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So it’s around July time and I am already thinking of what to do next year. I have always wanted to get back into circuit racing but never had the funds to do it. With this years sprinting going so well I was looking for a new challenge for 2006. I started looking around at what I could do on a limited budget. Yes, I know there is no such thing as a limited budget in motorsport but I am forever the optimist. I took a look at single-seaters in the form of Formula Vauxhall Juniors and running them in the Mono-Posto championship, and also I looked at Formula Jedi, but both these championships involve a lot of travel which would work out expensive. The Jedi entry fees made me rule this one out pretty quickly although it does look a lot of fun. I then had a look at my local track, Castle Combe, and their championships. The Formula Ford looked cheap enough to get into but the likelihood of damage was high with the open wheeled cars. So I turned to either the GTs or Saloons. The only thing that put me off the saloons was having to develop a car over the season. This wasn’t something I wanted to do again after the Elise, so I was left with the GT’s. I looked at a few cars that were eligible for the GTs like the Global GT Light, Mission T5 and the Radical Pro and Club sports. As luck would have it, when I was walking around the paddock on a Combe race day I noticed a Radical owner having a few problems. I spent a few hours with this chap helping him out and getting some background on the car. This made up my mind to buy a Radical; it was a proper race car that I could get in and race without having to develop it. This would mean I could concentrate on racing rather than machine development. In this same vein I decided that I would do my first year’s racing at Castle Combe in the Special GT Championship. This had two big advantages; one: it is very local so travelling costs are minimal and two: I know the track very well so I can spend time learning to drive the car and understand how it works. Ideally I would like a ProSport which comes with either a 205bhp or 250bhp Suzuki motorcycle engine, but again budget gets in the way (must do the lottery this week). So I decided on the Clubsport, which has the 1100cc/160bhp engine but isn’t that much slower due to lower weight and no high-drag aerodynamics. With the sprint season finished it is time to go shopping, and this is where I hit my first obstacle. Secondhand Radicals don’t come up for sale very often, and when they do they don’t stay on the market for very long. On my daily search of the internet competition car sales I see a new advert for a Clubsport, I give the chap a call straight away and arrange for a visit. Like when buying any secondhand car, the history is the most important thing. The seller in this case was very honest with the car’s history, plus he has been the owner for the last four years which bodes well. The car has all the right modifications to it, including a complete engine rebuild three races ago. The engines should be good for about 25 hours running so this engine was perfect as I should be able to do a season without touching it, other than routine maintenance. The rest of the car was good condition and it has a good spares package, which is all-important. So now it’s October and the car is in its new home. In only a short space of time the car is already undergoing some modifications. I’ve replaced the seat with a large type; yes, I’m big boned! I’ve removed the ballast weight that is used in the Radical championship. I’ve added a new gear selection linkage; this reverses the gear selection which means now to change up you pull the lever back and to change down you push forward. Don’t you just love sequential gearboxes! I have a long list of things I want to do before the racing season kicks off but I’ve got about 5 months to work on it. The car is currently very yellow but this will be changed to team colours over the winter. I’ve got my first outing in it at the end of November at Brands Hatch, it’s only a trackday but I need as much driving time as I can get before the season starts. I can’t wait to see how this car goes but I just hope it’s dry! I’ll report back with my first impressions on driving the Radical in part 2.
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