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| Added: 18 Mar 2013 |
Category: Older Oval Racing |
| The History of Superstox In NI |
Back when the announcement was made that Tullyroan Oval would re-introduce Superstox to Northern Ireland I decided it would be the makings on a nice blog to do a piece on the History of Superstox in Northern Ireland.
What seemed a simple task quickly hit grey areas, research suggested that an open wheeled Stockcar class ran under the Spedeworth banner at Clandeboye in Bangor in the late 60’s, it’s possible that these were Superstox, but it’s more likely they were just branded as “Stock Cars”.
In 1986 Ballymena Raceway introduced Superstox to their line up and before long they were running at Shamrock Park and Aghadowey as well. The Superstox of that era were quite like F2’s, and in the 90’s ran on Avon tyres, they had big wings, alloy wheels and if you put them side by side there wasn’t a lot of difference.
The Superstox of the mid 90’s are the cars that I remember, Johnston, Shaw, Watson, Hamill, Dempster, Adams amongst the names I recall racing. It’s fair to say I didn’t see a lot of Superstox Racing myself.
In 1997 a radical set of rule changes known as SX2000 rules were brought in to revive the Superstox. The changes included removal of the big wing, different tyres, the use of steel rims only, no more LSD’s, just a few of those I’m aware of. The decision was made to merge the local Superstox with the F2’s, as the Superstox of the era was closer to an F2 than it was to the SX2000 rules.
In 99 the Superstox were re-introduced to Shamrock Park using the SX2000 rules, but they never reached their previous heights and soon died out again.
That really is the tip of the iceberg from the research on the class, and I’m still trying to unfold the facts of the 60’s and 70’s where and era of “Stock Cars” existed in Northern Ireland, which seemed to be anything open wheeled and the cars raced in either F2 or Superstox major championships. Research has begun on a piece on that, but in the meantime, here are some photos of the Superstox as I remember them.
Many thanks to John Wolsey for the use of the photos in this article
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