Mallory Park

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Mallory Park
Motorcycle racer in Mallory Park 2007

The Mallory Park is a motorsport race track in Leicestershire and with a length of 2.173 kilometers one of the shortest permanent racecourses in the UK .

Mallory Park is located in the small town of Kirkby Mallory , which gave the circuit its name. The track was a trotting track in the 1940s and was paved in the early 1950s, after a few changes of ownership, and opened in 1956 as an automobile and motorcycle racing track. The first racer on the track was the then British sports car and Formula 1 -Pilot Bob Gerard , after a straight line is named on the track.

The route offers several variants. The centerpiece is a 1.6 km long oval , which, however, is rarely used. In addition there is the full circuit and the motorcycle race track, which extends the circuit to 2.269 km with additional chicanes. These chicanes are necessary because otherwise the course would be fast and dangerous for motorcycle races. In 2003 the area of Gerards Bend was rebuilt in order to reduce the speed before the following corner section. The area also includes a motocross course on which the British World Championship run took place in 2008.

The racing circuit had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, when almost all British motorsport championships took place in the park. In the 1970s, races for the Formula 2 European Championship also took place on this racetrack. Today, club races are mainly driven and twice a year races for the British Superbike Championship . In July 2007, Briton Ollie Bridewell had a fatal accident during training. He came off the track on a wet road without any outside influence, fell and hit the boundaries. He died of severe head injuries. The Mallory Park Race of the Year for motorcycles, which does not belong to any championship, has also been taking place since 1958 .

Web links

Commons : Mallory Park  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 54 ″  N , 1 ° 20 ′ 16 ″  W.