Club column: Matt Beer

A visit to Knockhill is a must, especially on a weekend where the Scottish Motor Racing Club’s many entertaining series take centre stage

This isn’t going to be one of those deeply insightful Autosport columns that illuminates the behindthe-scenes truth of a big news story or draws attention to a major and profound motorsport issue. Instead it’s a shameless‘i went to a thing, it was brilliant, you should go too if you haven’t already’. That thing is a Knockhill clubbie meeting.

My British patriotism doesn’t extend much beyond shouting “pfff, it’s basically Wales/scotland/dartmoor”when someone lauds the New Zealand-plus-cgi scenery in a Lord of the Rings film, but that loyalty-to-scenic-parts-of-this-country argument is one I’m pretty passionate about. So I’m a strong advocate of Scottish holidays, and now also of factoring the Knockhill clubracing calendar into your booking process – something I’ve finally managed to do earlier this month while checking in on Autosport Academy members’in-paddock performance.

For someone whose national motorsport growing up happened mostly at Castle Combe, there’s a lot that’s familiar about Knockhill. A strong local championship scene with one-circuit series at the core of the calendar, and a location that feels far away to much of the population but draws racers and spectators from major nearby cities (for Bristol read Edinburgh), while also having a‘catchment area’that stretches off 200 miles into the pointy bits of the UK (for Cornwall read the Highlands).

Knockhill does have its mega-draw flagship events in its British Touring Car and British Superbike meetings, but I was much more keen to finally make my first visit there for one of its regular Scottish Motor Racing Club race days to get a sense of the track’ s‘ normal’ life.

Trying to sustain seven one-circuit championships in a remote-to-many location is not easy, as some varying grid sizes and combined series prove, but the best of the SMRC bill is absolutely cracking. The Legends and Minis in particular have reasonable-sized fields, high-quality drivers very willing to go wheel to wheel with each other (as late nights for race-direction officials proved), and could be the lynchpins of any club bill.

The Classic Sports and Saloons produced what you always want from a historic grid: evocative cars racing each other with lairy abandon, while smelling and sounding great.

The Scottish FF1600 field certainly could be larger, but it’s doing what FF1600 does best: unearthing genuine young talents with the potential to be professionals and making them prove themselves against established club-racing standouts, with the added bonus of often having Dario Franchitti on hand in the paddock. The Indianapolis 500 winner’s presence highlights the lineage from Scottish motorsport’s greatest achievements to these Knockhill meetings, also underlined by the annual presentation of the David Leslie Trophy to an FF1600 race winner (a touchingly emotional Ross Martin this year) and

John Cleland’s wins in the visiting Super Touring Trophy.

A small and somewhat fragile field meant the Super Tourers were not the bill-topper they should have been, but Knockhill did its best to make the most of them with a grid walk and informative treatment from commentary team Robert Johnston, Duncan Vincent (who impressively hops between the comms box and racing a Legend) and Dave Christie. Casual spectators would’ve left adequately and accessibly educated on why

Super Touring became such a big deal and why Cleland was a hero of the era, and the hardcore would have been satisfied that the commentators knew their stuff.

The overall commentary approach was a masterclass in turning a grassroots meeting into‘a Proper Event’, with plenty of information about the local championships’ storyline sand characters. Also impressive was Christie jumping on to grids to interview front-row starters at the end of formation laps as the backmarkers formed up ahead of the actual race start – impressive in both the racers’ surprisingly casual willingness to talk at that point and Christie’s nimbleness.

Knockhill is not a track where you should spectate from the same place all day. Alternate between the spots where you can see the majority of the action and those where you can get spectacularly close to the trackside – watching from the infield at Duffus Dip as a pack of Minis launches itself out of the sky towards you, or from the exit of the hairpin as a bunch of FF1600S try to go four-wide within what seems like touching distance, is a pretty visceral experience. And when you look up from the track, there’s an epic view all around, whether it’s to the hills and mountains or the Forth. It was also refreshingly freezing on a weekend where the south was melting under a heatwave whose novelty had worn off.

That’s my Celtic motorsport tourism advocacy done, for now. But I’ll probably pinch this column back next time I manage to fit Anglesey circuit into a trip to Wales or finally factor Kirkistown into an itinerary. And make no apology for that either.

“AND WHEN YOU LOOK UP FROM THE TRACK, THERE’S AN EPIC VIEW ALL ROUND”