Autocar is racing in the Radical SR1 CupSilverstone hosted the first round of the Radical SR1 Cup, and Autocar's man was in the wars on his debut
One thing that doesn’t come up in testing, practice and extensive preparation for a race weekend is what to do when you end up facing the wrong way on the track on the exit of the first corner, cars flying at you head on.
This is not fun. You brace yourself and shout weird things inside your helmet. ‘Soorbaaat’, which I think translates to ‘sorry about that’, was my first attempt at an apology for causing the mayhem. It reverberated around the helmet of the driver of car number 21 (a certain M. Tisshaw) in the Radical SR1 Cup round one, race one, corner one, and indeed career race number one at Silverstone on Saturday.
Then as the spin takes on a mind of its own and the car fires backwards towards the Copse gravel trap and ultimately the barrier, words much ruder break out, and you wonder if any of the cars who darted left will collect you. One did.
The race weekend action of Autocar's SR1 Cup debut had started long before then, though. Qualifying was the first eye-opening experience of the day. Despite appearances, it’s not as simple as putting in as fast a lap as you possibly can.
It’s a mini race in its own right. The jostling begins in the assembly area where you try to get at the front to have a clear track in front of you.
In the likely event you’re one of the 14 drivers who don't manage to get that front position on track, then you have to make sure you have a clear track in front of you before you start your hot lap. Which means either going for it from the off and getting past the people ahead of you, or holding back to find some room.
Either scenario brings tyres immediately into the equation: you don’t want to push too hard on cold tyres and risk going off, but you still want to make sure the tyres are up to temperature for when you do get the space to start pushing.
You also have to keep an eye on the clock. Twenty minutes sounds plenty in the garage, equating to eight or nine timed laps around the full Silverstone Grand Prix circuit in a Radical SR1, but once you've done a couple of tours to get everything warm and had a couple more that have to be aborted due to traffic or mistakes, time soon goes.
In the SR1 Cup, your best lap in qualifying is your grid position for race one and your second best lap is your grid position for race two, so there’s even more to get done in your 20 minutes. They’re long laps too. Did I mention the pressure was on?
In the end, race one qualifying got an eighth place on the grid and race two was seventh, in a field of 15. Some, including yours truly, were complete rookies, while others were in their second year of the championship.
After qualifying, there was time for an extensive war council session with Radical expert Roger Bromiley, the man with the unenviable task of improving me as a racing driver. As well as a debrief on qualifying, there was a lengthy - and eye-opening - discussion on race tactics.
As with qualifying, the race actually starts much sooner than crossing the line for the first time. The warm-up lap also plays a crucial part in this; there’s time for a practice start as you get off the grid, then it is straight into hard acceleration before hard braking in straight lines to start to get heat in the brakes and tyres.
Once a bit of heat is there, the weaving from side to side on the track starts. This isn’t just for show; the violent movements from side to side, covering around half the width of the track, gets further crucial heat into those tyres.
Throw in some psychological tactics, such as getting up alongside or in front of the bloke ahead of you on the grid to let him know you’re there, and ‘accidentally’ stopping in the wrong grid box to allow a further practice start, and you should be ready for a good start, providing those nerves don’t get the better of you.
The start, then, is something that requires impeccable clutch control. You hold the revs at around 9000rpm, and then gradually feed it in to ensure a smooth getaway, rather than dumping it and spinning the wheels, at the risk of stalling.
From eighth on the grid in race one, my start was slow and cumbersome, but off the line I went, on the inside of the track, with no immediate danger to being passed (or indeed passing someone for that matter).
Until, of course, the ‘incident’ at turn one occurred. There was little drama to what caused it; it was an inexperienced driver who hadn’t managed to warm up the tyres properly taking a corner on too tight an angle. Lesson learned and I was down, if not quite out completely.
While the contact that followed the spin - as one car collected the rear wing and the right rear corner of bodywork of our SR1 - had a significant impact on the aerodynamic performance on the straights and downforce through the high-speed corners, the wheels and suspension were fine, and nothing was hanging off that could possibly incur in a black flag for a mechanical defect.
A recovery drive got me up to 13th out of 15, and it could have been 12th with one more lap as some serious time was being taken out of the car in front. Indeed, if my car had shed a few more bits of debris on the track after the contact, it might have been enough for a beneficial safety car to bunch the pack up. Sadly, it never materialised.
My incident meant the gap between races one and two was a busy one for mechanic Pete Geeson and the team to ensure the car made it to the grid again. It did, and a hearty thanks must go to Pete and the team for their efforts.
The first corner incident also gave Roger a little raw material to work with with tips on racecraft, but the cause for the first corner crash became clear upon review in the video suite: the warm-up lap was simply not good enough for putting enough heat into the tyres. The start had also been too slow, and the corner could have been made easier by moving to the left of the circuit and widening the angle.
These invaluable tips firmly ingrained, the warm-up lap for race two involved more aggressive bouts of acceleration and braking to get those tyres warm, before more vigorous chucking of the car from side to side on the straights.
I lined up in position seven on the start line, and after another shaky getaway - the highlight of which was probably not stalling - I sped towards the arch nemesis of Copse again. Luckily this time it was without incident, and a position was even gained along the way.
And that was just about the highlight of the race. Fifth place was briefly achieved when someone in front fell off, but they quickly reclaimed their position. The eventual gap to the winner was around 30 seconds with the rest of the group staggered behind. Seventh place behind was a further 12 seconds behind me.
So a lonely and thankfully less eventful race, then, one where concentration and speed dipped at times, making any chance of catching those in front impossible.
But what a feeling it all was. Sixth on my debut weekend was a solid base on which to build. Next up is Oulton Park in just 12 days time. There’s plenty to work on, as a debrief received from the ever-helpful Roger confirms this: my warm-up lap preparation needs further work, the starts can improve, and I need to get up to pace sooner in each race.
More positivity is also needed on the throttle in particular, along with a bit more bravery on the brakes, where I need to hit the pedal harder and later to slow the car down with the same amount of impact but in a much faster and efficient way. Bring on Oulton Park.
Video highlights:
Race one
Race two
Read more Radical race diary entries
Part one - Snetterton test day
Part two - Bedford Autodrome competitive track day
Part three - What's it like to drive a racing car?
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