As Silverstone prepares to host its 50th Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton has agreed to mark the occasion by spending the whole weekend using his British accent.

The Stevenage-born driver’s British accent hasn’t been heard in full since 2010 and sources say he has spent the past week working with his engineers to make sure he doesn’t spoil the effect by suddenly saying ‘fricking’ or ‘totally’ as if raised in the well-known San Fernando valley area of Hertfordshire.

‘Lewis really wants his British accent to work this weekend,’ a Mercedes source revealed. ‘But it is a bit rusty since he’s spent so long now using other accents such as that one that makes him sound like a grumpy teenager from an international school.’

‘It would mean a lot to the Silverstone crowd if Lewis used his British accent,’ said Trosty Munge of the HamFan website. ‘But we fully understand if that’s too difficult and he has to go back to talking like an impersonation of an American done by someone who’s not very good at accents.’

‘Wait, Lewis Hamilton is British?’ asked one perplexed F1 fan. ‘We thought he was a Belgian who grew up in Hong Kong doing an impression of P Diddy.’

With thanks to Barrett Sutherland