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Silverstone Circuit

motor racing circuit on the Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire border, UK

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ171402
Source-derived summary

The Silverstone Circuit ( ) is a motor racing circuit in England, near the Northamptonshire villages Silverstone and Whittlebury. It is the home of the British Grand Prix, which it first hosted as the 1948 British Grand Prix. The 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone was the first race in the newly created World Championship of Drivers. The race rotated between Silverstone, Aintree and Brands Hatch from 1955 to 1986, but settled permanently at the Silverstone track in 1987. The circuit also hosts the British round of the MotoGP series.

Circuit

The Silverstone Circuit is on the site of a Royal Air Force bomber station, RAF Silverstone, which was operational between 1943 and 1946. The station was the base for the No. 17 Operational Training Unit. The airfield's three runways, in classic WWII triangle format, lie within the outline of the present track.

The circuit straddles the Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire border and is accessed from the nearby A43.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Silverstone Circuit” is motor racing circuit on the Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire border, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Silverstone, Circuit and motor, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1950, 1955, 1986—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1947-09-01. For this dossier, Silverstone, Circuit and motor is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “motor racing circuit on the Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire border, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q171402. VIAF identifies the subject as 444144782715657729730. The Library of Congress control number is nb2018005156. Authority coordinates are 52.075, -1.017. None of the 5 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1950, 1955 and 1986.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Silverstone Circuit”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Silverstone Circuit primary sources, Silverstone Circuit archive and Silverstone research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Silverstone Circuit”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Silverstone Circuit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.