006 - Silverstone

Silverstone was a bomber base before it was a racetrack.

RAF Silverstone flew Wellingtons out of Northamptonshire during the war. When it closed, the perimeter road and three runways were still there — and in 1948 someone worked out that a perimeter road is a racing circuit that nobody has to build. The first British Grand Prix ran on it that year. The airfield geometry is still legible in the layout today.

That flat farmland is exactly the point. Silverstone rises and falls just 14 metres across the entire 5.9-kilometre lap, and the absence of hills is why it is so quick. Nothing slows you down. Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel arrive as one continuous sequence of direction changes taken at extraordinary speed, and Copse and Stowe are corners in name more than in practice.

This print is a survey of it.

The circuit is traced from real geographic data — the surveyed line, not an illustration — and coloured by height. Below the map, the elevation profile plots the lap against distance, and it stays deliberately shallow, because that is the truth of the place. Fourteen named sections are keyed to the chart: Abbey, Village, Brooklands, Luffield, Woodcote. The way a surveyor annotates a drawing, not the way a poster decorates one.

Just Silverstone, measured. One plate in a numbered series of the world's great circuits, built to hang together.

• Colour vibrancy: our 12-colour fine art printing technology delivers vivid, accurate colours with stunning depth, far beyond standard 4-colour inkjet printing technology.
• Frame material: durable pine wood.
• Paper finishing: smooth matte finish for a clean, glare-free display.
• Paper weight: 200 gsm (80 lb), thickness 0.26 mm (10.3 mils).
• Available sizes: offered in a variety of sizes to fit any space or frame.
• Protection: shatterproof plexiglass protects the poster.
• Eco-friendly materials: printed on environmentally conscious, FSC-certified paper and wood.
• Ready to hang: includes hanging kit, ready to hang directly on the wall.