Do great crowds produce great races ?

Much emphasis was put on Silverstone's full-house last weekend as fans packed the grandstands and lined the track for what turned out to be an action-packed British Grand Prix.

The races which produced good entertainment this year also enjoyed great attendance, although any causal connection between the two remains uncertain.

" I think we had a great crowd and the reason for the big crowd is because we have a British World Champion and Lewis is obviously doing tremendously well, " commented Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

"It is great we put on a great race for the crowd today and that is what we need to strive for, putting on good races and making the cars a real challenge to drive and that is being focused on in the future."

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also noted that Sunday's race went a long way towards silencing F1's critics, although working towards the sport's future is what everyone must be focused on.

"Sometimes these things just happen at the right moment and I think there were just such great crowds out there and then a race with all the ingredients that are necessary to make it a great race: the Williams going like arrows, very difficult and not able to overtake, the right calls in the rain at the right time and then probably the right winner."

"We had great races like Montreal, which was full, and Melbourne, which was full, and then Austria was pretty good if you consider it is a tiny place and we had 55,000 on the Sunday," Wolff added.

"The TV audience has been up in all of the last races in some of the major countries, but that is history and it doesn’t matter. We need to take each other by the ear and ask how are we going to make it better to convince the critics that this is actually a great sport, and I think we did some of that on Sunday."

Click here for F1i's driver ratings from the British Grand Prix

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