News.aspx Look forward to an exciting year racing with Radical in the Radical Clubmans Cup Drivers:- Gary Ramsdale & Shaun Mellors The car made its 2011 debut resplendent in its new livery. Qualifying was a bit of a disaster, with us expecting a dry day, the heavens opened 5 mins before the start of qualifying! Unfortunately the car was set up for dry conditions, and consequently handled somewhat unpredictably! The first race saw Shaun Mellors run a fairly solid performance maintaining his grid position throughout the race. Race two was not so successful, as Gary Ramsdale took action to avoid a spinning SR3 RS on the first lap, which resulted in an outfield excursion. Position was never really recovered, but did finish the race 25/27. Oh well thats racing! Saturday, 2 April 2011 The AEL Crystals/ES Team Radical have invested in a new car for 2012. The 1500CC Radical SR3 RS is the latest iteration of the successful SR3 chassis with a new front end yielding even greater levels of downforce and grip. Also incorporated is a paddleshift gearbox and an all new AIM datalogger with incorporated SmartyCam video recorder. So look forward to some exciting clips on Youtube next year. Again the car is sponsored by Electronics sourcing magazine, and will be displayed at ES Live in May 2012 The photo shows the cars recent outing at Brands Hatch with some of the Electronics Sourcing staff enjoying a thrilling ride around the iconic Indy Circuit With summer finally making itself felt, the Radical Circus descended into the Kent countryside for the 3rd round of the Clubmans Cup. The GP Circuit is the full circuit of Brands Hatch and is renowned for providing some exciting and high speed racing. We were still experiencing handling problems with the car, and despite a good start threw it all away with a dramatic spin through Surtees. Although a bit of a setback to say the least, we picked ourselves up and battled to recover some of our placings. The safetycar was deployed, which gave us the opportunity we needed to rejoin the body of the race, and eventually managed to pick off the back markers to finish the race with some honour restoredWe arrived for testing on the Friday 13th - an obvious omen as the oil filter seal blew as the engine started! 1st 2 hours then spent changing the oil and filter, and cleaning up the mess! Qualifying was reasonable considering only 8 minutes each is possible with a 20 minute qualifying session. Gary was out first, and warmed the car and tyres up sufficiently to allow Shaun to qualify us in 17th place out of 25 entries. Race one started with Gary in the cockpit. A poor start off the line left him chasing the pack for the first half lap, and then outbraked for Shell Oil Corner, and half spinning onto the grass. After a quick recovery back onto the track and just catching up with the back markers, the race was abruptly halted by a drive shaft failure at the end of lap 2. Race 2 driven by Shaun Mellors was conducted in very wet conditions. Again a poor start meant that Shaun spent the first three laps playing catch-up. However from this point Shaun steadily reeled in 7 places to finish 10th overall. A very credible race. The car made its 2011 debut resplendent in its new livery. Qualifying was a bit of a disaster, with us expecting a dry day, the heavens opened 5 mins before the start of qualifying! Unfortunately the car was set up for dry conditions, and consequently handled somewhat unpredictably! The first race saw Shaun Mellors run a fairly solid performance maintaining his grid position throughout the race. Race two was not so successful, as Gary Ramsdale took action to avoid a spinning SR3 RS on the first lap, which resulted in an outfield excursion. Position was never really recovered, but did finish the race 25/27. Oh well thats racing! Saturday, 2 April 2011