Radical's Most Important Racer?

Radical's Most Important Racer?

Try Turn 1 in fifth… just above 160kph… I’m almost flat through there and wondering if I need to be in sixth…”

Sorry… you what? “Seriously, just trust me. It will hang on better that way…

” Hang on… Hang on?! What if it hangs off at that speed? I’ll be in a field, presumably in quite a mess.

“It won’t, just trust me. This thing’s made for it.”

That’s my pep talk, if there was much ‘pep’ about it. It came from 2007 British GT champion Alex Mortimer, who knows a thing or two about high cornering speeds. Having conquered Dodge Vipers and GT2-spec Ford GTs, Mortimer is now Radical’s motorsport and engineering director. He’s introducing me to my weapon for the weekend at Snetterton – the firm’s new Generation 2 SR1.

It’s the baby Radical, the entry level. But I use the term ‘baby’ in a kind of feral, bouncing off the walls with energy kind of way, as opposed to a cutesy adjective. After all, this is racing, who wants cutesy anything?

The 2017 SR1 is a real piece of kit. An uncompromised racer, capable of raising pulses on sight and rearranging your neck muscles at speed.

When Radical pulled the covers off its range at January’s Autosport Show, the SR1 essentially stole it. The model designation is nothing new – the original SR1 Cup was launched in 2012 – but the car that caught the camera flashes in Birmingham looked nothing like that one. This one looked just like an SR3: pointy, aggressive… exciting.

Radical’s sweeping change at board level last summer was done to refresh the firm. And its redesign of the SR1 in particular is a noticeable improvement.