Two rivals took each other out fighting for the lead, thirty paces from where you are standing.
Last reviewed 12 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 800 BC–now
The short answer
At the 1995 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, championship rivals Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill collided at Priory corner while battling for the lead and both retired, handing an unlikely win to Johnny Herbert, who started fifth and had never won a race in 71 previous starts.
Sunday Service @ Silverstone — 2013 · dez1172 · CC BY 2.0
July 1995
Two title rivals collide fighting for the lead
Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill went into this race as the two men who mattered. Schumacher led the championship by eleven points. Hill drove for Williams (Formula One team). He had won here the year before and wanted to win again in front of his home crowd. His wife was due to give birth any day.
Hill took pole position and led from the start. Schumacher used a one-stop strategy. Early on he got stuck behind a Ferrari but used his lighter fuel load to slip ahead once it pitted. By lap 41 Schumacher was leading. Hill had already made two stops and was chasing him down.
Four laps later, on the approach to the corner known as Priory, Hill tried to take the lead back. He dived down the inside. Schumacher held his line. The two cars touched and both spun into the gravel. Both retired from the race.
Neither man could argue his way out of it afterward. The stewards took no action. The collision handed the race to a driver nobody had backed that weekend.
The two title contenders eliminated each other with sixteen laps still to run.
The same afternoon
Johnny Herbert wins after the leaders wreck each other
Johnny Herbert had started fifth for Benetton. He was well off the pace of Hill and his own teammate Schumacher. He had barely finished a lap in either of the two previous races. His own team had whispers it wanted to replace him with a test driver. When Hill and Schumacher took each other out, Herbert was suddenly running at the front with nobody left to beat.
He held the lead to the finish. It was his first win in Formula One. He had started 71 times before. Jean Alesi came home second in a Ferrari. David Coulthard came third for Williams. For Benetton it was a fifth win of the season. The win came from somebody else's mistake rather than their own pace.
July 1992
Fans mob Nigel Mansell's car after his win
Three years earlier, this same stretch of track had already shown what a home crowd could do to a result. Nigel Mansell took pole and led every lap of the 1992 race, becoming the most successful British driver in Formula One history at the time. His win was clean. What happened after it was not.
Fans poured onto the circuit to celebrate before Mansell had even made it back to the pits. His car was swallowed by the crowd on the slowing-down lap. Marshals had to clear a path and drive him in themselves so he could stand on the podium.
A dominant win still ended with the winner unable to reach the pit lane on his own.
July 2003
A man in a kilt undoes Jarno Trulli's race
Eight years after Hill and Schumacher wrecked each other's afternoon, the race got taken away from its leader by something nobody could have predicted. Jarno Trulli ran at the front for the opening eleven laps in his Renault, ahead of pole-sitter Rubens Barrichello.
Then a man in a saffron kilt ran onto Hangar Straight, straight into the path of cars doing 170 miles an hour. He was a former priest, defrocked not long after. The safety car came out. Almost the entire field pitted at once, and the order that came out the other side had nothing to do with who had been fastest. Kimi Räikkönen ended up in the lead by lap 30 and finished third. Barrichello recovered to win it. Trulli's race, built on pace, was undone by a man on foot.
Rain would do to one driver what a trespasser had done to another.
July 2008
Lewis Hamilton dominates a race soaked by rain
Lewis Hamilton arrived under real pressure. He'd gone scoreless in the two previous races and dropped to fourth in the standings. Heavy rain fell over the whole weekend.
He started fourth and passed both rivals on the opening lap. On lap five, in conditions other drivers were backing off in, he took the lead outright and never gave it up. He won it going away, in a drive that is still ranked among the best wet-weather performances the sport has produced.
2014
A vintage racer is killed in a first-lap crash
At the Silverstone Classic in 2014, a historic racer competing in a pre-1966 Formula One car was killed in a first-lap crash. The circuit made Herbert's win possible. It undid Hill and Schumacher. It has also taken a life from a field of cars built decades before any of them.
The corner is quiet now, but it has never once let two drivers share it for long.
Open this place in Strata
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and it will dig the ground you are standing on instead, wherever that is.
The circuit is built on RAF Silverstone, a Royal Air Force bomber station opened in 1943 and used until 1947, its wartime runways still traceable in the track layout.
What happened at the 1995 British Grand Prix at Silverstone?
Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill, the two championship contenders, collided at Priory corner while Hill tried to retake the lead; both spun into the gravel and retired, and Johnny Herbert inherited the win for Benetton.
Who won the 1995 British Grand Prix?
Johnny Herbert won, his first Formula One victory after 71 starts, having started fifth and been promoted to the lead once Schumacher and Hill took each other out. Jean Alesi finished second and David Coulthard third.
What was here before the 1995 collision made headlines?
Three years earlier, in 1992, Nigel Mansell had led every lap to win the British Grand Prix cleanly, becoming the most successful British driver in the sport at the time, before fans swarmed the track to celebrate.
Why did Rubens Barrichello win the 2003 British Grand Prix instead of Jarno Trulli?
Trulli led the opening eleven laps, but a man in a saffron kilt ran onto Hangar Straight in front of cars travelling at 170 miles an hour, triggering a safety car and a mass pit stop that reshuffled the order; Barrichello recovered from the disruption to win.
Was the 2008 British Grand Prix held in the rain?
Yes, heavy rain fell over the whole weekend, and Lewis Hamilton, who started fourth after two scoreless races, passed both rivals ahead of him on the opening lap and took the lead on lap five, winning in a drive still ranked among the best wet-weather performances in the sport.
Where this came from
1
GPFans — Max Verstappen crashes out of the 2026 British Grand Prix
