Home Sweet Home

With seven of the ten teams based in the UK, the British Grand Prix has special significance for the vast majority of people in the Silverstone paddock this weekend. In years gone by, the British teams were reckoned to have an advantage over what was back then a larger contingent of foreign squads, because they spent days on end pounding round the track before the arrival of testing restrictions.

These days any advantage is purely psychological, much of it provided by you the fans who come here to cheer on your favourites. But a home race can also mean more work and more pressure as a variety of F1 workers now tell us.

Eric Boullier - Racing Director, McLaren

It's much more demanding here! Obviously we have a lot of attention, from the media, from the fans and strangely logistically it is more complicated for a simple reason: we are putting more effort in for this race. Because we are just a couple of hours from home, people are pushing the limits of the deliveries and then we struggle to have our parts on time here compared with Australia, for example, because in Australia you have one shipment and can't miss it or make another delivery. So it's better.

Here, bits are coming every day because we have a rotating van system all the time, straight from Woking all the time. It's funny. But it's a lovely race and when the weather is like this it's absolutely brilliant. I'm half British now because I'm living here, too.