Carl H

Programme of events F2 Heat 1F1 Heat 1F2 Heat 2F1 Heat 2Heritage CarsF2 Heat 3F1 ConsolationF2 Heat 4Heritage CarsF2 Heat 5F1 FinalF2 ENGLISH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPF1 GN

Time is running out! Manchesters’ iconic Greyhound stadium hosts a high octane Championship spectacular for the Big League BriSCA F1 Stock Cars combined with an impressive line up of talent for the prestigious English Open Championship for BriSCA F2 Stock Cars, Europes’ biggest open wheel stock car class. More importantly are the milestones being celebrated making this a ‘must see’ event as the sport of ‘Stock Car Racing’ celebrates it’s 65th consecutive season since it’s inception at New Cross in London in 1954. To commemorate that we have the lovingly built original and replica Barn Stormer and Golden years cars from the 1950’s to 1970’s putting these machines through their paces ‘just as it used to be’ and a flavour of Manchester’s Heritage with the old Belle Vue operating from 1954 right through to 1988 before, 11 years later, the sport was regenerated here at Kirky Lane. If that wasn’t enough, 2019 is in more ways than one a big year for the sport here. Amazingly we celebrate 21 years of racing right here at Kirkmanshulme Lane. The Greyhound stadium was built in 1926 for as the first ever Greyhound facility ever in the UK and in 1927 saw the first year of the World famous Belle Vue Aces Speedway team. Check out the understand bar for a huge array of heritage photos and montages from the era to date! More poignant that really does mean ‘catch it while you can’ is a battle to save the stadium currently from the hands of housing developers which, if we lose, sadly could mean racing ends as soon as then end of this year. No better reason than pay us a visit and the justification being it doesn’t get much bigger than this! Sharing the bill today are both of the UK’s top short oval stock car classes. Time is literally running out for World Qualification for the BIG LEAGUE BriSCA F1 Stock Cars – 7 litre oval racing, full contact, brute horsepower machines. Big wings, huge bumpers, giant characters and ‘balls of steel’ as they battle through a series of heats before the feature event Grand Final and today marks the absolutely last chance to secure points to qualify for the next stage of the Road to Gold in Norfolk in September! What follows is the ‘cut’ for the two World Semis’ the first at Sheffield early August. A full grid of BriSCA F1’s is expected, the best of 2019 to do battle. There is also Startrax season long Championship in progress. BriSCA F2 Stock Car Racing sees one of the seasons major Championships on offer, the English Open Championship and already close on 50 cars are entered, some 3 weeks before the event and nearly all the UK’s top drivers and exponents of the ‘loose’ stuff! Big grids of cars every race, full contact and a loose surface provides three and four abreast racing and like the F1’s bumpers back and front to move the opposition. A fast paced series of five qualifying heats will see the top 34 cars [ approx. ] make the grid for the Final – a huge field for the tight, challenging and technical Kirkmanshulme Lane shaleway! This is a fantastic family event, come and savour the great comraderie and atmosphere – We have great all weather facilities including a 2000+ all seater, glazed and heated raceview Grandstand at no extra charge – you can view in comfort and with full facilities to enjoy including ‘TV’s’, licensed bars and fast food offerings. We also have covered stands and terracing plus high level unrivalled viewing from turns 3 & 4! You can also get up close to the racing and visit the cars and stars in the pit area, take your camera phone and we are child friendly – just get a close up of these awesome machines! This really is an event not to be missed, racing starts at 3.30.pm and should finish around 7.pm

Sunday 30th June @ 3.30.pm - Belle Vue Greyhound Stadium, Manchester! If you have never been to Belle Vue before, only interested in BriSCA or indulge nostalgia THIS is the one for you! The whole future of the iconic venue lies in the hands of the developers and Manchester City Council, we have played our part in 'objecting' in every legal way possible to retain the site and, currently we sit awaiting the councils' evaluation of the developers responses whereafter we can respond. REALITY CHECK - There are some dramatic reasons to choose June 30th to be at the 'Vue'! Startrax & BSCDA are working closely and hard to ensure one of the biggest grids at Kirky Lane for the last BriSCA F1 Stock Car Racing World Qualifier! Over 40 are targeted - Hopefully 6 great F1 races1 Huge work has gone into the 2019 ENGLISH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP and as we write 50 are entered including World Champion Gordon Moodie! Six pulsating races Belle Vue Greyhound Stadium celebrates 21 years of Oval racing from May 1999 to June 2019 - and we see demonstrations from the Heritage F1's from the era and beyond, not seen since 2004 - A live insight into the Golden era of Stock Car Racing We celebrate 65 years of Stock Car Racing in the UK If none of those are sufficient, we need your support AND the clock is ticking, do not take it for granted this spectacle will be around in MANCHESTER in 2020 - Support it whilst you can!

