Silverstone signs deal to host British Grand Prix until 2040 with £120m upgrade

Silverstone has signed a 14-year extension to its contract to host the British Grand Prix, securing the race until 2040 and ending a decade of uncertainty in which the circuit twice came within months of losing it.

The deal, announced at the circuit on Monday, commits Silverstone to a £120m programme of works including a new pit and paddock complex, 15,000 additional permanent grandstand seats and the resurfacing of the circuit’s outer loop. It is the longest contract the circuit has held and the first to include a clause capping the increase in the hosting fee at inflation.

“This is the first time since I have been here that I have been able to say the race is safe and mean it,” said the circuit’s managing director, Caroline Reeve. “We have had five-year deals and we have had the threat of the race going to London or going abroad, and every time it has meant we could not plan. Now we can.”

The hosting fee, which the circuit does not disclose but which is understood to be about £28m a year, is funded entirely by ticket sales and hospitality: the British Grand Prix receives no government support, unlike almost every other race on the calendar. The circuit sold 480,000 tickets over the four days of this year’s event, a record, and has committed under the new deal to pricing at least 20% of them below £100.

That commitment follows criticism from fans and from a parliamentary committee that the cost of attending had risen by 70% in a decade. The cheapest three-day general admission ticket this year was £289. Reeve said the circuit had “heard that loud and clear” and that the new seats would allow it to offer more entry-level tickets without reducing income.

The sport’s commercial rights holder said in a statement that the race was “one of the foundations of the calendar” and that the extension reflected the circuit’s investment in the event. The British Racing Drivers’ Club, which owns Silverstone, had faced calls from some of its members to sell the circuit to a private operator; its chairman said on Monday that the deal “answers that question for a generation”.

The pit complex will be built over the winters of 2027 and 2028 and will replace the current building, opened in 2011. Planning permission was granted by West Northamptonshire council in July. The circuit also confirmed that it would seek to host a round of the world endurance championship from 2028, which would require the new facilities to be complete.

Reeve, asked whether the circuit could now consider the kind of night race or street-circuit spectacle that other venues have adopted, said it would not. “People come here for a motor race in a field in Northamptonshire,” she said. “It rains, there is a queue for the car park and the racing is good. We are not going to fix the things that are not broken.”