2020 Trackstar Banger Entertainer Champion Callum White - Jim Harrod Photography
2020 was a tough year. Everyone's plans were completely turned upside down but despite the dreadful pandemic, UK short ovals across the country did their best to host race meetings amongst the lockdowns and tier systems with various levels of success. Like many tracks, Trackstar Racing at the Adrian Flux Arena kept pushing to provide some fantastic race meetings. We caught up with Trackstar's Social Media Manager Keith Organ to find out more about the 2020 season and just how their banger scene has continued to hold strong.
National Bangers are without a doubt the largest formula on our ovals, with hundreds of cars from different classes attending meetings across the country in a typical weekend. Trackstar Racing reported 461 banger drivers attending their meetings in a 4 month shorter session due to Covid-19, with facility restrictions also limiting this number; but even still banger numbers at Kings Lynn remained high. How is this when there are many other East Anglian tracks?
"It's possibly a combination of a few things, the track is regularly praised for the condition it is prepared in, drivers love the stadium. We try and have a good relationship with the drivers, we try and make them feel welcome when they come; the little things go a long way" says Keith. "Matt in particular has a superb relationship with drivers, not just as drivers, but he knows a lot of them on a personal level and knows what’s going on in their lives. Put the pieces all together and we’ve got some incredible driver support and we’re very grateful for that".
Seeing double? – Damien Widdows Photography
Sadly meetings up and down the country had to be postponed and even cancelled due to the pandemic, but Trackstar still managed to have some great meetings, what do you feel was Trackstar's most successful meeting this year?
"It’s hard to pick the most successful to be honest, any meeting that was staged was a success in 2020. We’re very fortunate our meetings are often fully booked even Pre-Covid, but then with Covid restrictions, we had to take fewer cars and spaces were harder to come by, so we had to introduce a random draw system, to make bookings as fair as possible, not ideal, but a nice problem to have I guess. It was good to have a Pre-75 meeting back at King’s Lynn, the Banger World of Shale goes from strength to strength each year, but it was good to get the Unlimited Icebreaker back on the map with a huge line up last January".
Continuing to say, "we had 4 successful F1 Stock Car meetings; the F2, Saloon and 1300 Stock Car opener is always a great night; lots of great meetings. Spectator tickets; since returning 1st August, for most of the meetings were sold out, I think it was a run of 8 consecutive meetings that we sold out and those that didn’t, sold above expectations. We always look at the reviews and feedback online, generally, this year was very positive; I think people were just thankful they could go racing. We honestly can’t thank people enough for coming to King’s Lynn; we were blown away with the support".
Playing piggyback – Jim Harrod Photography
The Adrian Flux Arena has played host to some huge banger meetings, including annual meetings like the Unlimited and 1500cc Icebreakers along with many different team meeetings, but what are your favourite memories from bangers at Trackstar?
"The Retirement/ Testimonial meetings King’s Lynn staged were very special, they all had something different and stand out in my mind, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone that didn’t enjoy the first one; the Axe-tinction meeting for Steve Hemmings, that was an incredible meeting" says Keith; the Axe-tinction meeting gathered 176 Unlimited Bangers together with drivers from across the UK and mainland Europe back in 2013. "Also, it’s always nice to see a driver that’s not necessarily high profile take some titles or a driver you’ve seen grow and improve over the years take a championship".
The past has been filled with plenty of cars, but with meetings up and down the country running Micras, Mondeos and Astras every week, what do you think happens next? Will we be seeling 'All Mondeo Bangers' in 10 years time just like Pre-90 meetings?
"It is a very difficult one and honestly, I’m not sure at this stage you can come up with a one size fits all solution. For example, you have tracks that thrive with Back to Basics Bangers, and then you have King’s Lynn for example, that is solely National Bangers and is fully booked with them most meetings. I think there will be a time in the future that Back to Basics will take over as the main Banger formula, but not for a while, the sport will also need to address electric cars too which is another factor", continuing with "until then, there will always be drivers who want to get a car and race it around a track; times change and so do the cars that fill up the scrap yards; but there probably will be an All Mondeo meeting in 10 years time though".
Barton Boys – Damien Widdows Photography
The Adrian Flux Arena saw a series of practice sessions hit the track at the start of the year, offering something new at Trackstar; but how did this go?
"They were a huge lifeline to Trackstar and to the Stadium to be honest and really helped with income mid-year. They were very well supported too and we got to see some formulas we can’t always accommodate race dates for. Drivers gave some really positive reviews of them, so we will probably look to re-introduce them too. With so much uncertainty we’re hoping that when lockdown is lifted it will open the door for some activity at the Stadium, although sadly this will probably not be any race meetings for a while and we will, of course, need to liaise with the relevant authorities to understand do’s and don’ts when the time comes. The practice sessions were a big plus for us and we were so appreciative of the support", hopefully, this year will allow us to see some more.
With Covid restrictions still in place and the likelihood being that life probably won't be returning to normal until late April, would Trackstar consider a behind closed doors/ Pay Per View meeting?
Keith says "we have looked into the PPV option a few times now and sadly each investigation comes back to, it’s not commercially viable for us to offer. This year alone we’ve looked at varying options, starting in March before we went into lockdown, in May as the practice sessions got the green light and once again towards the end of 2020 – Nick at Impact Videos looked into it himself too. It works better for Spedeworth as they have more tracks to utilise and they have a bigger back catalogue to delve in to with 40 years of Martin Hunt Videos. Us just as one track, it won’t have the same effect".
"In May 2019 we had a team of Uni Students who’s project was to broadcast a live event; which, based on Social Media engagement was very, very, positive. So, we had discussions with the Producer last year to see what was do-able and again it just doesn’t prove a commercially viable option for us, in other words, it would cost us money to do it properly, which will be the expectation; a static webcam wouldn’t cut it".
"King’s Lynn is one of the most expensive Stadiums to operate within the Sport. A behind closed doors meeting could be an option to look at, but need to consider it versus costs, we would need 100 drivers paying £100 and that would just about cover costs".
Saloons shifting shale – Matt Bull Photography
However, despite 2021 looking to be another difficult year and a very hard one to plan for, what ideas for meetings has Trackstar got coming?
"We have lots of ideas being thrown around, but in such an uncertain year it wouldn’t make much sense to deviate from what we know and what we do well. Tweaks of course, may happen, but I think our core fixtures will remain much the same. We don’t know when the green flag will drop so it is very challenging, ideally, we’re hoping for April. So we’ll see. We have the Unlimited Banger War of the World Teams of 6 and 2L Banger War of the Worlds to look forward to, which will be using to raise awareness of Mental Health in the sport, particularly being so Male orientated environment".
One thing we have noticed with King’s Lynn is that the promotion does seem to stick with a set core formulas making up the fixtures and appears reluctant to offer others, why is that?
"It’s not a reluctance really, we appreciate a lot of formulas want a lot of race dates at King’s Lynn and sorry we can’t offer them dates, but it simply comes down to we don’t have enough available dates to offer our existing formula set as it is". Keith explains "more so in 2020 when meetings had to be worked differently to accommodate only two formulas instead of three. As I mentioned, the Stadium is not cheap to run, so fixtures need careful planning and need to be commercially viable, we can’t just put meetings on for the sake of it. What Trackstar has now is a very successful business model, that is working very well, the majority of our meetings are oversubscribed and have waiting lists. It wouldn’t be logical to cut the numbers in those formulas further in place of a non-regular formula, particularly with restrictions in place and likely to be for some time".
We thank Keith for taking the time to speak to us, and wish Trackstar Racing the best year possible; we hope you support the track in 2021.