With twenty-five Caravans thundering around Foxhall Stadium one might have been forgiven for thinking that the only thing missing was the BBC Top Gear Team yet even they would have been hard pressed to make an already rip-roaring spectacle any more explosive, writes Kevin Wegg.

Unscheduled fireworks however were also present in the V8 Stock Cars albeit off, rather than on, track where confusion over grid positions for their English Championship led to various heated debates in the pits after the race but the result stood with the Scott family making it an easy one-two after starting on the front row. Promoter Deane Wood had done his best to upset the apple-cart with Scott Junior the first to feel his front bumper only for the compliment to be re-paid with interest when he himself was spun out. In trying to re-join he nearly wiped out leader Peter Scott Senior and only succeeded in landing back in the armco. Despite a wheel guard now rubbing on his wheel, Senior was in the clear to take his fourth championship win at the ripe old age of sixty-five! Bill Chance made the most of his pole start in the first of two support races to claim the spoils whilst Superstox ace Dave Miles Junior put his experience to good use by bumpering his way to victory in the other.

Mayhem ensued in the first 2.0 Hot Rod heat as turn four turned in to an auto-graveyard with no fewer than eight cars involved in three almost simultaneous pile-ups. Paul Kaynes was the first when he careered off track and went head-long in to the inner marker tyres, destroying his front-end in the process. The car of Billy Clarke will sadly need slightly more than a polish before it becomes race-worthy again whilst Ipswich racer Michael Walmsley could still smile despite proclaiming that: "I know what I'll be doing every night this week!" Daniel Smith used both the outside and inside lines in the restart to hit the front but Paul Wright hounded him for lap after lap on the outside and eventually made it stick for a thrilling win. The vastly-experienced Mark Willis had the bit firmly between his teeth to take an emphatic win in heat two with Kevin Randell having suitably recovered from his opening race crash to take send. Danny Fiske drove a blistering race around the boards and almost snatched third for what turned out, surprisingly, to be his best of the day. Randell meanwhile went one better still in the final after a frenetic scrap with Daniel Smith and long-time leader Joe Jackson.

Michael Hewitt and Kevin Buckley bagged comfortable wins in the two split Banger heats before fifty-two cars came together for the suitably bone-jarring all-in race led by Paul Felgate until that is a backmarker slowed his progress and allowed Ken Denby to pounce. After a quiet afternoon by his standards Dave Canham hit top form to take the all-important flag in the final and his day was about to get even better when he and a full compliment of twenty-five Banger Caravans entered the arena to the apt strains of Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday" over the PA. Within seconds an instant scrapheap of twisted metal; wood and it has to be said somewhat dodgy window curtains was littering the raceway much to the frenzied delight of a bumper crowd who cheered loudly every time a van was literally smashed to smithereens. Thrilling stuff and aptly rounded off in style when the only two left running - Lee Bassham and Dave Canham - brought proceedings to a fitting climax with a thumping head-on that wiped them both out.