You think Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team have contempt for caravans? You haven’t seen the guys at Rusper Raceway!

One ‘race’ during a two day meeting over the August Bank Holiday Weekend involved an annihilation of three caravans that had the crowd cheering and whooping on the banks of the track! Within a few laps, an old Vauxhall Astra had been driven right through the middle of one caravan, while another had been forcefully driven into the banking!

This is banger racing, or stock car racing for the prim and proper. You might have thought it had died a death, but you’d be wrong. You may not see it on the television as much as you did during stock car racing’s heyday in the Seventies and Eighties, but there’s still plenty of enthusiasm for the sport. But these are challenging times. Racing organisers must meet certain restrictions these days - and Old School rules are (some might say sadly) consigned to history.

Bits and pieces have been flying off old bangers at Rusper Raceway for nine years, but now a new promoter has taken on the lease of the land and has big ambitions. Trojan International already runs successful race tracks, the most notable being Ringwood. Now they are hoping to modernise facilities at Rusper and eventually attract national standard drivers to the track.

Craig Robinson, proprietor of Trojan International, told AAH: “We came here in the middle of last year and tried to help the last promoter in improving health and safety aspects at Rusper. Then we took on a new lease of two years and our plan is to upgrade the race track and bring the facilities into the 21st Century. You can’t just throw it all together and go and race like we all used to, as there is a lot of red tape and health and safety requirements.You’ve got make sure your drivers, the spectators and the marshalls are safe, so we have to improve all of this.

“You can’t just strip them out and turn up at the race track like you used to. It takes three or four days to prepare the cars now   as you need a roll cage. Twenty years ago it was a matter of kicking the windows out and away you go. I’m an Old School driver and we all love grass roots racing, but times change and things move on. We have to as well if we want to carry on racing. What we have done at Ringwood, we are trying to mirror here.”

The racing has only just started back up at Rusper - three events have so far been held - but Craig is hoping that more cars will be at Rusper once the regular seasons finish at other tracks. One problem is that there is a lack of drivers out there - with Rusper and other raceways such as Angmering trying to attract a diminishing number of cars and drivers.

The problem is not that people don’t enjoy smashing up cars any more, but the high price of scrap metal.
Some drivers do bring cars from scrap yards they may own or work at, but most are obtained through knocking on doors - literally drivers asking to take away your old car. Back in the day when you had to pay to get your car towed away, this offer was normally snapped up, but there’s big money in old junk these days.

Craig said: “ The cars are out there but they cost too much now because scrap is so high. Ten years ago they would give you £20 to take the car away, but now people know that they can take any old wreck up to the weigh bridge and pick up £150 for the scrap metal. It’s a shame, because ten years ago we were getting treble the amount of cars.”

On a more positive note, banger racing could be about to enjoy a resurgence. For people wanting to enjoy a form of racing, it remains the most affordable way (if you have a car then the race day licence is only £20) and the ‘kids go free’ days at other tracks are proving to be a big hit. Some of the children end up cheering drivers their own age, as in banger racing they start young. The junior rods - limited to 1000 cc cars, is for children aged 10 -16, and Rusper has recently had an 11-year-old behind the wheel of a car!

Also, media interest in the sport is increasing again, so maybe the good old days will return. Craig said: “Speedway died out for a while but has picked up again. Stock car racing took a dive through the 70s and 80s but is picking up too. With the upgrades we’reintending to do here we can now move it all on to the next level. I hope that one day we will be seeing 30 cars in races up here, rather than the handful you’ve seen today.

“For now, we’re going to run with rookies rather than the national bangers until we reach the right level, but we do intend to bring the national bangers to Rusper Raceway.”

For more details visit www.trojaninternational.co.uk