Fratton, Hampshire
- (1955)
Eighteen year old Mrs Shirley Cornish, of 75 Highfield St, Fratton, sat in a café on Saturday, and during a conversation someone said to her, “Why don’t you have a shot at stock car racing?”
To answer that question, Mrs Cornish quickly left the café and made her way to Portsmouth Greyhound Stadium. She had decided suddenly that stock car racing was something that she did want to try.
So in the third race of the evening, she borrowed a stock car and careered round the track, completing the required 20 laps of the race. She weaved in and out of the 17 other cars , and on one lap she was knocked of the track and onto the centre of the ground. But she did not care. Reversing, she backed onto the track and was off again to complete the race.
“I have only been married for nine months and my husband is away. I do not know what he would say if he heard,” she told our reporter. (Portsmouth Evening News, 27th June 1955).