ARCHIVE ON THE AIRWAVES

SEPTEMBER 2025

RPM reached BBC Radio 2 on August 22nd when Vernon Kay took a pause from playing music for a few minutes...and instead offered his hundreds of thousands of listeners a blast from the BBC's radio commentary of the 1950 British Grand Prix, F1's first-ever World Championship race.

Formula 1's history-making opening round wasn't televised live..but did reach millions of radio sets around Great Britain, with legendary commentator Raymond Baxter describing the scene live from Silverstone; in a Grand Prix that witnessed a long duel between Alfa Romeo team mates Fangio and Farina.

This material then remained untouched in the BBC archives for over 70 years until it was uncovered by an RPM researcher. And, having been re-played at Silverstone over their public address system to delighted spectators at their recent Silverstone Festival, such a stir was caused that the audio file was then picked up by Britain's most popular radio station.

This feature can now be enjoyed in full below:

BBC Sounds - Vernon Kay - 1950 British GP Feature