F1 WCQR plus F2 English Open Championship Gates open 2.pm Heritage Cars at 3.15pm First race 3.30pm Adults £18 Senor Citizen £16 Child 10 – 15 £7 Accompanied Children Under 10 Free of Charge Family Ticket 2 Adults + 2 children aged 10-15 £40 Proof of age may be required Raceday magazine £2

I think that would have been Opposite Lock website, or possibly Michael's F1 Stock Car Page.

Carl do you have any stats from back then, number of meetings, most successful driver, shale/tarmac split, horse power …..??!! Yes, I'll see if I can dig them out at the weekend. They're on papyrus scrolls in the attic. Although they were all 1 horse power, obviously.

Report and pictures.... https://factoruk.com/2019/06/19/brisca-f1-motorsports-game-of-thrones/ https://factoruk.com/2019/06/19/brisca-f1-motorsports-game-of-thrones/

Press release from Spedeworth Foxhall Heath Stadium, Ipswich – Saturday 22nd June Meeting Preview. MORE THUNDER EXPECTED SATURDAY NIGHT! It’s one of the meetings everyone’s been looking forward to for months! Everyone’s been buzzing about it and it’s almost here, the 2019 Angie Rowe Thunder 500 Meeting at Foxhall Heath Stadium, Ipswich for a very special action packed race meeting in the ‘Foxhall Bowl’. This coming Saturday we remember a lovely lady who played such a major part in the organisation and growth of National Hot Rods over a number of years as we play host to an absolute feast of top class Stadium Motorsport. As ever, the National Hot Rods are in town for their annual ‘shake down’ in preparation for their World Championship in an incredible fortnights time, and we also have the mighty all action, and no holds barred Brisca F1 Stock Cars and National Ministox to make for an evening at Foxhall the whole Family simply won’t forget! The National Hot Rods are fresh from their English World Championship Series Finale at Aldershot a fortnight ago which saw the Series concluded with the title going to Chris Haird from Scotland’s Rob McDonald and Jason Kew. This week, there’s no World Qualifying points, it’s all about remembering Angie and the massive contribution she made to National Hot Rod Racing so it’s all about prestige, setting a marker, dialling the car in, claiming that perfect set up and testing the Foxhall tarmac in readiness for the World Championship and Spedeweekend! Don’t forget National Hot Rod Fans, the 2018 Championship of the World and Spedeweekend is on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th July and is looming quickly and tickets are selling fast too so be sure to purchase yours asap to save disappointment. The mighty Brisca F1 Stock Cars are always a massive hit, literally, when they pay their once yearly visit to Foxhall on a track where they can unleash some of the immense power of their Chevrolet V8 Engines. It’s a World Championship Qualifier and F1 racing on Tarmac is always fast and frantic, new British Champion Tom Harris is grabbing all the headlines as is Matt Newson, and they in turn will be challenged by ‘Crowd Pleasers’ Frankie Wainman Junior, Harry Steward, Lee Fairhurst, Mark and Finn Sergeant, Daz Kitson and Russ Cooper - there’s so many quality Drivers in the Formula right now chasing for that chequered flag. The mighty Brisca F1 European Championship and Spedeweekend takes place on the Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th July at the now Shale surfaced Northampton International Raceway too and that’s another great weekend to pencil into your Diaries! No doubt this World Qualifying Meeting will be another fast, loud and hard – hitting meeting not to miss! To complete our Motorsport feast, we have the National Ministox appearing featuring the rising future stars of Oval Racing! The National Ministox always fly around Ipswich and are one of the most competitive Formulas on the ovals so make sure you don’t miss their races! This meeting they are racing for their 2019 Golden Helmet and National Championship Qualification. Please take time to visit the ‘Dave’s Graphics and Chris Berry Photography’ Trackshop Superstore, where you can purchase your Full Colour Programmes and copy of the brand new June Issue of full colour Wheelspin Magazine, Spedeworth / Incarace Merchandise and the amazing all action photos from Chris Berry. Racing starts at the usual time of 6:30pm and turnstiles open at 5.00pm. If you haven’t been to our Foxhall Heath Stadium before then this meeting is well worth a trip not just for the racing but to see the superb facilities which are now available. We have two fully seated grandstands along the back straight which can hold several thousand people and offer excellent elevated views of the racing, plus a covered Grandstand on the Home Straight. Wherever you choose to sit in the grandstands you can see all the action around the Ipswich raceway. We have a grandstand for those who are disabled or have special needs on the Kent Cams bend and our renowned catering facilities, - which offer some of the best Stadium food in the country, - are accredited with a five star Hygiene Rating. We also have elevated VIP Hospitality units which include a VIP box and balcony which provide uninterrupted views of the racing. We often have one or two units for hire for at meetings for Corporate, Group and Children’s Birthdays, contact us on 07947 509390 for more details if you wish to hire one of these great facilities. We also have toilet blocks including baby changing and disabled facilities. A Saturday night at Foxhall is ‘The’ place to be with the family, see the race action under floodlights whilst you soak up the atmosphere under our blue neon terracing lights – give the takeaway a miss, set the TV to record, enjoy one of ‘Fraser’s Specials from the Diner’ and let Spedeworth/Incarace Motorsports give you a spectacular night of racing action and facilities at Foxhall Stadium! If you enjoy your racing with us, why not treat a Friend to a night at the racing with one of our Experience Vouchers as a perfect Gift for that special occasion. Contact us on 01252 322920 for more details. Come and join us Saturday night and let Spedeworth Motorsports present to you a racing spectacle that will be a showcase in the memory for many years to come! THIS IS ONE MEETING NOT TO MISS AT FOXHALL IN 2019, SEE YOU THERE!

