In fact, the Cavalier dominated the meeting for the bangers; most of the front runners drove them, including heat winners Anthony Oak and Paul Whiteman and final winner Jason Jackson who put himself further into the overall RJK Export Championship lead with his performance on this day. Oak managed to grab the win easily from Jackson in the first heat with Jimmy Randall holding off Kevin Elmore for third spot, whilst the second race started with Wayne Holton being pushed onto the track by a Ministox driven by Craig Oliver! Whiteman took this race on and grabbed the lead roughly mid way, winning easily whilst Mark Newman battled Stephen Lee right through the closing stages to keep hold of second place. The final, and allcomers' affair, saw forty-one cars running. With that many on track, it was inevitable that the race would soon become a scrap with only seven cars finishing in all. Turn one became the first site for wrecking but soon the circuit filled up with scrap metal, one notable performance being Roy Laybourn who seemed to be on a mission, hitting anything he could get his increasingly wrecked car to aim for. Second heat winner Whiteman also saw some action, burying Colin Burnham on the pit bend. Turn four eventually became completely blocked, more damage being caused as some runners tried to punt their way through, though one notable fact was that many of the remaining cars happened to be in the blue and white of the Midnight Runners, an interesting thought given the coming team event at Easter. Only Simon Smith and Greig Cheeseman survived to break up the colours led by Jackson, Newman, Harry Rawlins, Whiteman and Randall, everything else dead and buried. With all the damage, it was surprising to see how much returned for the Rawlins 2000 qualifier, and certainly a number of the returning cars seemed ready only for a last thump. Oddly, on the subject of teams, it seemed that the Gladiator team was wrecking itself at the start of the race, but the state of the field at the end of the final told on them all, with the final winners taking the event, led up by Paul Whiteman. With Smith burning brightly on the pit bend, Jimmy Randall survived the attentions of Matt Fuller to grab the last car running award.

Things started well for the Ministox on March 28 at Arena Essex, with heat wins for a couple of debut wins; Harry Stevens won ahead of Josh Fuller and Ben Murray, the latter racing well from the back of the field in race one, while Liam Friel took the second heat, just holding the last corner, with Luke Armiger and Dan Weeks behind. The consolation, however, took a long time to get going with a staggering four restarts! With twenty-five cars on the circuit to start with, all went well to start with until Billy Hobbs, Alfie Lee and Ryan Cunningham crashed heavily on turn one, Lee getting stuck mid-track; hence the first red flag. The next attempt saw Dan Mellish collecting Scott Waite, Rob Marsh and Rob Hull on turn one, George Goodearl being disqualified for starting the incident, and we had another complete restart to do. One non-starter scrambled the next attempt, so the starter red flagged it, and we were on to our fourth start attempt, but another non-starter in that meant that we went to a fifth start and many of use were wondering if we would ever see the Outlaw Hot Rods again! The fifth start proved successful, however, and we finally got a result, Michael Outen winning after passing Billy Saunders who had led most of the race, Saunders dropping to fourth by the end, Sam Hayfield and Christopher Whiteman getting the other eggcups. The trouble was that the final seemed in danger of copying the consolation, with another crash on turn one between Jamie McAngus and Roy Laybourn and the turn one armco. They ordered the cars up for a restart and, once the clerk of the course had warned Dan Weeks about jumping the start, they all got going again. All seemed well, but as the leaders started to move through some of the tail enders, so it all went wrong again. Inside the last three laps, Dan Moulston spun Sean Groom inside turn two, then Bill Hobbs collected Lee Middleton in what became a series of crashes under the QE2 bridge which brought the race to an abrupt end, the win going to Dan Weeks who had just managed to stay in front of Jamie McAngus and Josh Fuller. Similar events also marred the helter-skelter, which was won by Joseph Simmons ahead of Luke Armiger and Craig Oliver, back from his banger shunting duties!

The Outlaw Hot Rods seemed to have their own problems at the March 28 Arena Essex meeting, various mistakes leading to crunches that seemed to give some of the drivers artistic thoughts on the use of gaffer tape! After Rick Fray had easily won the warm up race, a number of cars met up on the back straight in a crash that left some of them in pieces, which were all picked up and put back together with copious amounts of tape for the final! Salvo Falcone, who won that final, favoured the colour coordinated yellow tape to stitch up his back panels, while Terry Bell favoured a contrasting silver effect on his car. Not that this stopped the damage, especially as Jimmy Bryan, having taken the exit from the pit bend rather wide on one lap, caught the side of the dead Dave Hitchen car and tore his passenger door loose! Bryan, minus door, kept going and finished, while the door was retrieved as the cars passed onto the back straight. Bryan had also been involved in the warm up shunt, though it didn't look like he had used any tape on his car. Falcone won the final ahead of Clinton Groom, who had escaped the shunting session, while Fray held off Bryan and Stu Hammond for third place. The helter-skelter was even closer, though the amount of tape in use didn't seem to have increased appreciably, Gary Deal just winning over Terry Bell and Dave Hitchen.

RJK Export Bangers

Outlaw Hot Rods

Ministox