Donington Grand Prix

Welcome to donington-grand-prix.co.uk - a fan based website which stands completely neutral and unaffected by all the politics and controversies surrounding the race which is scheduled for 2010. We are looking forward to the British Grand Prix at Donington as we hope you, the F1 fans are too!

The British Grand Prix at Donington Park

The British Grand Prix was the first ever race in Formula 1 back in 1950 and was hosted at Silverstone. After changing locations a couple of times over the years, Silverstone had an exclusive contract to host the British Grand Prix since 1987.

After years of public disputes with F1 owner Bernie Ecclestone, he lost his patience with Silverstone's seeming inability to come with funds to improve their track and bring it up to a world class standard as like so many other F1 tracks around the globe.

On July the 4th 2008, which was the Friday practice day of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Bernie Ecclestone announced to the world that Donington Park would host the race from 2010 onwards in a 10 years contract (which has since been extended to 17). This shocked the F1 world, particularly over 100,000 loyal fans to Silverstone who attend the race each year.

Donington-Grand-Prix.co.uk was born...

Since that day, Donington Park has rarely been out the headlines for all sorts of reasons.

The first question mark was whether planning permission would be granted from the local authorities to allow work to begin at the circuit. The length of time processes such as this can take made a lot of people wonder if the 2010 date could be met.

The second question mark over the project is over the £100million needed to carry out the upgrade work that would be needed if Donington was to indeed host the British Grand Prix. It has been announced that the funding should be in place by the end of July 2009 with no more information available until then.

The third question mark leads in nicely from the first and second. Can the circuit be ready in time if planning permission and funding have caused delay? Well apparently so and the first bit of proper building work is set to commence on August 1st 2009. This leaves just under 10 months before the race is due to be hosted. Time of course will be needed for FIA inspection prior to the British Grand Prix.

Simon Gillett the Donington Grand Prix mastermind

Simon Gillett is the man in charge of the whole British Grand Prix at Donington Park idea. He has faced massive criticism for his handling of the project so far and the way he hasn't been able to divulge hard facts about how the funding is happening amongst other questions about the project.

He has always been adamant though that the race will be on schedule and has repeated this over and over again, mounting more pressure on himself than anyone else.