Silverstone is known today as a world-famous racing circuit, but its story begins in a very different time. Long before the roar of Formula 1 engines, Silverstone was an airfield: an RAF base active during the Second World War.

If you’ve heard names like Maggots, Hanger, or Wellington when watching a race, you’ve heard echoes of that past. These aren’t just corner or straight names. They are remnants of another era, when aircraft hangars lined the edges of the field, and Vickers Wellington bombers took to the skies from RAF Silverstone. “Maggots,” now a thrilling high-speed corner, was once a local field where RAF pilots found moments of calm between missions.

This circuit is more than just tarmac. It’s built on history.

Yet, many have chosen to forget. Time moves forward, and in doing so, we often try to leave the past behind. But how can we forget,or worse, deny our history? We can’t change what was. We can only choose how we carry it forward.

Still, there are those who try to rewrite the truth. Who want to move on without looking back. But the truth doesn’t vanish just because we stop speaking it. What remains is a choice: to ignore where we’ve come from, or to honour it.

And that got me thinking: what if we, as South Africans, approached our history the same way?
Embrace what was, and change what we can?

The present is ours to shape. But we should build it on the foundations of memory, not in the shadows of forgetfulness.

Silverstone reminds us that the past isn’t gone, it’s just beneath the surface, ready to be remembered.