Graphic: Silverstone - the inside track

TWENTY-FOUR hours is a long time in Formula One. When we all headed home after practice at Silverstone on Friday, the official line was that today’s British Grand Prix would be the last to be held at the circuit. Bernie Ecclestone insisted that next year’s race would be staged at Donington Park, or nowhere. By yesterday morning, he had performed an about-turn, stating that if the East Midlands circuit is not ready to host the race in 2010 it will return to Silverstone.

I doubt that the British GP will be at Donington for the long term because I can’t see fans putting up with a bus trip in and out and a delayed and controlled departure. Donington has a heritage that goes back to pre-war days, but it is a rather run-down venue and it will never match Silverstone as a driver’s circuit. Any racing driver will tell you how special this theatre of speed is. The first five corners are massively fast but not quite flat out, a ribbon of tarmac that always separates the great from the merely good.

Memories of Silverstone flood in. I went in the 1960s to see a grand prix for the first time. We took packing cases and bits of wood to give ourselves elevation for a better view at Copse. I marvelled as the likes of Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart showed their mastery, a powerful influence on any youngster.

I saw Jody Scheckter trigger a multi-car shunt at the end of the first lap in 1973, sticking my head above the infamous old Woodcote sleepers that have claimed many cars and several lives, as they cut Andrea de Adamich, who had broken his leg, out of his car.

I recall being there in GP support races for F3 and Touring Cars, excited at being part of it all, sleeping in our race car transporter on Club straight.

I had epic F3 fights with Ayrton Senna on a treacherously wet track, seeing him brake way too late into Stowe, smiling to myself temporarily before seeing him come out of the corner in front of me. I remember being side by side with Nigel Mansell into the last corner of a BMW touring car race in 1979, neither of us prepared to back off, him spinning and me winning. That single moment changed my career from hobby racer to serious contender, putting me on a different path in life.

The first time I drove down the Silverstone pitlane in an F1 car was for McLaren, as a prize test I shared with Senna and Stefan Bellof. I remember the impossible, endless power — which was actually about the same as my current road car, albeit with rather less weight. The three of us did the same lap time, then watched as Senna somehow negotiated a second run. Coming through Woodcote with blue smoke already belching from the exhausts, Ayrton kept his foot down because he wanted to complete the lap. The engine fried itself as he crossed the line and he pulled up, climbed the pit wall and asked Ron Dennis for the lap time. I recall Ron closing his clipboard and saying, “I find it very difficult to remember to press the stopwatch when I’m watching one of my cars blowing up” and walking away in fake disgust, no doubt planning a contractual offer.

There are memories of sports cars, too — winning the Silverstone 1,000km for Jaguar, always a good warm-up for the Le Mans 24 hours. Then, in 1991, driving the Ross Brawn-designed Jaguar XJR14, losing approaching 10 minutes in the pits because of a broken throttle cable and driving the rest of the distance single-handed and finishing third.

Afterwards, while fundamentally happy, I couldn’t stop crying. I’d run out of the right fluids and minerals. That effort led to me driving for Benetton with Ross and Tom Walkinshaw in 1992.

For Benetton I finished third, beating Senna and my teammate Michael Schumacher but behind the Williams cars of Mansell and Riccardo Patrese. I have a vivid image of the Mansell-mania track invasion on the slowing-down lap, a man putting his child in my path to make me stop so he could get a photograph, me trying to drive back for the podium procedure, people tapping me on the crash helmet as I drove by.

These are all positive memories I’m bragging about, but there were plenty of disappointments too. As a McLaren driver in 1994 my race lasted 383 metres before my Peugeot engine barbecued itself. I found a cubby hole in the McLaren truck and cried. Again.