The Formula 1 teams escaped the French strickers' truck blockade and raced north to Silverstone where the British GP was due to take place a week after the French event. Christian Fittipaldi was out of action following his accident in France and so the Minardi team hired Alex Zanardi as his replacement.

The partisan crowd wanted a Nigel Mansell victory and after qualifying the World Championship leader was on pole from his Williams-Renault team mate Riccardo Patrese. Ayrton Senna was third (as always) in his McLaren-Honda. Michael Schumacher's Benetton was fourth ahead of Gerhard Berger's McLaren, Martin Brundle's Benetton, the Lotus of Johnny Herbert, Jean Alési's Ferrari, Mika Häkkinen in the second Lotus and Érik Comas's Ligier-Renault. At the back of the field there was a significant moment as Damon Hill finally managed to get his Brabham into a race, qualifying last on the grid, a tenth quicker than Zanardi.

There was a hug crowd and this resulted in Mika Häkkinen getting stuck in traffic jams and missing the warm-up because he had to explain to police why he was driving down the wrong side of the road.

At the start of the race Patrese took the lead at the first corner but Mansell did not think much of that, retook the lead and duly drove away from the field to score another dominant victory. Patrese followed him and the fast-starting Brundle ran third for the whole afternoon, battling with his old Formula 3 rival Senna. Schumacher followed them but later had an incident and dropped behind Berger.

Senna eventually went out with a gearbox failure while his team-mate Berger ran into engine trouble and Schumacher moved up to fourth with Berger fifth and Häkkinen sixth.