Silverstone Radical Masters
Radical ventures
22nd April 2011
The weekend of 16th / 17th April saw Ryan and his new team mate Tony Brewer head to Silverstone to compete in rounds 1 and 2 of the European Masters series.
It was going to be a tough weekend with both Ryan and Tony having not driven the SR8 Radical before and Tony having not raced for 5 years, so the aim was to get two solid race finishes under their belts, gather information / improvements and move on from there.
Friday's practice day was very dis-jointed, as all five sessions had two red flags in which meant track time for Tony was heavily reduced which was only going to make the race weekend more challenging.
Saturday and qualifying day for both races has a format where Tony drove first for fifteen minutes, then a five minute driver change period before Ryan competed in his fifteen minute session.
Sadly our car was one of ten which failed the static noise test and therefore had to have the exhaust silencer changed before it was allowed to go on track, this meant Tony didnt make it out on track at all and Ryan just about made it out to qualify 11th out of 48 cars.
On Sunday Tony had to start race one from the pit lane along with the other nine Radicals which failed the noise test and do the best he could in a race situation for 20 minutes before handing over to Ryan - Tony did a solid drive for his first race in 5 years and brought the car into the pits to hand to Ryan in 45th position and by the end of the race the car crossed the line in 31st position.
Race two saw Ryan hang onto his 11th position on older tyres until the driver window 25 minutes in, and Tony once again did a solid drive to only lose seven postions and finish the race in 19th place.
Overall Ryan said, "it was a great experience to drive another new car in a new championship, and will be a good challenge during the year, to improve the set-up of the car, and sit beside and coach Tony on additional test days and go through data analysis to make us a stronger pairing."