In the heart of old Cornish tin-mining country, a piece of scrubland at United Downs near Truro has for fifty years been home to a stock car and banger track. Described by local racing promoter Crispen Rosevear as 'a bit wild and feral, like something out of Mad Max', the raceway is at the heart of a community of committed drivers and fans who descend on this quiet patch of Cornwall on race days. Dozens of brightly coloured cars, some heavily dented, arrive on the back of trailers and fill the surrounding countryside with their full-throttled thrum and the smell of racing fuel.

But alongside the drama on the track, a crisis threatens to engulf the entire raceway and the passionate community it belongs to. Cornwall council, which owns the land, signed an agreement to lease the site to a company that wants to build the world’s first rum distillery powered by renewable geothermal energy. The council changed hands in May 2021; the current council says it wants racing to continue, but is constrained by the legal agreement made by the previous administration.

With the track’s future uncertain, members of the racing community fight to save their raceway from closure. Show less