Booking list as of this morning. 5 Charlie Sworder 11 Neil Scriven 12 Michael Scriven 13 Kelvin Hassell 16 Mat Newson 37 Chris Cowley 48 Shaun Webster 84 Tom Harris 120 Casey Englestone 124 Kyle Gray 126 Harry Steward 147 Eddie Collins 164 John Fortune 166 Bobby Griffin 172 Micky Randell 175 Karl Hawkins 197 Ryan Harrison 217 Lee Fairhurst 300 Paul Carter 325 Richard Davies 326 Mark Sargent 346 Ashley England 415 Russell Cooper 422 Ben Riley 451 Martin Spiers 464 Luke Davidson 501 George Elwell 515 Frankie Wainman 526 Finlay Sargent 532 Daz Kitson 543 Drew Lammas

A bit more British Championship / Hednesford trivia from the meeting programme... This will be was the 62nd British Championship and the 21st time it has been held on tarmac. Although it's now usually known as the British Championship, the title on the trophy is British Drivers Championship. The British is a joint venture between the promoters and the drivers association. The championship was not held in 1971 or 1977 because of disagreements over where to hold it. The first five British Championships were held at the magnificent West Ham Stadium in East London. Built in 1928 for greyhound racing, it also hosted speedway and stock car racing, and had a capacity of 100,000. The British has been staged at 19 different tracks. Hednesford Raceway is at the end of Reservoir Road, and is on the site of an ill-fated reservoir built in the 1870s. It collapsed in 1887 and was abandoned in 1930. A motor racing circuit was built in 1952. Coventry has staged the most British Championships, with 12, followed by the original Belle Vue (8), West Ham (6), and Long Eaton and Skegness (5 each). The British had a different winner every year until 1983, when Len Wolfenden became the first driver to successfully defend the title. Two of today's entrants, Frankie Wainman Jnr and Paul Harrison, have won 13 British titles between them - more than all other current drivers put together. Bradford is the only track to have held the British Championship on both shale and tarmac. Hednesford is one of the oldest stock car tracks in the UK. The first meeting took place on 29th August 1954 and the winner is listed as "Tatter Meadway". That wasn't actually the driver's name, but the name given to the car by its owner, the Meadway Motor Spares company. They also owned Wrecker Meadway. It is thought that several different drivers raced the cars under these names. In 1962, Hednesford Raceway was taken over by Bill Morris, who owned Meadway Motor Spares. Bill, and later son Martin, ran the raceway for over 30 years. Frankie Wainman Jnr has won the most British titles with 9 victories to date, including four consecutive wins in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. There have been 7 major championships held here at Hednesford. The World in 1988, 1991, 1995, and 2001; the British in 1990; and the European in 1989 and 1992. John Lund won all of them apart from the 2001 World Final. The 1990 British was dominated by two drivers - Chris Elwell and John Lund. Of the 8 heats, Elwell won 3 and Lund won 2, and with them on the front row of the final it looked like it was going to be a straight fight for the title between these two. However, at the start of the race, Lund hammered Elwell straight into the fence on the first bend. The start/finish line at Hednesford was originally on the opposite side. It was moved as part of the track renovations after the main grandstand burned down in 1990. Doug Harvey, the 1960 British Champion, was American. He was in the US Air Force and raced while stationed in the UK. Rumour had it that the USAF unwittingly supplied a lot of his equipment! Gerald Taylor's 1972 victory at Long Eaton is notable for two reasons. He was a yellow top and is the lowest graded winner, and he won by the shortest margin - about half a car length. Mark Gilbank has the most runner-up places without winning. He came second in 2004, 2005, and 2018. The East and West Bend stands at Hednesford were built as part of a plan for a large American style D-shaped oval, which was later abandoned. This is why the stands do not fully align with the current track.

