SATURDAY evening's motor sport meeting at the Foxhall Stadium, Ipswich, sees the National Bangers in town for the annual Hurricane meeting featuring front wheel drive cars up to 2000cc.

SATURDAY evening's motor sport meeting at the Foxhall Stadium, Ipswich, sees the National Bangers in town for the annual Hurricane meeting featuring front wheel drive cars up to 2000cc.

This format means that the Vauxhall Cavalier is likely to be a popular choice, but there's plenty of scope for other models, and with £500 prize money on the final, some of the drivers may choose to bring something a little more exotic.

This has always been a popular meeting, and tends to attract some of the big names from other promotions across the UK, although the home line up is strong enough these days to feel confident about their chances.

Dean Mayes, Lee Clark, Luke Parfitt and Carl Gould, all came to prominence in the National Class last year, and with other established drivers like Dave Canham, Chris Bailey and Danny Sutton also among the entry, the locals may well turn the form book upside down, as they have been doing quite regularly for the last year or so.

Racing rules in the National Banger Class are less restrictive than the 1600cc “Rookie” Class which has most of the meetings at Foxhall these days, so the action tends to be quite a lot heavier.

The cars are built with a rough, tough night in mind, and anyone who goes away with the prize money will certainly have had to work hard to avoid the crashes and pile-ups going on all around the track.

It should be a particularly lively evening, even more so as the meeting also includes Two Litre Stock Cars as part of the supporting bill, these are a relatively new version of an old favourite, and were well received when they raced here last month.

Three very lively races keep the spectators entertained right to the end with one of the heats and the final seeing a lot of last lap action which radically altered the outcome of the races.

As with the Bangers there is a wealth of local talent in this class including Diggy Smith, George Morphey and Bruce Wilcox who will be doing their best to get the bumpers in on top Southern names like David Burton from Enfield, Eastbourne's Steve Anscombe and the Aldershot pair of Deane and Billy Wood.

There's some non-contact racing as well, with the 1400cc Hot Hatch Stock Rods back for what should be another very competitive evening.

Racing in this class is always close, with the top five or six finishers often crossing the line all together - and frequently after much place changing over the closing laps.

Jon Wood from Eastbourne enjoyed his best ever night here last month when he took his Vauxhall Corsa to three wins, although such dominance by one driver is quite rare, and while he is still going well, he will be starting this meeting from much nearer to the back of the grid.

Paul Frost, Kevin Teager and Wayne Leedell are three of the top East Anglians who will be hoping to get amongst the winners on Saturday while Stuart Smyth and Andy Sturt head the Southern challenge.

Several of the top stars from Scotland like to race at Foxhall as well, so they may be among the contenders.

The meetings doubles as a memorial to former commentator and stadium manager John Earrey, who fulfilled both roles for speedway as well as stock cars for many years before he sadly passed away.