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Boy racers are terrorising towns across Britain from behind the wheels of high-powered supercars bought on cheap credit.
Secretive groups compete in online leagues where they challenge rivals to drive on busy roads at vast speeds, according to a new Channel 4 documentary.
Shocking footage shows three cars weaving between traffic as they are brazenly raced along a stretch of motorway at up to 170mph – in scenes reminiscent of The Fast And The Furious films starring Vin Diesel.
The joyrider gangs – who posed menacingly with their vehicles wearing balaclavas – meet on a weekly basis to take part in adrenaline-fuelled races that are broadcast live to tens of thousands of viewers on the internet.
One of the largest groups, Mpire, has more than 70,000 followers and its social media pages shows dozens of people gathering in towns across the UK to race cars worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Boy racers are terrorising towns across Britain from behind the wheels of high-powered supercars bought on cheap credit
Shocking footage shows three cars weaving between traffic as they are brazenly raced along a stretch of motorway at up to 170mph
The group’s founder, named only as Min, tells the programme: ‘Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris – we went from being boy racers to having some of the most expensive and fastest cars on the planet.’
Asked how the drivers, mostly men in their early 20s, can afford such luxury vehicles, he replies: ‘Cars are becoming more and more affordable… finance is available to more or less anybody.’
The documentary, The Secret World Of Boy Racers: UNTOLD, finds that the police are trying to crack down on young men causing havoc on Britain’s roads – with the number of cars seized due to anti-social driving almost doubling between 2019 and 2022. But the boy racers brag that police are unable to catch them in their high-powered cars.
In one clip, a group is stopped by officers on London’s Bond Street but simply drives to another location, speeding off each time the police catch up with them. When questioned by an officer, one of the drivers replies brazenly, ‘I’m not obstructing no one’ before fleeing again at top-speed.
One of the racers claims he has been banned from driving after he was caught at 140mph on the M6 and has 21 points on his licence – despite only passing his test three years ago. He boasts: ‘I couldn’t give a s*** about the police, that’s the God’s honest truth, I couldn’t give a f***.’
Another of the racers – who brags that he ‘turns the public highway into a racetrack’ – adds: ‘I’m not worried, I’ve got north of 700 horsepower on tap. Nobody is catching me.’
The documentary comes as a driver who killed a mother when his £180,000 Range Rover SVR ended up on rail tracks was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last week.
Rida Kazem, who was ‘showing off’, was travelling at 110mph on the westbound A40 in Ealing, West London, before he hit a kerb and the car went off the road. Beautician Yagmur Ozden, 33 – one of his passengers – was killed instantly.
But the boy racers admit to giving little thought to the safety or comfort of the public in their relentless pursuit of speed. Footage shows a family and a terrified pet dog captured in the light of a living room window as car exhausts boom outside their home ‘like the invasion of a country’.
Secretive groups compete in online leagues where they challenge rivals to drive on busy roads at vast speeds, according to a new Channel 4 documentary [File image]
The documentary comes as a driver who killed a mother when his £180,000 Range Rover SVR ended up on rail tracks was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last week [File image]
Greg Sumner, 32, a self-confessed former boy racer who was left paralysed in a crash that killed two people, said: ‘People don’t consider the severe impact of it going wrong until it’s too late.’
The father of two was a passenger in a car that went out of control on a bend at 91mph in a 40mph zone and ploughed into an oncoming vehicle. Both drivers died.
Mr Sumner, who shattered 27 bones and spent five months in a coma, says: ‘The consequences of that crash were the deaths of two fathers, four children are going to grow up without their dad.’
But other drivers are obstinate in the face of the risks of their illegal and highly-dangerous hobby. Robert was one of 19 people seriously injured at a car meet crash which saw two men jailed for a total of nine years.
The 28-year-old admits the incident left him with lasting pain that sometimes prevents him from getting out of bed. But the car fanatic, who has owned 60 vehicles in the past two years, vows to carry on racing despite the accident and said that he doesn’t worry about the risks because he is ‘in control’.
The programme’s presenter, Ben Zand, says: ‘In the past few months I’ve spoken to police officers who have admitted stopping boy racers is difficult.
‘They tend to rely on issuing social orders and seizing cars to try to deter people from getting into the scene.
‘But it doesn’t seem to be putting off the boy racers we spoke to.
‘So many I’d met seemed to feel invincible. But the problem is, as I’d seen myself, they’re not.’
The National Police Chiefs’ Council said: ‘Tackling speeding and dangerous driving is a priority for policing.
‘Behind every collision there are family and friends who have to live with the tragic consequences for the rest of their lives.’
The Secret World Of Boy Racers: UNTOLD is available to stream on Channel 4 from Monday.
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