Radical SR10 review

Interestingly, although the SR10 is a full-blown race car, Radical is aiming it at a slightly different audience from its Radical SR3 staple racer (which accounts for half of everything Radical makes) and the SR8. It is instead "an ideal choice for those who want a car with extreme track performance, but who aren’t yet committed to full wheel-to-wheel competitive racing." The firm cites the track day and car club markets as prime targets for the car.

You climb over a high side intrusion bar and drop down, down, down into the cockpit. Hands appear and belt you tightly into the car. You look at a new wheel-mounted scrollable LCD display, while rotary dials allow you to choose different throttle and gearbox maps and also the level of steering power assistance if that option box has been ticked, which, in my case, it had not. I’d like the wheel to be higher, but there’s no manual adjustment. Otherwise, the cockpit is spacious yet feels snug, which is a neat trick.

The engine blasts into life. From the first turn of the crank, it is clear this is simply a tool for doing the job, no more and no less. There’s quite a lot of vibration, it’s easy to stall when pulling away and there’s nothing remotely nice to say about the harsh blare it emits when stretched. But my goodness it gets the job done.

Because while 425bhp may not sound that much in these crazy times, when you consider how little car it has to push and that the result has a better power-to-weight ratio than a McLaren Senna, you begin to get an idea of just what you’re dealing with here. But it’s the torque that makes this car such a different experience from an SR3 or SR8.

In most important ways, it just makes life easier. If you’re ever anything other than as busy as you can be in something like the SR10, you’re driving the wrong car. And knowing that it doesn’t really matter if you’re a gear too high, or make a mistake and lose some speed, because all you need to do is twitch a toe to find it again, is a real bonus. It means you can concentrate more on guiding this missile around whichever track you’re on.

In my case that was the Bedford Autodrome’s West Circuit, which, with its short straights but super-quick combination corners, could have been tailor-made for showcasing the talents of a car such as this.

It is, of course, bloody rapid. As in quick enough around a place like this to make a typical hypercar look utterly pedestrian. And that’s to be expected: with slicks, a highly evolved aero pack, full race suspension and bugger all ground clearance, it has advantages no road car could enjoy. To give you an idea, it will generate about 2.3g lateral, which is double a perfectly respectable figure for road-going sports car. You find yourself tightening your belts until it’s almost difficult to breathe to stop yourself being slammed around the cockpit.

I had slightly tricky conditions – a bit too damp for slicks but too dry to make full use of the wets, but on both tyres and despite no driver aids of any kind, it gave no problems at all. You could skid it around in the slow stuff, the chassis balance was beautiful, and even when the back started sliding in the really quick turns on slicks, because the fronts switched on sooner than the rears, you never find yourself in crisis management mode.

The car is so light, inherently well set up and fundamentally stable that you can almost always just correct on the steering without thinking about getting off the throttle and losing time. You can quite easily lock an unloaded front tyre if you’re sloppy about bleeding off the brake pressure in the entry phase to a corner, but you can learn your way around that. All in all, it’s an impressive package.

I think the car would benefit from an at least optional system that allowed not only traction control but for the driver to be able to choose both the point and extent of its intervention. The car doesn’t actually need it, but if the car is aimed primarily at the track day market and not committed racers, such drivers might appreciate the choice and enjoy playing with it. I know I would.

But actually, if I have any problem with the car at all, it’s only that I also drove the latest SR3XX, which may have only a fraction of the power from its 1.5-litre Suzuki engine (226bhp) but is over 100kg lighter, at 620kg, and only two-thirds the price.

And while I liked, enjoyed and admired the SR10 in all regards save its rough and ready engine, I absolutely loved the SR3, which is just as quick through a corner, sounds completely brilliant, revs past 10 grand and is even more chuckable, even easier to sort out on the limit and is in every way that matters to me utterly addictive. It’s also been around in one form or another for nearly 20 years so you can pay pretty much whatever you want for one, from less than £20,000. I know this because it sent me scuttling for the classifieds as soon as I was home.