There is no need to proffer a history of Brooklands here — that story has been told by someone better qualified than me. Everyone knows what Brooklands is, thanks to WB, the Brooklands Society and the Museum which brings thousands of people to see it. Yet many who visit may not realise just how much of the world’s first racetrack still exists beyond the museum compound.

Today the bulk of Brooklands is an industrial estate, with factories and supermarkets inside and housing nibbling at the edges. But it is still enclosed by, defined by The Track – a concrete Coliseum where technology was tested and heroes made. Built only a few years after Victoria died, it’s been abandoned for twice as long as it was open; yet maybe three-quarters of it still stands. Some of it is invisible behind industrial units or dense foliage. Much of it is closed to the public. But its substantial construction has so far dissuaded developers from demolishing it — amazingly only the Members end is listed — and that’s our good fortune.

It’s an irony that Hugh Locke-King, the man who erected this Circus Maximus of motor racing, didn’t drive. This was his country estate (his house, now a college, stands to the north); yet he turned it over entirely to a new sport and a new industry, spent 1,150,000 (1,25m today), and ruined his health fighting battles over planning and local opposition. It was a stupendous engineering project. Stand by the Clubhouse and look towards the Members Hill. If the soaring 70ft of the Test Hill doesn’t impress you, look at the height of the cutting above the straight It dwarfs the huge hangar where bombers were once built. They removed half a hill to force this track through. Across the top sweeps the Members Banking, a tidal wave of concrete rearing over you.

Imagine the impact: the sudden bellow of the Birkin Bentley erupting from behind the hill at 130mph, an explosion of sound, the car in plan view way above your head. Remarkably, the 30ft-high wall, almost too steep to climb, is only some 6in thick. 200,000 tons of concrete went in to this steel-reinforced eggshell, 2.75 miles round, which aimed to be “safe at 120mph, and reasonably safe at higher speeds”; though Indianapolis and Montlhery followed its lead, Brooklands for years hosted the fastest racing in the world. At 143mph, John Cobb’s all-time lap record in the brutal Napier-Raikon wasn’t matched at the Brickyard until 1955, though long eclipsed at AVUS. Remember that its all-banked form was to give Britain an endurance testing facility to rival France or Italy; the fact that it spawned its own unique cars was a consequence of that. And since Brooklands behemoths were big, heavy and fast, we could not think of anything more appropriate to take to Weybridge than a brand-new Bentley Continental T.

With it perched under the Members Bridge, the banking seems to run out of sight both ways. In fact it cuts off abruptly at both ends. To the east, it was demolished to allow the Gallahers tobacco company to build its HQ; but don’t hiss too loudly, for a wartime workshop had already punctured it, and in return Gallahers leased the 30 most crucial acres to the Museum Trust, allowing the long-projected museum to become a reality. Then Gallahers blotted their copybook by removing the concrete from the only non-listed section of the Members Banking. Hiss here.

To the west, the huge concrete wall stops dead for physics, not finance. Here the track once leaped the meandering River Wey on the Hennebique Bridge, named after the company which built it. This was an Edwardian high-technology achievement: to follow the track’s line it had to be curved, concave and slope downhill. Only the new ferro-concrete could handle this complex form, and the result was in effect a monocoque 170ft long, where the track itself was the structure, supported only by concrete piles. It was the settling of these foundations which produced the infamous bump that caused the massive Outer Circuit cars to leave the ground as they careered round at 130mph or more, creating the archetypal Brooklands photograph — Birkin or Cobb off the deck in two tons of machinery.

But deterioration and the threat of collapse caused the bridge to be demolished in the ’60s, and now a grove of tall trees closes the vista. Right across the river, though, the circuit continues: you can drive along the potholed runway and pick it up where the banking eases down into the Railway Straight Stand with your back to the missing bridge and a broad apron of pink concrete stretches ahead; even though since WWII a hangar has blocked the straight, the line of it is obvious by the trees. Behind them runs the railway line – imagine sitting on the 11.15 as Parry Thomas careers past only yards away at three times your speed. The track is astonishingly wide – 100ft: it’s like the M1 without a central reservation. Plenty of room to keep out of Sir Malcolm’s way as you buzzed along at a foot-flat 69mph in your tuned Austin Seven.

Only a wire fence separates this point from the remains of the Finishing Straight in the museum complex, but completing our lap means driving round to the museum entrance once more. Fitting, because the entrance-way takes the Bentley along the most obvious section of the Campbell Circuit, a great serpentine slice out of the base of the Members Hill which led the cars round the back and left-handed onto the banking again. Above, on the hill, hundreds of spectators could sit in the grandstands looking down on the likes of Bira caning his ERA over the rough surface. If you weren’t part of the ‘in crowd’ in the Paddock, you would most likely find yourself on this elevated place, having entered the precinct through a tunnel under the Members Banking you can still peer inside the dank, gloomy burrow. Leading up from it, the track winds around the Members Hill to a little hamlet of buildings, shuttered and derelict. These were once a social centre, where you could take luncheon in the BARC members’ rooms and then settle in the stands looking over the circuit. Those stands are long gone, and some of the view, too after 90 years, the woods Locke-King felled have returned. But the Test Hill has preserved an avenue through the trees and what an outlook. Only from here can you absorb the vast scale of Brooklands.

Once highlighted by the gleaming belt of concrete, it is now the border of tall trees which leads the eye round this astonishing landmark. Despite the fringe of industrial development, the centre of the site remains largely empty, due to the risk of floods such as recently devastated the Museum. It was never good land, yet it beggars belief that this huge area should have been turned over to a vision by one prescient man. Down below, the Paddock looks much as it did. Despite wartime use and then aviation research, the Clubhouse has survived intact, as have many of the venerable timber sheds which once housed a variety of racing activity. Restored, the Campbell and ERA sheds look as they did when Sir Malcolm was building Bluebirds here and Humphrey Cook was trying to bring British racing cars centre stage. Wooden pit bays have been built to match the originals, and the Press Office is much as WB knew it. There’s one final relic to explore: north of the Clubhouse a road still dips down to the Entrance Tunnel. It’s blocked up now, but this once made a theatrical entry: you dived down under the Members Banking, then breasted the rise and the whole circuit came suddenly into view, throbbing with noise and smell. It must have been magical. Every day something was happening: testing and tuning never stopped, and at weekends it was a society venue to equal Ascot. Indeed it was strongly modelled on horse racing not only the separate Finishing Straight, but a Paddock where competitors would parade before the event, disc-topped finishing post, elaborate handicapping and, very early on, even personal colours for drivers, aping jockeys’ silks. And Brooklands would not have been the same without its gesticulating tic-tac men.