Arena Essex Banger Racing

For years I have been promising to take the two boys to watch the banger racing especially as we live so close to Essex Arena. I have very fond childhood memories of banger racing in Norfolk from watching Dad stripping out old cars in the front garden and preparing them for racing, to actually going to the races and listening to Status Quo music. Anyway last weekend we had a rare Sunday with no football, the sun was shining and there was racing scheduled at Arena Essex. So finally we got to go.

 

We had an absolutely great day out and pretty good value as well at £40 for a family ticket. There was something like 13 race which lasted from 1pm to around 5pm, however the gates opened to the public at 11am so that you could walk around the pits and look at some of the cars. The actual banger racing has changed a lot from what I remember as a kid and like most things these days its a bit of Health and Safety gone mad, but we still saw some spectacular racing, some good crashes and even a few cars rolling over.

 

The micro bangers were by far the best and some of the action here was absolutely savage. The first round had something like 30 cars and by the final destruction derby only about 11 made it back to the track and to be honest its a bit of a miracle and full credit to teams for getting the cars patched up and back out on the track.

 



 

On the pit walk we got to see the Arena Essex pace car that takes the winners around the track.

Joshua and Brandon with one of the bangers in the pits.

Brandon looking cool with the 999 car.

The Denace the Menace cars were probably the best painted cars, but they were not very menacing and didn't cross the finish line in any of the races.

All show and no go.......

Learning all the flags as we enter the race track.

Having a picnic in the sunshine whilst the cars tear around the track.

Lots of action in the Micro Bangers with cars getting spun and flipped.

We bumped in to some friends from Beavers and Cubs, so the kids all played together which was nice.

Holly getting a good view of the action from off the top of my shoulders.

The significance of this picture is that the Mini passing behind Joshua was driven by a racer called Josh King. If you zoom in on the picture you can see his name on the windowscreen.

Micro Bangers getting red flagged again as a car ends up on its side.

Holly enjoyed the racing but she did cover her ears for the first race as the noise caught her off guard.

Some of the Micro Bangers were unrecognisable after a few races yet somehow they still kept getting back out on the track!

I think this one as with many other bangers was just too far damaged and destined for the scrap heap!