Cadwell Park

Think of Cadwell Park, and most people would associate the circuit with British Superbikes and various forms of club motorsport. However, between 1959 and 1975 it also featured BriSCA F1 stock cars on it's annual fixture list.

The circuit itself, near Louth in Lincolnshire, charts it's history back to 1934 when Mr. Mansfield Wilkinson first established it. His son Charles was the secretary of the Cadwell Car and Kart Club, and it was under this stewardship that stock car racing made its first appearance in 1959.

The track itself was unlike anything else on the calendar, 602 yards (550 metres) with uphill and downhill sections, sharp 90 degree turn onto the home straight and part of the raceway went behind trees. It wasn't unusual to see cars battling, then disappear behind the trees, only to emerge in a different order - if they emerged at all!

Most meetings featured either F1 and Karts or F1 and F2 (Senior and Junior stock cars as they were known in the 1960s), with the main meeting of the season featuring the annual Cadwell Park Race of the Year, which was a 40 lap event with £100 to the winner. 40 laps of Cadwell was an eternity and in some cases the race times were 17 or 18 minutes!

BriSCA F1 last ran in August 1975, but Cadwell Park are proud of their racing history and display pictures of stock car racing on public view, and in 2019 had an F1 Heritage display at it's Historic Motorsport Wold's Trophy event. Indeed, a search of "Cadwell Park stock cars" on YouTube and the circuit's own channel has a 3 minute video featuring the return of F1 Stock cars to the track - featuring, amongst others, Mike Shirley (395). Also some fantastic cine film of racing from the 1960s exists on YouTube, it just brings home what a challenge the drivers would have had with the undulating fast circuit.

Andre Zang