Road America: Why America has the best circuits in the world

Seventeen years ago, when I wanted to see if my girlfriend was any good, I took her to Road America. The landmark that shares a name with this column: 14 corners, four miles long, opened in 1955, in the rolling green dairyland of Wisconsin.

The lady in question had been with me less than a year. She was smart and funny and wore vintage dresses to work. I wore jeans and trainers and considered myself also well-dressed and funny, which is to say, I was almost definitely neither of those things. Understandably everyone I knew quietly assumed dress lady would one day leave me for a helicopter pilot.

‘Why do you want me to see this place?’ she said, as we packed for the trip.

‘It’s my favourite.’

‘Why?’

‘It has everything?’

She shut the boot and raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not an answer.’

I thought for a moment. ‘There’s nowhere else like it?’

‘How many tracks does America have?’

‘I have no idea,’ I admitted. ‘Hundreds.’