Young racer turns to teaching
Scott Fraser’s skill and experience behind the wheel belie his mere four years in the driving seat. Caroline Brodie finds out why this young racing driver wants to become a fully fledged driving instructor
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THANKFULLY, not many of us can claim to have first stepped behind the steering wheel at the tender age of two, but that’s all the time it took Scott Fraser to work out that cars and driving were for him. A very early memory of sneaking into his auntie’s car and firing up the engine before being spotted and quickly removed is his first of being hooked on cars.
“That’s when it all started for me,” the 21-year-old driver recalled.
It was the beginning of a childhood in which motors were to play a central role.
Scott and his older brother, Iain, spent hours on end tinkering with cars, especially Audis, of which his father, Alastair Fraser – who is driver-training manager at Knockhill’s Centre for Driver Excellence – owned several, including a dark blue Quattro which was a favourite of his younger son.
During his teens, Scott spent every available weekend at Knockhill, where he caught the bug for racing.
“Quite a lot of people who work at Knockhill have got into racing for a while,” he said.
“To me, it always just seemed like great fun.”
And that fun paid off for him.
For the past two years running, he has won the Scottish XR2 Championship title, as well as the newcomer’s title in 2006.
On top of that, he has spent the past few years working alongside his father as an instructor at Knockhill, where he has shown hundreds of drivers how to make it round the track in one piece, as well as teaching the centre’s driver-training courses, which have been shown to reduce the risk of accidents by as much as 62% among those who have taken part.
But Scott now plans to turn his back on a job most young car enthusiasts can only dream of – and a successful stint on the racing track – to embark on a career which will put him at the front line of tutoring Scotland’s future young drivers.
“I just want to forward my career with driving and have more involvement in something I love doing.”
He may have an unconventional background for a driving instructor, but Scott strongly believes racing has made him more cautious than most about the potential dangers he faces each time he drives the more than 70-mile round trip from his home in Eaglesham, Renfrewshire, to work at Knockhill.
“I know what it feels like when you hit a soft tyre wall at 70mph,” he said.
“The initial impact is enough to destroy your car.
“Racing has really opened my eyes to that. When you see people flying about on the roads, you can see that they just don’t understand how dangerous it is. That’s a big problem.”
Scott is also well aware of the shocking statistics that show too many drivers are being killed on Scotland’s roads, and of the heartache suffered by victims’ families and friends. He has already seen several friends crash cars since they passed their tests.
“I have been really lucky,” he said.
“I have not known anyone who has been badly hurt, but my older brother had a friend who was killed.”
As a strong advocate of advanced driver training, he is getting behind the Press and Journal’s Young Driver of the Year campaign in the hope that young drivers can learn the valuable lessons which can save a life.
“There’s a time and a place for everything, and when you see people racing about in built-up areas where there are just so many things that can go wrong that it doesn’t bear thinking about, you know that’s not the time or the place.”