Adnmission prices Adults £18 Seniors (65+) £16 Children (5-14 yrs) £7 Programme £2 Car park £2 E-tickets available from the Spedeworth website https://7c4ae5.67.ekm.shop/22nd-june-2019-102-c.asp

Current booking list 5 Charlie Sworder 11 Neil Scriven 12 Michael Scriven 13 Kelvin Hassell 16 Mat Newson 37 Chris Cowley 43 Adam Bamford 48 Shaun Webster 70 Aaron Leach 84 Tom Harris 124 Kyle Gray 126 Harry Steward 147 Eddie Collins 164 John Fortune 166 Bobby Griffin 172 Micky Randell 175 Karl Hawkins 300 Paul Carter 326 Mark Sargent 415 Russell Cooper 422 Ben Riley 464 Luke Davidson 501 George Elwell 515 Frankie Wainman Jnr 526 Finn Sargent 532 Daz Kitson 543 Drew Lammas

9am

Info from Incarace. BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIP SUNDAY! If anyone has any questions in regards to Sundays British Championship, let us know in the comments and we will do our best to answer them. Heres some FAQ answered about the event for those of you who don't visit the Raceway regularly:- - ADMISSION - All admission payments are on the day, at the Turnstiles. The prices are as follows. (Cash & Card accepted) General Admission £22.00 Concession : 65 years & Over £20.00 Concession : Children (8-15yrs) £8.00 Accompanied Children under 8yrs FREE Inside Parking £10.00 Programme £2.00 Gates open 9am - PARKING - Inside Parking is available on first come first served basis (at a cost of £10.00) and no spaces can be reserved. Please use the middle lane at the Point on the approach road and be prepared to pay your admission fees to our Gate Staff. The main parking area is outside the Raceway on the Chase Common and once this is full parking is in the Town Car Parks. Please be mindful of local residents if you park on the roads surrounding the Raceway - we are working with the local authorities to maintain a good relationship to allow racing to continue - dont be inconsiderate and put this in jeopardy! NO camping is permitted on the Chase Common as is agreed with the Council due to its National Park status. AND EVERYTHING ELSE! The event starts with the first race at 1:00pm. You can take your own food and drinks in but refreshments are available around the Raceway throughout the day from the catering outlets and licensed bars. Dogs are welcome providing they are kept on a lead at all times. There are two large covered grandstands meaning you can keep sheltered whatever the weather - rain or shine! Everyone can access the Pit Area, however children must be supervised at all times. The track location is Hednesford Hills Raceway, Reservoir Road, Hednesford, Cannock, Staffordshire, WS12 1BF. We want to make this a day to remember, so be sure to add to the atmosphere by shouting for your favourite drivers!

Two time British Champion Lee Fairhurst (217) is hoping for a third win this Sunday in the British Championship. Lee has been racing the Daniel Van Spijker car for some time which has proven to be quick but last weekend saw him bring his own World Championship winning car out for the first time in quite a while. The car has been refurbished and has been sat on display at the University of Bolton since the beginning of the year Can Lee make it three come Sunday evening? Which car will he be in? Get down to Hednesford Hills Raceway to witness the speed and the action first hand for only the second time in this championship's history.

F1 World Qualifying Round plus National Ministox and National Hot Rods Start time 6.30pm Adults £18 Seniors (65+) £16 Children (5-14 yrs) £7 Programme £2 Car park £2

More trivia.... The very first British was called the Stock Car Drivers Championship of Gt Britain. The format was 3 heats, Consolation, Final. The top 60 drivers were split across the 3 heats. The heat grids were drawn out before the meeting. Another 13 drivers booked to race, and they went straight to the Consolation. The winner, 14 Wilf Davies, retired at the end of the season and did not defend his title.

Updates since that was published. Roger's Oval Racing Pages and Rolling Start closed down in 2017 (I think). F1stockcars.com closed last month after a lengthy legal dispute over the "F1" logo. A new owner was found for briscaf1stox.co.uk but nothing ever materialised from them. I started my Since 1954 project to help fill the void. A lot of info was kindly provided by Paul. He later took briscaf1stox back from the new owner and relaunched it. By the start of the 2019 season, most F1 promoters had got to grips with the internet, and the BSCDA had launced their PR team to improve their presence on social media.

