Why British drivers are F1’s best

Great Britain has another Formula One world champion. Lando Norris’s third place in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday makes him the 11th world drivers’ champion from these shores, the second youngest Briton to achieve that feat behind only Lewis Hamilton.

Britain now has 21 titles, nine more than Germany’s 12 (split between Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg) and 13 more than Brazil’s eight (Emerson Fittipaldi, Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet). With McLaren’s victory in the constructors’ championship, British teams have now won 35 of a possible 68 team titles. When it comes to race wins, Britain has amassed 325 across 21 drivers. The next best is Germany’s 179 across just seven men.

Next year the number of British drivers in F1 will increase to five with the arrival of Arvid Lindblad at Racing Bulls. There is an argument to make that six – more than a quarter of the grid – if you count British-born and raised Alexander Albon, who represents Thailand.

Why, then, does Britannia rule the asphalt in Formula One?

History, infrastructure and expertise

Although grand prix racing took place before the Second World War, before the establishment of the Formula One world championship, British race winners were not exactly plentiful. Italians, Germans and French drivers tended to sweep up the wins. After 1945, though, Britain had countless airfields that were no longer of military use. Their layouts were almost perfect for the creation of motor racing circuits in a sport which was starting to boom.

Silverstone, which still hosts the British Grand Prix, was essentially a track that followed the perimeter road around the airfield with the three runways crossing in the middle of the track. The current layout is not all that different. See also: Snetterton, Goodwood and Thruxton among others.

This, combined with a great deal of aeronautical knowledge and engineering expertise (BRM and Lotus’s Tony Rudd served in the RAF and knew a lot about engines) acquired in the war years, meant that motor racing was accessible and knowledge plentiful.

It took a while for this to translate into a greater presence in F1, as Giuseppe Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari swept all of the titles for Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati and Mercedes. Success did follow, though.

By the 1958 season (as the upstart “garagistes” began their rise to the top), six of the top 10 drivers in the championship were British. Mike Hawthorn (Britain’s first champion) led Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks, Roy Salvadori and Peter Collins in the top five. In the manufacturers’ cup, Vanwall won with Cooper third, BRM fourth and Lotus sixth.

In 1959, Australian Jack Brabham won his first title for Surrey-based Cooper, which heralded the start of British dominance of F1. Between 1959 and 1993 a British team won the drivers’ championship 30 times out of a possible 35. British drivers won 10 of those, albeit with a 16-year drought after James Hunt’s 1976 title.

A network of feeder series and junior teams

Decades of history and success in motorsport means there are plentiful championships, series, circuits and junior teams that help young drivers test their skills and progress up the ladder, both in single-seaters and other formats. Motorsport can be a career, yes, but it can also be a hobby. Norris started his motorsport career in the Ginetta Junior Championship in 2014 before moving to single-seaters, spending much of his junior career racing in the UK.

Evidence of the benefits of being based in the UK are that overseas talents often move here. Oscar Piastri came to the country at 14 from Australia and learned his craft here. Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion, competed (and destroyed the opposition) in the Formula Renault series for Manor Motorsport.

Manor are perhaps the archetypal British junior team who have helped drivers progress up the ladder, including Hamilton, on their way to F1. Other teams who have done similar for drivers, British or otherwise include Carlin (Norris, George Russell, Max Chilton), Hitech (Russell, Lindblad, Williams reserve Luke Browning) and Arden, owned by Christian Horner.

In short, the opportunities are plentiful. And let us not forget the legion of F1 teams who have triumphed and paved the way: Lotus, Tyrrell, BRM, Brabham, Jordan (Irish but based in the UK), Cooper, Hesketh and March among many others.

That is not to say that the UK is the only option. Oliver Bearman, of Essex, moved to Italy at 16 to compete in Italian F4 and join the Ferrari driver academy. It has done him no harm.

Motorsport valley

It is not just British drivers that excel in the sport. McLaren took both titles this season, following on from their constructors’ championship last season. That takes it to 35 constructors’ championships for British teams, with several more for teams based in the country.

The glory days of British domination have disappeared – in the 1980s and 1990s McLaren and Williams won 32 championships of a possible 40 – but even the non-British teams are in fact more than a little British. Red Bull are Austrian but based in Milton Keynes; Alpine French and based in Enstone; Mercedes German but have headquarters in Brackley.

In fact, most of the F1 teams have some kind of presence in motorsport valley, an area that takes in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Surrey. Within a 50-mile radius from Silverstone it is only Ferrari who do not have some kind of facility. Cadillac, who will join F1 next year, have a base at Silverstone. Racing Bulls have moved some operations closer to sister team Red Bull in Milton Keynes, though are still based in Faenza, Italy. Audi, taking over from Switzerland-based Sauber, have opened a technology centre in Bicester.

Why does this matter? In some ways it is a bit of a virtuous circle. British teams have been the most numerous and at times dominant in the sport, which led to a concentration of the best engineering talent being based in the UK. This is further reinforced by the education and job opportunities (again, helped by the decades-long tradition of industry) in the same area with well-regarded motorsport and engineering courses available at Coventry, Cranfield and Imperial College, among others.

Put simply, if you want to attract the top talent, then having a base in the UK is vital because that is where so much of it is located.

A playground for the wealthy (kids)?

The accessibility and affordability of motorsport has dwindled in recent years, though it has never been cheap. Getting through to the higher levels of karting is expensive enough but once you get into single-seaters the sums needed to simply complete the season, never mind to compete at the top, are eye-watering.

It should not escape your attention that, for all Norris’s abundant talent, he comes from a wealthy family. Bearman’s father, David, is also the CEO of global insurance firm Aventum. Money alone is not enough to reach the top, but it is impossible to get there without significant backing somewhere along the line, whether through family money or sponsors.

If you have the cash, though, why not have a bit of fun racing around the circuits of Britain and see where you and your child end up? What a fantastic journey it has been for Norris and his family, as has been the case for the 20 other British grand prix winners before him.

[Source: Daily Mail]