Silverstone Spectacular

The next day David Richards and I were at Silverstone in the build-up to the Grand Prix weekend and one of our tasks was to present Lando Norris with the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy for 2024. This trophy is an annual award honouring the highest achievement of a British or Commonwealth driver in Formula 1 World Championship. It was created by the family of Mike Hawthorn, the 1958 F1 World Champion, who sadly died at just 29 years of age, in a road accident shortly after being crowned. It has been awarded to a glittering array of drivers from the first recipient, Jack Brabham through to stars such as Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, Jenson Button and of course on 12 occasions, Sir Lewis Hamilton. It was amusing to see Lando’ s careful scrutiny of the base of the trophy, with its array of small gold plaques, as he carefully counted the number of spaces remaining on the plinth … and declared there were nine more opportunities for him to achieve the accolade. They may even have to add another tier to the base!

The next day back at the McLaren hospitality facility, David and I were delighted to present team principal, Zak Brown, on behalf of McLaren, with the Sir Malcolm Campbell Trophy, which is awarded to those who have made a significant impact on British motorsport, whether through their achievements as a driver, engineer, team or promoter. Of course, McLaren needs little introduction, but it is worth noting that they now have 198 F1 victories after Sunday’ s race, and they are the second oldest active team, and the second most successful on the Grand Prix grid. I first met Zak in 2003 when I tracked him down to his marketing company’ s office in Indianapolis where he was operating pretty much only in NASCAR and IndyCar. I was running the commercial operation at the BAR Honda Formula 1 team, and I had a sense that this young man could open doors in the USA. With his help we came very close to securing Johnny Walker as a sponsor for the next season, and ironically lost out to McLaren – but then they did have a rather better track record than ourselves!

David Richards, with Sports Minister Stephanie Peacock, Secretary of State for DCMS Lisa Nandy, and Hugh Chambers at the British Grand Prix

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Revolution- July 2025