TIMELINE OF IMPORTANT THINGS THAT HAPPENED ~780BC The first full contact vehicle racing - horse & chariot events in the Olympics. According to the history books, these were often brutal events, so perhaps fortunately there were no internet forums back then 1769 First motor car. Powered by a steam engine. It was quicker to get out and run. 1822 Charles Babbage designed the Difference Engine, the first ever programmable computer. It was entirely mechanical - electrical computers were a century away. 1894 First ever offical motor race 1930s First electronic computers 1952 Auto Rodeo in Belgium - old road cars racing in a field 1953 Oval racing takes place in France, inspired by Belgian Auto Rodeo. 1954 First ever stock car meeting in the UK. New Cross Stadium, London, on Good Friday. Late 1950s First attempts at connecting computers together. Problematic and unreliable. 1969 Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) pioneers the use of packet switching - sending the data small chunks at a time, instead of all at once. 1969 Unix operating system. Today, all Android and Apple products, at least 90% of all web servers, the computer that produces the F1stockcars.com Points & Stats Microsite, and literally billions of devices from handheld GPS units to Pixar's CGI Studios, all run on systems either derived from or inspired by Unix. 1970s Networked computers become widespread throughout academia and the military. 1971 First email to be sent over a network (rather than to another user on the same system) and hence use the @ symbol in the email address. A specific programme for emailing, with useful features like "Reply" and "Forward", did not appear until 1975. 1978 Bulletin Board System – a sort of electronic notice board, and the ancestor of forums and social media. 1983 With lots of different networks in use, all incompatible with each other, the US Department of Defense, by now the main user, decides that standardisation is necessary, and decrees that all networks must use the TCP/IP protocol. This is the beginning of the internet as it exists today. 1984 Domain Name Service allowed hosts to be identified by a unique name, instead of numerical address. 1985 First ever domain name registered. www.symbolics.com 1989 First web browser, and the beginnings of the world wide web. 1994 Windows95 - the first home editions did not include networking capability, as Microsoft thought that home users wouldn't be all that interested in the internet! 1995 The internet begins to become mainstream. 1997 First website to feature stock car racing - Roger's Oval Racing Pages 1999 First BriSCA F1 specific website - Mike's F1 Stock Car Pages. Later featured the first ever F1 forum. 2000 Opposite Lock website, plus loads of others. 2000 Skegness on Wednesday 2nd August becomes the first ever F1 meeting to be discussed online. 2000 Belle Vue on Sunday 28th August is the first ever F1 meeting to have the results online the same day, and also the first F1 meeting to have an online meeting report. 2001 Hednesford on Sunday 14th April is the first ever F1 meeting to have the results texted from the track and published on the internet. 2003 Wimbledon on Sunday 13th April is the first ever F1 meeting to have results available direct from the track as the meeting took place (via an email service). 2003 Stoxnet goes live on June 11th. 2004 Live results from meetings on Stoxnet. 2004 The Internet Fans Challenge Trophy takes place at Belle Vue on Monday 30th August, becoming the first ever race organised by and funded by fans via the internet. 2005 Hard And Fast website launches. 2006 Points tables added to Hard And Fast, and viewing figures treble. 2006 The first Under 25 Championship is held on Monday 28th August, organised entirely on Stoxnet. 2007 Allstox forum launches as an alternative to Stoxnet. 2009 F1stockcars.com is launched. 2010 briscaf1stox.co.uk goes online, and begins the task of documenting every single race, meeting, track, and driver, ever. Before long it is regarded as the definitive online reference for BriSCA F1.

