The likely future of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone will be made clear on Tuesday, when the British Racing Drivers Club will make an announcement that is strongly expected to confirm it is to exercise its contractual break clause with Formula One and cease to host the race after 2019.

The BRDC, which owns Silverstone, warned this year of the potentially ruinous cost of hosting the race under the current contract with the Formula One Group. It is set to run until 2026 but includes a clause that raises the hosting fee each year. It is understood to have been £12m in 2010 and is set to rise to £27m by the contract’s conclusion.

The BRDC has made its concerns known to Formula One’s new owner, Liberty Media, but has been adamant there would be no renegotiation, despite stressing the importance of maintaining classic European races as part of F1’s brand. The race is one of the best-attended on the F1 calendar and attracted 139,000 fans last year and a similar number in 2015. But because of the hosting fee it still made a loss of £2m in 2015 and £4m last year.

Liberty has said it wants to actively engage with circuits in order to help them generate more revenue but in Silverstone’s case they are already almost at capacity in terms of selling tickets. “We are pretty much a full house and we are charging pretty much a full price and we still can’t make the sums add up,” Stuart Pringle, sporting director at Silverstone, said in May.

Silverstone is the only circuit in the UK with the classification to host F1 and no other credible alternatives have been forthcoming. Should the British Grand Prix not be held it would be the first time since the world championship began in 1950 that it has not been on the calendar. At the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend the McLaren chief executive, Zak Brown, suggested that Liberty should buy the Northamptonshire circuit and use it as an asset to promote the sport.

Lewis Hamilton will be aiming for a fourth successive Silverstone win on Sunday but says his disappointment at finishing fourth at the Austrian Grand Prix, despite an impressive recovery drive from eighth on the grid, was a reflection of the intensity of his battle for the Formula One world championship this season.

Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas won the race at the Red Bull Ring and Sebastian Vettel was second, extending the German’s lead in the title race. Hamilton took a five-place grid penalty due to a gearbox change before qualifying and although he came through the pack, the Mercedes driver was visibly unhappy with the result. He now trails Ferrari’s Vettel by 20 points with his team-mate Bottas 15 points behind him.

The British driver acknowledged afterwards that Bottas is increasingly involved in a three-way fight for the title. “It’s important for people to understand that you have to have patience with us as drivers,” he said. “I can’t speak for everyone else, but you can’t be happy every day you have a result, no matter whether it’s second, fifth, 10th. Wherever it is, you’re gonna be pissed at one point because you put so much into it. You train, you sacrifice everything to make sure you get the best result possible. So when you don’t, when you don’t personally deliver and other things are stacked up against you it’s hard to come out smiling. Because that means you don’t care enough. The fact is I care more than I need to.”

He has recently endured poor luck that has hampered his efforts to secure a fourth world championship. At the last round in Baku a loose headrest cost him a likely win and this weekend he suffered a brake failure in practice and the forced gearbox change. These are problems he can ill-afford given that he faces competition from Ferrari as well as his team-mate and he acknowledged that he needed to come back strongly at Silverstone.

“This is an intense battle which I’m loving and I think we are loving as a team, but I want to win this championship,” he said. “Right now I’m 20 points behind. I don’t have a crystal ball but it doesn’t look great at the moment. Still got a long, long way to go, it could easily, within one race, switch. But the bigger that gap gets the more pressure builds.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Valtteri Bottas leads into the first corner at the Red Bull Ring. Photograph: Christian Bruna/EPA

Vettel has been able to exert pressure since the beginning of the season when the Ferrari proved it is a match for the Mercedes in race pace and he too was disappointed at not being able to convert his second place on the grid into a victory. “I feel like I could have won and I didn’t, so I am not entirely happy,” said Vettel. “At the beginning of the race I was just not quick enough. The pace was there, but the balance wasn’t.”

The Ferrari has generally proved straightforward to set up so far this season and they will expect a return to form at Silverstone. It is a race Hamilton has won for the past three years in a row however and he is confident he can turn his fortunes around there.

“I’ve had other years that have been difficult as well,” he said. “When there’s adversity there’s opportunity to grow and to do something pretty special. I’m really generally happy with the way I’ve been driving.”

The Mercedes executive director, Toto Wolff, insisted the team were still not considering team orders yet, with Bottas now clearly a factor in the championship battle. “Like we have handled it in the past,” he said. “With the difference that dynamics between the drivers are completely different. For Lewis it was actually the best outcome that Valtteri won the race rather than Sebastian. We are not even half time and we start counting points.”

Wolff also joined the growing debate over the validity ofwhether drivers should take penalties for technical problems beyond their control, something which was raised repeatedly over the weekend in Austria. Grid penalties for changing power unit components have been employed in an attempt to prevent teams with a financial advantage being able to repeatedly change parts without censure. But punishing the drivers for failures has proved highly unpopular.

“Penalties are interfering in championships, drivers and constructors,” he said. “You can see it in all kinds of sports there is the aim of becoming almost perfect with video in football, ski-jumpers getting multiples depending on the wind, for me that is all too much. I would like to see the one who jumps the further, who drives the fastest and scores the most goals. The controversy around referees missed judgments fills the newspapers and makes us discuss it in the pubs on a Monday.

“It is the same in Formula One, I think we need a certain freedom and I don’t think the drivers should be penalised too much for problems with the car but you can’t let it get out of control.

“With Ross Brawn [F1 sporting director] in charge we have the guy with the most experience to come up with the best solutions for that.”