Pre-race Statistics of the British GP

SILVERSTONE! The home of British motorsport and the 64^th British GP, one of only two nations to have hosted a grand prix every year since 1950, Italy being the other. This will be the 47^th F1 race at Silverstone, the British GP has also been held at Aintree and Brands Hatch.

The current layout of Silverstone is 5.901km long with a race distance of 306.852km after 52 laps. 34.76% or 16 of the 46 races have been won from pole position and 28.26% or 13 from second on the grid. McLaren have won at Silverstone 12 times and Ferrari 13 times, Alain Prost is the most successful driver with five wins to his name for four different constructors. The lap record at the current layout is 1:30.874, set by Fernando Alonso at the first race in 2010.

Williams are celebrating their 600^th grand prix this weekend, 36 years after their debut and 24 after their first win. Their first win came at the 1979 British GP at Silverstone, Alan Jones qualified on pole but Clay Regazzoni got the win. Since their debut they have won 114 races, finishing on the podium 297 times and won a total of 16 championships, nine constructors’ and seven drivers’.

Personally though, I don’t think this is their 600^th grand prix, Williams boycotted the 1982 San Marino GP due to the FISA-FOCA war but still seem to count it in their records. And if you count the pre-Williams Frank Williams Racing Cars team from 1969-1976 they’ve actually just gone over 700 GPs, though that was a completely different team.

Red Bull could claim their 50^th pole position on Saturday, just four years after their first at the 2009 Chinese GP. If Lewis Hamilton finishes the race in fifth then he will have exactly 1000 points since his debut.

The Silly Stats

MUD! You would need 94,416m² of mud to completely cover the Silverstone track surface. That same amount of mud could cover between 13 and 16 football pitches. If the mud was ankle deep it could fill FOUR Olympic sized swimming pools and annoy a lot of swimmers.

Anthony Davidson is just 5 foot 4 and it would take 3,642 of him lying head to foot around Silverstone to lap once around it.

As it’s Wimbledon as well as the British GP this week here are a few more silly stats. It would take 118,020,000 delicious strawberries to cover the Silverstone track surface. Those strawberries would weigh 1,416,240kg and cost at least £404,640.

For some more stats on the British GP see my mini-stat page