Page 121 - Paddock Life Issue 13 ADRENALINE

Adrenaline, that’s the theme of this issue and if there is one car that has adrenaline woven through its DNA it is the Radical. To be radical you have to offer something innovative and unique so that was a good starting concept for the car company when it was founded in 1997. The general idea was to create a new niche in motorsport. Now twenty years later have they succeeded? The best way to find out was take up their offer of a day at Silverstone and find out for myself.
As I drive down the back of the national paddock at Silverstone circuit to garage 9b there is some pretty impressive machinery. It’s a Goldstar track day and this firm has a platinum coated reputation for running a great track event, so they always attract a wide verity of cars and drivers. As it’s the week before the Silverstone Classic a lot of the classic racers are using the day for practice, but I am still genuinely shocked to see “The” Ferrari Bread Van as I drive in. This was a conversion on a 250GTO that Ferrari “disowned” so it’s kinda the lost GTO and nobody can really put a price tag on it, but with the others trading around the $50 million mark even the de-badged bread van is a valuable motorcar and certainly a one off. There’s also an E Type lightweight, but the parking behind the garages is full of Lamborghinis and Ferraris so you get the tone of the day.
On track you can expect to see anything from the classics, especially the Austin A30 race cars practicing for the weekend. A good few supercars, a lot of RS Audis and BMW Ms, even a few hot hatches from lads who want to see if all their work on shiny engine bits actually makes a difference... there’s always a good selection of Porsches at these events and they are generally used for testing by private race teams, so you get a few race cars and today I noticed a couple of GT4 cars.
I am met at the back of the garage by Graham Prew, Radicals sales manager. Radical use these day as customer events. Graham takes me down to sign on as a driver. This involves
signing my disclaimer and listening to a comprehensive drivers briefing all very well designed to keep red flags to a minimum and make sure as many cars go home in the same condition they arrived. So once I have my wristbands to show I’ve ticked all the boxes we are back to the garage to meet the team.
Radical is one of the largest producers of racing cars in the world with over 2000 cars sold globally, so they must be doing something right, the current range extends to six cars – all very distinctively identifiable as Radicals, having similar no nonsense styling. The “entry level” car is the SR1 with top speed of 138mph delivered from a screaming Suzuki 1340cc bike engine, the next step up is the SR3, with very similar looks, but a 1500c engine taking it up to 147mph and delivering a 0-60 time of 3.1 seconds. This prototype style sports racer was launched in 2001 and has proven itself over and over, with more than a 1000 SR3s sold you’ll rarely go to a track day and not see one of these flying around. Brand new this year is the SR8 powered by a unique bespoke Radical V8 engine coupled to a sequential six-speed gearbox in the right hands it can lap Silverstone’s F1 circuit in sub two minutes giving near LMP2 performance.
The flagship of the brand is the RXC Spider aimed fair and square at the gentleman racer using all Radicals learning from LMP2 the RXC is powered by a Ford EcoBoost V6 3500cc twin turbocharged engine through a Quaife 6 speed box, suffice to say – a proper bit of kit. The remaining two models on the books are the RXC 600R which in simple terms is a closed cockpit version of the RXC and the RXC GT3, which as its name might suggest is a version homologated for national GT3. The mind blowing thing about all these models is you could have them road registered, which is actually a genuine racing car on the road.
So, I’m eager to see what we have in garage 9b to play with. We have an SR1 Cup, which runs on road tyres, an SR3 RSX running on slicks and a red RXC that is actually road
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