25th September, 2020 in Sport

Seventy years of the British Grand Prix

The British Grand Prix race has an impressively long history that stretches back to 1926, when it was first held on the Brooklands circuit. It became an annual fixture by 1948 and in 1950 it first ran as an official part of the FIA World Championship calendar.

Immense changes have occurred over that seventy-year World Championship period, beginning with the hectic, heady and exciting days of the early championships, when such illustrious names as Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss battled to break new records. Over the years, unsafe and unwieldy cars driven by incredibly brave and highly skilled drivers have evolved into the sleek, superfast and comparatively ultra-safe beasts of today, whose drivers, of course, remain equally as skilled.

There have been many dramas, crashes and thrilling moments along the way at iconic tracks such as Aintree, Brands Hatch and Silverstone: the great rivalry between Lauda and Hunt; memorable names including Senna, Prost, Schumacher, Mansell, Coulthard and Hill; and the modern-day achievements of Lewis Hamilton.

The evocative images below chart the inexorable progression of the ultimate motorsport and were all taken by Mirrorpix photographers.

Extracted from The F1 World Championship at the British Grand Prix: 70 Years in Photographs by Mirrorpix