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Official Site: Radical Sportscars
Wikipedia: Radical Sportscars Page Sections History |
History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Radical Sportscars page on 17 November 2015, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Radical Sportscars is a British manufacturer and constructor of racing cars. The company was founded in January 1997 by amateur drivers and engineers Mick Hyde and Phil Abbott, who built open-cockpit sportscars which could be registered for road use and run on a track without modification. Although most of Radical's sportscars are road legal, they also build some purpose-built racing cars, such as the SR9 Le Mans prototype.
History
The company's first car, the Radical 1100 Clubsport, was based on a Kawasaki motorcycle engine placed inside a small open-cockpit chassis. The cars were intended to run in the 750 Motor Club's races under the Sports 2000 category, with co-founder Hyde driving.
In 1999, Radical had built enough 1100 Clubsports that they decided to create a one-make series based around the car. Backed by the British Racing and Sports Car Club, the series featured identical cars that were open to anyone who owned an 1100 Clubsport. The same year, Radical debuted their second model, the Prosport. Available with Kawasaki or Suzuki engine up to 1500 cc in displacement, the Prosports were even more powerful and faster than the Clubsports, and included F3-size slick tyres and an adjustable rear wing. The cars were also brought to the United States for the first time, for use in the SCCA D-Sport class in 2000.
Radical's next creation was the two-seater SR3, a car which could compete in international racing, such as the FIA's C3 class. The car uses a Suzuki-based engine tuned by Powertec (now RPE) which offered 1300 cc or 1500 cc versions and a maximum of 260 hp (190 kW) in the latter. A six-speed sequential gearbox was developed specifically for the car to improve performance. The SR3 could also be made road legal in the United Kingdom with the addition of indicators, a hand brake, a catalytic converter, and road legal tyres.
In 2006, Radical would make its largest leap into international motorsport with the development of the SR9, a complete Le Mans prototype in the LMP2 class. Official partner Rollcentre Racing would debut the car with success in the Le Mans Series and 24 Hours of Le Mans, and SR9s in the hands of independent teams would contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans a further four times.