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| Nino Farina, 1950 Silverstone winner and World Champion (LAT) |
Silverstone hosted the first ever Grand Prix for the Formula 1World Championship. Held on 13 May, 1950, on a circuit configured from abandoned runways of the former WW2 bomber base, the inaugural British Grand Prix was contested by 21 cars and witnessed by 150,000 enthusiastic spectators, among them members of the British royal family. The winner of the historic event, driving an Alfa Romeo Tipo 158, was 44-year-old Giuseppe Antonio Farina, who went on to become the sport's first World Champion.
The six champions entered in the 2012 British Grand Prix live in a very different world from the first man to win the driving title. 'Nino' Farina came from a privileged Italian background and had a stylish, straight-armed driving technique that was adopted by many drivers. A hard and determined racer, he relied on a combination of profound self belief and raw courage tocompensate for the superior skills possessed by many of his more naturally talented opponents. Yet he also drove recklessly in a most dangerous era and few F1 drivers ever competed with such apparent disregard for their personal safety.
Even Enzo Ferrari (who employed him for several seasons) feared for Farina's future: "A man of steel, inside and out", Ferrari said. "But I could never help feeling apprehensive about him. He was like a high strung thoroughbred, capable of committing the most astonishing follies. As a consequence he was a regular inmate of the hospital wards." Somehow surviving an accident-strewn racing career, Farina was killed in 1966 when his road car skidded off a slippery alpine bend.
- more about Farina and all the champions in the Hall Of Fame section of formula1.com
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