Silverstone's first Grand Prix, 1948: the race on the runways

It was madness: Grand Prix drivers racing flat out from opposite ends of one long runway, only to turn away from each other at the last moment at corners improvised with hay bales.

But such was the major part of the first Grand Prix course ever to be devised at Silverstone.

Fortunately there were no head on collisions, and the next year the organizers hit on a more sensible arrangement.

But none of the many subsequent Grand Prix at Silverstone, for all the everincreasing glamour and hype, have quite engendered the same excitement as that very first one in 1948, even though it was held on a long disused airfield bereft of modern amenities.