Formula 1 hospitality has a basic contradiction at its centre: the room is never the main event. However good the lunch, however expensive the wristband, the reason for being there is still outside, arriving at high speed. Each year, Silverstone’s premium hospitality spaces compete with that fact. The Vale, the circuit’s newest and most premium offering, was built to top them all. Its launch added another marker to the 2026 British Grand Prix, a record weekend that drew 564,000 fans across four days – the biggest Formula 1 event ever held – with Charles Leclerc taking his first Silverstone victory and five full-time British Formula 1 drivers on the grid for the first time since 1996.
Formula 1 hospitality gets an architectural upgrade at Silverstone
Set beside the paddock entrance, The Vale looks over the pit entry and the final corner sequence, the stretch of Silverstone where a lap tightens before releasing onto the start-finish straight. For Levi Jack Sibthorpe, founder and director of architecture studio Flux Nexus, the site offered two kinds of theatre. ‘At the rear, a tranquil outlook to the inner circuit lakeside; the front elevation, however, complete proximity to the race action,’ he tells Wallpaper*.
Arranged across two levels, on the ground floor sits La Bombe by Trivet, the restaurant from Jonny Lake and the team behind two-Michelin-starred Trivet in London. Upstairs, a second tasting experience, a music lounge, a bar and a terrace place guests above the circuit. The brief, Sibthorpe says, was to create ‘a brand-new race experience destination’ and establish the highest tier of luxury at Silverstone. ‘For us, it’s about human touch,’ he adds. ‘Guests should feel a level of human touch in every detail, from the furniture pieces to the finest details of the graphic design of a lanyard.’
While the project took 11 months to develop, The Vale had to be built in a matter of weeks, which meant Flux Nexus had to leave behind the masonry, ceramics and heavyweight timber framing the studio would usually favour, and use an 8m-tall cross-braced aluminium space frame. The most impressive architectural feature is a 10m overhanging cantilever roof that places guests directly over the race action. Meanwhile, cabinets, art corridors and tunnels through the building’s underbelly sit alongside more than 100 individual furniture pieces, 35 art installations, and the work of furniture house Mainguilty.
Food has its own track position. La Bombe by Trivet serves sea bass crudo with orange ponzu and crispy quinoa, trofie alla Liguria with Jersey Royals and summer beans, halibut ‘picchio-pacchio’ with white beans and basil, and gelato sundaes with sake, potato caramel and crispy potato. Upstairs, roaming menus run through the day: viennoiserie and Estate Dairy yoghurt at breakfast; Alpine burrata, lobster rolls with caviar, miso halibut yakitori, Colchester crab and sakura summer cake as the weekend unfolds.
Silverstone describes The Vale as an ultra-premium experience with limited capacity, VIP arrival options including chauffeur transfer and helicopter access, and after-hours music and entertainment on Saturday and Sunday. Sibthorpe says the aim was to ‘break the mould of what’s possible in the event world of temporary structures’.
