There was Mansell Mania at Silverstone in 1991 with the British idol second in the World Championship (albeit with half the number of points of Ayrton Senna) but with the dominant Williams-Renault FW14. Mansell was duly on pole after an exciting battle with Senna. Riccardo Patrese was third in the second Williams. Senna's McLaren team mate Gerhard Berger was fourth fastest ahead of Alain Prost and Jean Alési in their Ferraris, Roberto Moreno and Nelson Piquet in their Benettons and Maurício Gugelmin (Leyton House) and Stefano Modena's Tyrrell-Honda.

At the start Mansell made a very poor getaway and so Senna went into the lead. Mansell was having none of that and on the run down Hangar Straight he blasted ahead of the Brazilian, having turned off the rev-limiter to get the power he wanted. The rev-limiter is a device which prevents the driver from pushing the engine faster than the engineers would wish, but this can be overridden in exceptional circumstances. Berger and Patrese had collided at the first corner. Patrese went off but Berger soon fought back, passing Moreno for third place and then following Senna. He pitted for tyres in the middle of the race and dropped to fifth but in the closing laps he was able to get back to third place and on the last lap this became second when Senna ran out of fuel. Mansell, however, was untouchable all afternoon and scored a popular victory. Prost finished third despite a rare spin in the middle of the race.

Andrea de Cesaris (Jordan) did well, running in the top 10 until he had a huge accident at Abbey Corner but emerged unhurt as usual.

Senna was credited with fourth place with Nelson Piquet fifth and Bertrand Gachot (Jordan) sixth, a promising result for the Belgian driver.