“There were a few problems, but over the next couple of years Kevin ironed out all the issues and the site became stable and informative. All I had to do was keep it updated! The hardest part was adding the drivers and results from 1955 and 1956, as driver numbers were not set to specific drivers until 1957, and the results were mainly surnames or nicknames! The database only allows for one number per driver per year, and each promotion had a different numbering system, so for drivers that had used more than one number in those years, I had a decision to make! Eventually they were all finalised, but the 1954 results still remain a problem and stops the website from being complete.” “In the meantime Granville was supplying me with endless photos from his vast collection. I’d travel the 120 miles to his home, spend six hours scanning pictures whilst drinking endless brews and then make the 120 mile trip home again. Granville also had a huge collection of programmes and magazines which aided with the championships and other information. And also a lot of current drivers and ex drivers, promoters, and fans, all contacted me with a host of information, as well as photos and memorabilia. The influx was tremendous at the start, but over the last few years it has dwindled to the point of nothing.” Unfortunately, Paul’s enthusiasm has also dwindled. “The website has grown beyond my expectations, but without the input from people like Granville, and the lack of time for Kevin to program the site, it has become stale. I had plenty of ideas what I would like to add and do with the site, but with no-one assisting I lost major interest” Sadly, Granville passed away late in 2015. “I decided 2016 would be the last year I would update the site. I'll pay for the hosting of the site for 2017, but after that, who knows? “ “The website often hits its monthly bandwidth limit of 15Gb, and we thought 1Gb would be enough when we started, so the website certainly gets plenty of views. However, after 10 years of countless dedicated hours, lots of blood, sweat, and tears, and funds for the hosting fees, it could be that 2017 sees the final curtain” It would be a great shame and a tremendous loss if the site was to close down, but maybe, just maybe, a group of volunteers could take over and keep it alive. But the site is of significance for another reason. Until John Sargent's SargeTech appeared in early 2016, BriSCA F1 Stox was the newest fan-produced F1 site on the internet, and it had been around for six years. From the boom at the turn of the century, when the net itself was new and fresh and exciting, there are now less than a dozen websites about F1 stock cars. Perhaps the key point is that there is hardly any overlap; they all offer something different. I’ve heard suggestions that websites themselves are now old hat, and social media is the thing. While there’s no denying that there’s a lot of stuff about stock cars on FaceBook and Twitter, there’s also no denying that the quality of it is very variable indeed. Stoxnet currently has an average of 11,500 different visitors every day, so maybe there’s life in the old dog yet. One thing seems certain though. As long as there is F1 Stock Car Racing, there will be F1 Stock Cars on the internet.

But there was another website that arrived on the scene after F1stockcars.com. Launched in 2010 and now regarded as the definitive reference for BriSCA F1, Paul Broderick's briscaf1stox.co.uk now documents every track, meeting, race, and driver, ever. It’s a truly amazing piece of work. If I’m honest, I’m maybe just a tiny bit jealous that I didn’t think of doing it myself. Then again, I’m also glad that I didn’t try to do it myself either! It was a massive undertaking, as Paul explains. “In 2006 or 2007, someone started a thread on Stoxnet asking which number has had the most drivers associated with it, another asked about drivers called Harrison, and this lead to thread whereby you started at number 1 and named a driver, then 2, then 3, and so on. I realised that there was very little information on the web regarding F1 Stock Cars. I had a vast array of stock car things from my nearly 40 years of following the sport, like programmes, magazines, photos, and general memorabilia. With all this information to hand, I decided to see if I could put something together which could display it all” “My first idea was to start with numbers 1-500ish and add names to those numbers creating a huge long list. From that I would add information and pictures to each driver, to create an individual driver profile. Once the drivers were sorted, I could move on to other areas, such as championships.” “I purchased a domain name www.briscaf1stoxpics.com and started work. It took several months but when I had exhausted all my information the website was launched in July 2007, just before the European at Northampton. Comments started to roll in, mainly positive ones, but it did spark an interest in one person, Nigel Anderson. He thought the concept was a good one and offered me something that would take it to the next level – all the meeting results from 1954 to the present time. WOW!” “This was an excellent gesture, but one that threw up all kinds of problems... how do I display them, how do I get them onto the website, do I have enough time in my life! Fortunately I was able to manipulate the results into a workable display for the website, but it did take over six months to do. I finally uploaded the 1957 to 2007 results to the website and it made a huge difference. Now all I needed was to be able to link the drivers to the results and to the Championships, but that came much later... three years later!” “I found I needed more information, and one person came forward with vital knowledge and also more people to contact. That person was Barry Tempest. Barry helped me out with many things, then he did the one thing that proved the turning point in my website’s history – he introduced me to Granville Holmes. From this point on, I knew that I was destined to create a BriSCA F1 Stock Car website that would be like no other. Granville first gave me a definitive list of drivers, some 30-40 pages thick of every driver who had raced, under what number and what years. Coupled together with Keith Barber’s and Malc Aylott’s books, I had enough information to make the site complete. But did I have enough time?” “This is when I enlisted the help of Kevin Sharp, who was a long-time friend and also my boss for the previous 10 years. Kevin put all the data into a database, and programmed the website to find and display all kinds of information from it. This opened up all kinds of possibilities, but it finally did allow me to link the drivers to the results, to the championships and much more.” “Kevin worked long and hard at setting up the new website, taking care over the presentation, the feel, the accessibility and the internal workings. I was busy inputting all the information into the database, as well as coming up with all new ideas on what to display. This whole process took nearly 10 months to complete and with our website host Daniel’s expertise, we were finally ready to launch the site on 23rd December 2010 as www.briscaf1stox.co.uk”

