24 MICK SWORDER
Meet BRISCA F1 stock cars’mr Box Office
Five-time BRISCA F1 world champion Andy Smith believes Mick Sworder has more natural ability and the best car control of any BRISCA F1 stock car driver he has ever seen.
And anyone who has witnessed Sworder at full tilt, throwing his 750bhp F1 stock car sideways on full throttle, just millimetres away from the walls, will find that claim hard to argue with.
The BRISCA F2 world champion soon made his mark on his step up to the big league by winning the Europeans in his first full season in 2011.
Having bought Smith’s shale car the following year, Sworder’s best form since then has been on his preferred shale surface. Sworder came up with a creative and ingenious way to negotiate the slick shale oval at his favourite track, King’s Lynn, by sling-shotting his car up against the plate metal fencing, which gave him a huge advantage entering the straights – but that manoeuvre was soon banned.
In fact, racing bans have been a feature of Sworder’s career, ever since his early racing days.
A notorious hard-hitter, Sworder has been embroiled in a number of bitter feuds on track, notably with Bill Batten in BRISCA F2 and recently with Tom Harris in BRISCA F1, although he came off worse in an incident at Stoke in 2017 when he was left unconscious.
In recent years, having spent more time on the sidelines than racing due to his dealings with officialdom, Sworder has focused more attention on his 17-year-old son Charlie’s F1 stock car career.