On a dirt track in Smallfield, near London Gatwick airport, amateur “banger” drivers compete in an adult, more dangerous version of bumper cars. But the real drama is in the pits – the tensions before the race, the desperate efforts afterwards to patch the cars up to race again, the sad work of carting the unsalvageable ones off to the scrap yard. These photographs are a record of high hopes contending against the near certainty of a smashup, the battered wrecks becoming monuments to a remarkable pastime.