by David Finlay (03 Jun 03)

Do you remember Black Wednesday? It was the day in September 1992 when the Conservative Government got itself into the most tremendous financial trouble, dithering about things like ERM and insurance rates.

Personally I wasn't paying too much attention, because I spent most of that day driving Vauxhall Lotus Carltons both on the road (about 600 miles) and round the Lotus test track at Hethel. International money matters were not really on my mind.

But it was a black day for me, too, because I had just heard the news that Graeme Wight Jnr had been involved in a road accident and was almost certainly going to be paralysed from the waist down.

To everyone who knew him, it was horrifying news. Graeme was just 21, and in two years of competing in hillclimbs he had already forged a reputation as a very quick (if slightly over-enthusiastic) driver. He was also well known as a charming guy with a friendly word for everyone he met. The idea of him spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair was too dreadful to contemplate. We would all have been relieved as well as delighted if we had known that in 2003 Graeme would be a double British Hillclimb Champion, and the recipient of many honours - including, most recently, the Jim Clark Award, presented with the backing of Ford by the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers.

At the time of his accident back in 1992, Graeme's competition car was a race-prepared but road-legal Hillman Imp. Its camshaft had broken a few days earlier, and he had fitted a new one. Out for a brief test run on the lanes near his home in Aberdeenshire, he realised on the approach to a tight corner that the brakes had failed. The car launched itself up a banking, flew through the air and crashed four-square into a field. Graeme, who had instinctively tensed up to such an extent that he bent the steering wheel in half, took the full force of the impact.

Despite The Devastating News

He was in hospital for ten weeks, which gave him a lot of time to think about getting back into a racing car even though he had been told he would probably never walk again. To general astonishment, he entered the 1993 Scottish Hillclimb Championship in a re-shelled version of the Imp, and although he wasn't walking too well his driving was, if anything, even better than before. He set new records all over the place and won his class in the championship.

Before the accident, Graeme had tried out his father's Pilbeam single-seater. Afterwards, the senior Wight (also called Graeme) was understandably concerned about his son's safety and preferred the idea of him driving something with a lot of structure round the cockpit. With the Imp sold, Graeme spent a couple of seasons in a Vision sports car (pictured left and below). The family team then switched to a newer Pilbeam, in which Graeme became Scottish champion in 1997, two years after marrying Sally.

The following year the Wights moved further afield and began contesting the two-litre class of the British Hillclimb Championship in the Pilbeam. But Graeme Jnr was beginning to have thoughts about a radically new kind of car. The British Championship has been going since 1947, and since then it has gone through several periods in which a certain type of car becomes fashionable and tends to do all the winning, largely because it takes a while for anyone to think of something different.

In the 1990s the favoured machines closely resembled Grand Prix cars, and actually used F1 engines. They were enormously powerful, of course, but they were also surprisingly bulky considering the twisty nature of a typical UK hillclimb course. Graeme turned the concept upside down in his head and, in 2000, took to the tracks in a car which was the best part of 200bhp shy of the opposition. Crucially, it was also much smaller and more nimble.

Enter An Ace Designer

The chassis was a Gould GR51. David Gould caused a major upset in the 1980s by building - in his own garage - a car which won the British Championship in the hands of Chris Cramer. He had his own ideas for a relatively small single-seater, and he showed Graeme a mock-up of it. Gould also had in mind the very engine which Graeme (after consulting with Neil Peters, who works for engine builder Geoff Richardson) had decided would be an ideal match for the new chassis concept.

This was the 2.5-litre V6 used by Opel in its German Touring Car Championship (DTM) Calibras. The DTM engine regulations at that time allowed for some pretty hairy units. As Graeme describes it, you could use any engine as long as it had the same cylinder and valve configuration as that in the production car and didn't exceed the class capacity limit; Opel's response was to send a lot of money in the direction of Cosworth, which effectively built one of its HB Grand Prix engines within the required format.

Private customers couldn't get access to the really fancy bits, but Graeme still had about 480bhp to play with (the figure fell in order to achieve a reasonable level of driveability, then rose again while the mid-range power was maintained).

