Bernie Ecclestone failed to turn up, but sent his acid-tipped regards. Tuesday's ceremonial launch of Silverstone's new £28m pits and paddock complex took place in the presence of many of British motor sport's greatest figures, including Sir Stirling Moss, John Surtees, Sir Jackie Stewart, Sir Frank Williams, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Jenson Button, but without the man whose incessant goading could be said to have prodded the circuit into its latest phase of redevelopment.
Two years ago Silverstone hosted what it thought would be its last British Grand Prix after Ecclestone handed the contract to host the race to Donington Park with the firm promise that the showpiece event would never return to the Northamptonshire plateau on which the modern Formula One world championship made its debut in 1950.
A state of war had existed for years between Ecclestone and the British Racing Drivers' Club, Silverstone's owners, whom the entrepreneur charged with being unwilling to update their venue, originally a second world war RAF base for Wellington bombers, to match the lavish facilities being built with government funds in such places as Shanghai and Abu Dhabi.
When the Donington project collapsed through a widely predicted lack of funding, Ecclestone and Silverstone were forced back into each other's arms. The circuit was given a deal to hold the race for the next 17 years on the understanding that major improvements would be undertaken.
On Tuesday the results were revealed, in the striking silvery shape of a complex to be known as the Silverstone Wing, a building 390m long and 30m high, containing pits, garages, hospitality suites, and conference rooms suitable for all kinds of functions when the engines fall silent. From some angles the Wing's jagged shape resembles the profile of one of the Tour de France's more mountainous stages; from others it suggests what might happen were a Stealth bomber to crash into one of those low-rise logistics centres one sees alongside the M1.
Ecclestone announced his non-appearance less than 24 hours earlier and it fell to Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion and now the president of the BRDC, to read out his message. "I'm very sorry that I'm not here for this important occasion for the future of Formula One and the future of Silverstone," Ecclestone wrote. "But rest assured I've followed all the progress and the pits and paddock complex is a state-of-the-art facility, and will form the backbone of Silverstone's plans to become a world-class facility. It's a great shame it couldn't have been completed 10 years ago – but well done, Silverstone."
It was impossible to escape the conviction that had the event been held in a desert, not too far from an oil well, with a gaggle of sheikhs on the platform and the promise of sovereign wealth heading into his coffers, nothing could have kept Ecclestone away. But this was Silverstone, which still seems to exist in the 80-year-old billionaire's mind as a place of straw bales, Nissen huts, muddy car parks, inadequate toilet facilities and terrible weather, populated by buffoons in blazers and regimental ties who see it as their function to patronise the son of a Suffolk trawlerman. So he has made it his business to patronise them back, with some success.
"We'd like to have seen Bernie," said Hill, who is definitely not a blazered buffoon. "We did invite him, and we were very excited when he accepted, but we understand that he's very busy. Much of this is the way he wanted it, so he's got what he wanted."
The profile of the 3.7-mile grand prix circuit remains unchanged from the layout adopted last year, when the new Arena infield section was added. But the Wing is situated at what used to be the back of the circuit, between Club Corner and Abbey, so that the latter, a fast right-hander, now becomes the first turn, followed by Farm Curve, a sweeping left-hander.
"I'm really pleased with what I've seen," Jenson Button, the 2009 world champion, said. "From the drivers' and spectators' point of view, having the first two corners flat out will be amazing. I'd put Silverstone up with Spa and Suzuka as the best circuits, but you could say it was time for improvement, and this is outstanding.
"Among the things any driver really wants is to win his home grand prix, and I haven't managed it yet, so it's something to fight for this year."
The greats queued up to salute the circuit's special character and the enthusiasm of the fans for their heroes. Surtees remembered riding a single-cylinder Norton to victory over the four-cylinder Gilera of Geoff Duke, the reigning world champion, in 1955. Stewart remembered exchanging the lead with Jochen Rindt 30 times on the way to victory in 1969 – without the aid of Kers, moveable wing flaps or artificial pit stops. John Watson remembered an epic battle with James Hunt. Mark Webber, who had driven his Red Bull into the opening ceremony in a blare of noise, remembered watching the television in Australia in 1991 and seeing Mansell give the stranded Ayrton Senna a lift back to the pits on the sidepod of his Williams – and how, when he first arrived in England, he drove straight from Heathrow airport to the Silverstone gates. Hill remembered having to stop his Brabham on the track when the crowd flooded over the barriers to acclaim Mansell's victory in 1992.
Only Moss, who first raced in a British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1952, went slightly off-message. "It's always been a great circuit," he said. "But the original one was better than the one today, in my view." No one is more entitled to an opinion than the greatest driver never to have won the world championship.
But all British motor racing fans cherish their own Silverstone memories, whether of Jim Clark switching off his oil-starved engine through the corners on the way to his 1965 win, Jody Scheckter's impetuosity triggering the famous first-lap pile-up that eliminated 11 cars in front of the pits in 1973, Keke Rosberg blasting round on a qualifying lap in the turbocharged Williams-Honda at a record average speed of 160mph in 1985, or Michael Schumacher taking Copse Corner flat out in seventh gear.
Valentino Rossi, the nine-times world motorcycle champion and one of yesterday's guests of honour, ended the day with a handful of laps on a screaming 1,100cc Ducati, under typically marbled Silverstone skies. For the place that Martin Brundle described, with pardonable hyperbole, as "the centre of the universe for motor sport", there is more to come.