Hard And Fast lasted for four seasons before I decided to shut it down at the end of 2008. Apart from one photo that I blagged from Colin, it was entirely all my own work, and I was rather pleased with it. But it wasn't going to last forever; I no longer had the time to do it properly. My baby daughter was due early 2009, plus I'd been approached about writing the occasional piece for StoxWorld magazine. Sadly, that never materialised as it ceased publication. So when I was asked if I'd like to get involved with a brand new F1 website for the 2009 season, to be honest I wasn't all that keen. That site was F1stockcars.com and was the brain child of web developer and stox mega-fan Ade Williams. By this time, the official organisations had managed to cobble together some websites, but they were terminally out of date in every sense. Ade put the basic shell of F1stockcars.com together, with some example content, and offered it to BriSCA, free of charge, no strings attached. They turned him down flat. Rather than just bin it, Ade then approached livewire Steve "Waz" Cording, who had made the Fans Tyre Fund a massive success. Steve and partner Ailsa agreed to take on the site, and contacted a selection of well balanced fans and asked them to contribute in any way they could. Quite a few took up the challenge, providing meeting reports, photos, and other features. I was asked about using the points tables from Hard And Fast, and as they weren't exactly a massive effort, I said yes. With some artistic input from Ade, the various tables were made to look as good as the rest of the site, and the whole thing named (not by me!) the F1stockcars.com Points & Statistics Microsite. Over time, I added more and more statistics... in hindsight, I probably got a bit carried away! I recently ran a code analysis tool (Google "sloccount" if you're interested) and found that that "little computer program" is now 42,000 lines of executable code, and at the current industry average rates, the cost for a professional software company to develop it from scratch would be well over a million quid! "Myself and Ailsa worked quite extensively in expanding the site" says Steve. "It was a huge piece of work and very costly in time. Around the time of Gears & Tears, the hit rate went through the roof." But it took its toll. "Towards the end of 2012 I was burnt out with it, and had moved onto other forms of racing entertainment where I could once again enjoy just being an unknown paying spectator. I met some amazing people and built up good relationships with drivers, officials, and some promoters thanks to F1 dot com, and would not change those good times. But on the flip side, things got personal over something I was doing for free, and I eventually walked away. I am very proud of what we as a team achieved with the F1 site and the reporting of facts, not rumour, approach." I'd previously stood in for a few weeks while Steve and Ailsa had been on holiday, and I took over full time for the 2013 and 2014 seasons, before handing it all over to Rhosanna Jenkins for the 2015 season. Rhosanna had some fresh ideas, including getting "proper writer" Scott Reeves involved. Scott had already published numerous sports books, including some on stock car racing, and in late 2016 he proposed another one.... this one!

Somewhat ironically, just as the website fad had passed, the first proper content management systems arrived. These took care of the technical bits of websites, and adding a new article to your site was as simple as making a post on a forum. There weren't many websites still alive by this point, so I thought I'd start my own. I called it Hard And Fast, which I thought seemed like a decent description of F1 stock car racing (apparently it also has slightly rude connotations, which I was oblivious to - honest!) and it went live just before the 2005 season. It featured meeting reports and some fairly amateurish photos from every meeting I went to, plus occasional other features, including a big and very comprehensive article on the racing career of 207 Alan Garmston, who lived near me. The 90 minute interview took me about three months to type out and format... no wonder I never attempted anything similar again! My brother and I had got to know Dave Russo and his team "The 49ers" when I went round to the workshop to do a feature on the new car for Opposite Lock, and we ended as occasional passengers in the truck, and helpers/hinderers at the track. On the way home, there would be the usual forensic analysis of the results to work out what points he'd scored (assuming he hadn't smashed the car up!). At work one day, I had the thought that I could do it easier with a little computer program. So I wrote one. All it did was display each race in turn and ask for Dave's position to be typed in. It then gave the points for each race and a total. It didn't take long before I decided typing in the places was tedious, so I reworked the program so that I just pasted the results in from Stoxnet, and it picked out Dave's places by itself. From there, it wasn't much more of a leap to work out the points for every driver at the meeting, and then I took it a stage further and worked out the points for every driver from every meeting that season. Putting it all into points order seemed the next logical step. I thought that an up-to-date points chart, albeit unofficial, might be of interest to others, so I added it to Hard And Fast for the 2006 season. It wasn't long before the site's viewing figures had rocketed, with the points tables getting well over treble the number of hits of the rest of the site. They took me less than ten minutes per meeting to compile, and were much more popular than my meeting reports and features, which took hours!

