world.
One thing it had in common with a number of circuits is a beginning in wartime, in this case as an RAF bomber station that was home to the Number 17 Operational Training Unit. It was Wellington Bombers that used the perimeter roads and runways that, following its decommissioning in 1946/47, would play host to the finest racing machines and drivers of the day.
It was James ‘Jimmy’ Brown who designed the first layout – something he undertook in just a couple of months, although it was somewhat basic with hay bales and oil drums
