I was invited to be one of three South African motorsport icons competing against each other in Jaguar’s all-electric I-PACEs at the Hillclimb event in Knysna in May 2019. Mike Briggs, Shaun Watson-Smith and I put the 294kW and 696Nm high performance SUVs through their paces over the 1.9km Simola hill course over the weekend. This is what the event is all about:
The Knysna Hillclimb is a whole week of events, with lots happening in beautiful surroundings. Jaguar put on beautiful hospitality. It really is a world class lifestyle event on a par with a polo tournament or fashion festival, expensive cars and glamorous people. At the same time the extreme danger of motorsport adds a frisson of danger.
The race is extremely well organized, very fast paced. The circular route back means that cars are starting every half minute, so there’s much less waiting around than other hillclimbs. The course is well structured, there’s no way you can hurt a spectator, which allows you to really go for it.
You’re sitting in the pit lane talking to people and it feels like a fashion parade with all these beautifully dressed people around you. 10s later you’re getting a countdown and it’s time to go. It really makes it much harder to wind yourself up than in regular racing , where you have a warm-up lap followed by a long race. At the hillclimb the run is only around 40s, so it’s over almost before it’s started. You’re essentially racing against yourself. There’s no-one to measure yourself against visually so it’s a completely different mental vibe. My car did a 49.5, which is the equivalent of a Renault Megane broadly speaking. Pretty impressive.
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