Another thing that arrived in 2003 was Stoxnet. The Opposite Lock site had added a forum the year before but it turned out that the rapidly growing user base didn't always get on with one another, and Stoxnet was set up as an alternative. Fast forward to 2007 and it turned out that the rapidly growing user base didn't always get on with one another, and the Allstox forum was set up as an alternative... the pattern would continue into the age of Facebook. If there’s one thing that the internet has excelled at, it’s getting stock car fans to fall out with each other. While some users were occasionally unhappy, upset, or angry about things on the internet, the establishment varied from total indifference to outright contempt. Neither the individual promoters, nor BriSCA as a whole, had any kind of online presence at this time, and had no interest in doing so. On the other hand, the printed media, mainly The Whistleblower's column in Stock Car mag, plus quite a few other people writing in meeting programmes, were avid readers of the internet and took great delight in dissecting any online stox content and dismissing it as, for example, the “pointless ramblings” of “clueless amateurs”. Before he came up with Stoxnet, Daniel O'Neill had the idea of a "live" results service. This was in the form of an email system. Interested users could sign up to a mailing list, and would receive emails with almost up to the minute results and news, although photos were beyond the technology of the time. This needed someone trackside with a 3G mobile phone. Daniel did the first one from Wimbledon in April 2003. I think there were a couple of other people involved, but the majority of emails were sent by myself from a Nokia 3510i, which was one of the first phones to have a colour screen! This was well before smartphones; posting directly onto the net from a phone just wasn't possible, but emailing was do-able, most of the time, if you had enough patience and luck. Looking back now, I don't know why we didn't just send a text message to someone who would post onto the forum! Someone eventually did think of that, and for the 2004 season, results and other snippets of info would appear on Stoxnet as the meeting was taking place. The first ever results team was Ales texting and Pizzastud posting. Those were their usernames: Pizzastud was Jane Redford, wife of Pete, and hence "Pete's a stud" (!), and Ales was Ailsa Haigh - more of her later! He may or may not have been a stud, that's a story for an altogether different book, but Pete Redford was the first to use the new-found power of the internet to bring fans together in the form of a fan-funded race. Fans donated towards the prize fund and could then nominate a lower grade driver for entry into the race. It was eventually named the Internet Fans Challenge Trophy, the first of which took place at the Golden Jubilee Celebration meeting at Belle Vue on Monday 30th August 2004, and won by Steve Cayzer. This was followed later in the year by a Ladies Charity Race, organised by Kay Blackburn, and again making full use of the internet for publicity, and raising a load of cash for charity in the process. A couple of years later, the Under 25 Championship was devised by the late, great, Dave Leonard, with a prize schedule consisting of cash and goods, all donated by fans, and all organised via Stoxnet. The first U25 race was at Belle Vue on August 28th 2006, with Dan Squire taking the victory. Also making the most of collective fan power was Steve Cording. Rather than another fan-organised, fan-funded race, Steve's brainwave was the Fans Tyre Fund. A donation to the fund got you a vote, and the driver with the most votes each month was presented with a brand new tyre.

A number of websites about specific drivers began to appear, although it quickly became apparent that the vast majority of them were unofficial and produced without any involvement of the driver in question. Mick Sworder, then an F2 driver, was the first oval racer in the UK to have his own official website, although many others followed. At the time of writing, the Wainman Team and Will Yarrow are the only F1 drivers to have actively maintained websites, although plenty of others have a presence on Twitter and Facebook. Digital cameras were rare in the early 2000s, so adding photos was beyond the means of many. A mere £150 could buy you a scanner, which made computer images from printed photos, but you still needed something to scan in. The explosion of fan websites started to fizzle out with the realisation that there was pretty much the same thing on pretty much all of them. Fixture lists, results, a few photos, maybe something a bit different now and again. The updates became less frequent, the viewing figures went down, and the bubble slowly burst. But not all of them died a death. Yes, the ones that tried to cover current racing fizzled out, but there was another avenue - Retro! A few sites focussed on stock car racing's rich and colourful past. Peter Marsh's Pete's Stock Car Pages launched in 2000 with entirely historical features on F1 and SCOTA racing, Dave Kipling's Old Stox came a year later with similar historical stuff, and Simon Lewis' incredibly depressing Defunct Stock Car Tracks appears to pre-date both of them. All three are still going strong today - be sure to check them out.