Amid a sea of better-appreciated and well-appointed UK race tracks, Knockhill has a knack for holding its personal.
It’s Scotland’s solely FIA-approved observe and is infamous for its slim, sophisticated and steeply undulating twists and turns – and this coming weekend, it is going to host the seventh spherical of this season’s BTCC. I can’t wait.
I consider it because the UK’s Laguna Seca: one in every of its corners, Duffus Dip, has a pointy downward gradient very similar to the Californian observe’s Corkscrew.
When you’ve by no means pushed on it earlier than, you’ll start every lap with blind religion earlier than negotiating the steep, unforgiving kerbs and tight turns that may make or break victory.
It has taken some time to get right here. Again within the early Nineteen Seventies, a sheep farmer known as Tom Kinnaird had a daring imaginative and prescient for a race observe – and a digger in his shed.
He carved out what would develop into Scotland’s reply to the Nürburgring or Spa-Francorchamps, albeit on a barely smaller scale. The circuit advanced can be made up of outdated farm service roads and a disused mineral railway that closed within the early Fifties.
By 1974, there lay a snaking, undulating ribbon of asphalt that dips and rises by round 60 metres from the observe’s highest level to its lowest.
The primary race was held in 1975 and, because of a big catchment space that features each Edinburgh and Glasgow, it proved as in style because it was worthwhile. By the point it was inaugurated into the BTCC calendar in 1992, Knockhill had develop into one in every of Britain’s best-known race tracks.
I grew up watching BTCC racers there with my dad. It’s the place I realized to understand the talent required for drivers to pound spherical on the restrict, and it’s the place I discovered anybody might drive their automotive on a observe – whether or not it was a brand new BMW M5 or a ratty Renault Clio.
It’s additionally the place I bought a primary style of on-track driving and the strategies required to take action, from left-foot braking to the trusty heel-and-toe gearshift.
