2021 British Grand Prix News
Seven lucky drivers have had the honour of grabbing their maiden Formula One win at the British Grand Prix. Laura Leslie takes you through them below.
Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina – 1950
It was the first race of a brand new championship and the start of a legacy which remains to this day. The 1950 British Grand Prix was the inaugural round of the Formula One world championship. Contested by 21 drivers from 9 different countries, the race was held at the old Silverstone airport over 70 laps. Italian Giuseppe Farina would start from pole alongside his Alfa-Romeo team-mate Luigi Fagioli and that’s how the pair would also finish the race. In 3rd was Brit Reg Parnell in the 3rd of 4 Alfa-Romeo cars.
Farina also bagged the fastest lap of the race, meaning he also become the 1st driver to grab a hat-trick of pole, win and fastest lap. Farina would go on to score a further 4 wins and 18 podiums, before leaving F1 at the end of 1955 after a nasty crash spooked him into withdrawing from what would have been his final grand prix.
Jose Frolian Gonzalez - 1951
Argentinian driver Jose Frolian Gonzalez had taken part in just 4 grand prix prior to his maiden win in the 1951 British Grand Prix. His 1st 3 starts yielded nothing but non-finishes, so he switched to Ferrari part-way into the 1951 season in the hopes of a change of fortunes.
The move worked. In his first race for Ferrari he finished 2nd before taking that maiden win at the next race at Silverstone. The win was also Ferrari’s 1st in Formula One and Gonzalez would finish on the podium in every other race he started for the Scuderia that season. Gonzalez would score only 1 other win in his F1 career, 3 years later and again in Britain. Ferrari have since won 238 total races and taken 16 constructors’ championships.
Stirling Moss – 1955
1955 heralded the first trip away from Silverstone for the British Grand Prix since it’s pre-F1 days at Brooklands. Held at Aintree, which was indeed located within the famous horse-racing course near Liverpool, the race was won by a promising British talent by the name of Stirling Moss.
Moss led home a dominant Mercedes 1-2-3-4 and had to put up with a conspiracy that team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio had deliberately driven slower than he could have to allow Moss to win. Fangio denied all the rumours and insisted that Moss had simply ‘been the quicker driver’ throughout the race. Moss won a further 15 races in his career, becoming the driver with the most wins to have failed to become world champion. Mercedes withdrew from F1 at the end of 1955 and would not return for 65 years.
Tony Brooks – 1957
Once again held at Aintree, the 1957 British Grand Prix was to be a very rare thing in F1 history. A shared victory. Tony Brooks would drive his car for the first 38 laps of the race before handing over driving duties to Stirling Moss for the remainder of the race. Moss would cross the line in 1st place and both he and Brooks were attributed as the winners.
This was the 3rd and final time that two drivers would share a win in F1 history. The victory was also the first for manufacturer Vanwall, the team winning the brand new constructors’ championship the following season. Brooks won 5 more times in his career, 3 of those being for Vanwall.
Jo Siffert – 1968
It would be 13 years before F1 saw another maiden winner at the British Grand Prix. This time held at Brands Hatch, Swiss driver Jo Siffert became the 1st driver from the country to win in F1. Siffert drive for Rob Walker entered Lotus cars alongside Brits Jackie Oliver and Graham Hill. Siffert had been considered an outsider for the win prior to the race.
Both Hill and Oliver would end up retiring from the race with mechanical failures, Siffert taking up the Lotus mantle well and crossing the line 4.4s ahead of Ferrari’s Chris Amon. It would be Rob Walker’s 9th and final win as a privateer outfit. Siffert won once more in his career, at the 1971 Austrian Grand Prix.
Peter Revson – 1973
The 1973 British Grand Prix is primarily famous for a 13 car pile-up on lap 1 which would cause 11 cars to retire from the race. Peter Revson, heir to the Revlon cosmetics house, was one of the lucky ones to avoid the carnage. Driving for McLaren, the American had qualified a strong 3rd on the grid. In the race Revson took advantage of a collision between leaders Jackie Stewart and Ronnie Peterson and would end up crossing the finish line 2.8s ahead of Peterson’s Lotus.
The win was the first for McLaren in the country where it would eventually settle in and call home. The team has won the British Grand Prix a total of 14 times, most recently in 2008 with Lewis Hamilton. Revson won once more in his career, the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix. He would unfortunately have his career cut short the following year when a testing accident claimed his life prior to the 1974 South African Grand Prix.
Johnny Herbert – 1995
It could, and probably should, have been David Coulthard who made this list. The Scot was leading his home race in 1995 when he was slapped with a stop/go penalty for speeding in the pits. This misdemeanour left the race lead in the hands of Johnny Herbert.
The plucky Brit drove his Benetton home ahead of Jean Alesi, giving the team some cheer in the aftermath of it’s champion Michael Schumacher being taken out of the lead by Damon Hill earlier in the race. Herbert would go on to win again later in the season at Monza and helped the team to it’s 1st constructors’ championship at the end of the year. Herbert would win his 3rd and final race 4 years later at the 1999 European Grand Prix.