The first year was difficult, but a warning flag was emphatically raised at Doune, the most intimidating venue on the UK mainland. For the first 1000 yards of the not-quite-mile-long track, you can't go off because there is no off for you to go. Stray from the 12-foot wide tarmac and you'll hit a barrier, or a stone wall, or conceivably a tree. There are no straights to speak of, so it's all incredibly technical. Outright hill records tend to stay for a long time, or be beaten by one or two tenths of a second.

Before the June meeting the record was held by Andy Priaulx, who subsequently became one of Honda's BTCC works drivers. Priaulx had set a time of 37.99 seconds which many observers reckoned would still stand a decade later. Graeme obliterated it. When the clocks stopped at 36.50 seconds, David Gould, watching a display board halfway up the hill, at first believed that the timing equipment had broken. But it hadn't. Graeme had broken the record by the largest margin the British Hillclimb Championship had ever seen. It was possibly the finest run in the history of the sport.

First Year As Champion

Other events that year were more harder work, and Graeme finished fourth in the Championship. But in 2001 he was the class of the field and became the first Scot ever to win the title. He repeated the feat in 2002 after making more history - he set the first ever sub-25 second time at Shelsley Walsh, Britain's longest-establised motorsport venue which has been holding events since 1905, and was presented with a special award by Sir Stirling Moss to commemorate the achievement.

He was also the first reigning champion to be invited to take part in the Goodwood Festival of Speed, in which he put in a demonstration run just days after Sally had given birth to twins Ellie and Charlie (a sister and brother for Caitlin, who was born four years previously). And his second championship success made him the first choice for the Jim Clark Memorial Award, given in the past to the likes of David Coulthard, Colin McRae and Jackie Stewart.

At the time of writing, Graeme is leading the Championship again, even though his car's status has shifted from radical to mainstream to something resembling old hat. Other, similar Goulds have been built, and by definition they are all more highly developed than Graeme's, since his car was the first of the series.

But it's beautifully driven, and the road accident perhaps has something to do with this. Graeme is still very quick, but he admits that he thinks about his driving more than he did when he started out with the Imp. "I think about the consequences of crashing," he says. "I'm not overdriving, basically. The accident was a big wake-up call. It was as if God was giving me a slap and telling me I wasn't bullet-proof. I have a healthy fear factor, which is a good thing to have as long as it doesn't take over. My biggest fear is that I might wake up one morning and not have fear any more."

Thinking It Through

As well as being superb behind the wheel, Graeme is one of the most technically analytical drivers I have ever known. He is always thinking of ways to improve the car's set-up - even, in fact especially, when he is actually on a run. Even though a run will always last less than a minute, and frequently less than half that time, he finds that "it feels like I've been in the car for an incredibly long time. I'm really quite conscious of my thoughts during runs."

For example, as the car reacts in a certain way through a certain section, Graeme will be working out whether he can improve it by altering the suspension or the aerodynamic set-up. While making this decision, he will also be thinking ahead to a similar section further up the road where he can study the car's behaviour again and confirm or reject the initial idea.

By the end of the run, when many drivers would find that their minds had gone blank after such intensive driving at up to 150mph, Graeme reckons that he may have as many as five new set-ups in mind. The problem then is to decide which of the five will work best and make the necessary adjustments before getting back in the car for his next run. I would be astonished to find more than half a dozen racing drivers in the world - including those currently in F1 - who can describe and influence their cars' behaviour to anything like this extent.

After the meeting is over, there is plenty more thinking time, since Graeme then has to spend anything up to eight hours trailering the car back home so that he can be working at The Ploughman (the family pub, just outside Aberdeen) on the Monday morning. Wednesday night is car night - once the kids are in bed, he and Sally will change brake pads, polish the bodywork and do all the other bits and pieces. Graeme says that this is when they have their quality time together. Working on the car gives them more of a chance to chat than sitting down in front of the telly.

With Sally involved to this extent, and with Graeme Snr still competing in the same car, this is clearly a family affair. It's also one of the most impressive amateur motorsport outfits I know of. The success gained so far is hugely deserved, and any future titles and awards will be too.

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