Brands Hatch, a Racetrack in a Bowl

A grassy Kent hollow first raced by cyclists became a Grand Prix circuit that shared the British race with Silverstone, and every lap follows the land.

Nature built the grandstand at Brands Hatch long before anyone laid the track. The name belongs to a grassy hollow at West Kingsdown in Kent, shaped like an amphitheater, where cyclists raced along farm tracks in the 1920s and motorcyclists soon followed. In 1950 the owners and the 500 Club laid tarmac for cars. The short circuit still lies wholly inside that bowl, so a spectator can see nearly all of it from one spot, and a 1960 extension that doubled the length carried the Grand Prix loop out into the woods beyond.

That loop follows every fold of the ground. Off the Brabham Straight the cars plunge into Paddock Hill Bend on a gradient of about 8 percent, climb to the hairpin at Druids and swoop down through Graham Hill Bend. Beyond the back straight they fall away through Pilgrim's Drop and Hawthorn Hill, then wind through the trees by Westfield and Dingle Dell before the blind curve named for Sheene. A realignment at Paddock in 1976 brought the lap to 2.614 miles. The corner names read like a roll call of the sport's heroes.

Kent first hosted the British Grand Prix in 1964, when Jim Clark won, and from then on the race alternated with Silverstone. Jo Siffert won in 1968 with a privately entered Lotus that had been completed in the paddock on the meeting's opening morning, cutting it fine even by racing standards. In 1976 James Hunt won the restarted race but was disqualified, and the victory passed to Niki Lauda. When a date fell vacant late in 1985, Brands Hatch filled it with the European Grand Prix, and Nigel Mansell took his first Grand Prix win. The final visit, in 1986, began with a first lap crash at Paddock in which Jacques Laffite broke both legs, ending his Formula 1 career. Mansell won the restarted race. After that the British Grand Prix stayed at Silverstone, which had the room and run off Brands Hatch lacked.

Of its 14 championship rounds from 1964 to 1986, twelve as the British Grand Prix and two as the European, Niki Lauda won three, more than anyone. It stays busy with national and international racing, though noise limits hold meetings on the full Grand Prix loop to a handful each year. Up in the bowl, the view is as good as it was when the cyclists came.

Every Grand Prix here

• 1986 British Grand Prix
• 1985 European Grand Prix
• 1984 British Grand Prix
• 1983 European Grand Prix
• 1982 British Grand Prix
• 1980 British Grand Prix
• 1978 British Grand Prix
• 1976 British Grand Prix
• 1974 British Grand Prix
• 1972 British Grand Prix
• 1970 British Grand Prix
• 1968 British Grand Prix
• 1966 British Grand Prix
• 1964 British Grand Prix