TREMAYNE: Remembering the emotional day at Silverstone when fate – for once – smiled on Johnny Herbert

F1 Hall of Fame journalist David Tremayne looks back at a triumph that no one expected, but that was richly deserved after Johnny Herbert had been battered and cheated by fate.

Jul 06, 2025 8:13am UTC

Hall of Fame F1 JournalistDavid Tremayne

Johnny Herbert, Grand Prix of Great Britain, Silverstone Circuit, 16 July 1995. Johnny Herbert

I guess it was on Lap 51 of the 1995 British GP at Silverstone that the penny finally began to drop. There’d been a false dawn five laps earlier, but now it looked like it really was going to happen.

Johnny Herbert – ‘The Imp’ as Perry McCarthy had christened him in F3 – was actually going to win a Grand Prix... and on his home ground to boot.

Winning at home is the greatest buzz. Just ask Lewis Hamilton, or Nigel Mansell.