FIRST DRIVES

By combining intense trackday performance w ith enhanced durability, this latest Radical aims to offer the best of both worlds. Does it succeed?

This month: Radical’s new SR10, BMW’S M440i xdrive, a 720bhp Bullitt Mustang, and (at last!) Porsche’s 992 Carrera S with a manual gearbox

LOTS OF MAGICAL SEQUENCES GET seared into the memory banks in this job. I can close my eyes and relive so many drives: howling along the Pacific Coast Highway in the Ford GT in 2005 with its chief engineer alongside and a Ferrari 360 Modena (cheekily supplied by Ford as a benchmark) disappearing in the rear-view mirror; chasing 288 GTO, F40 and Enzo in the sublime F50 across our favourite road in Wales on a crisp autumn evening; watching Dickie Meaden slip and slide in a Carrera GT from the driver’s seat of a Noble M600; and so many more.

You wouldn’t expect a cold day in Lincolnshire to elbow its way into the files marked ‘Thank God I don’t have a real job’. However, back in 2016 Radical rolled into our Track Car of the Year test with its RXC Spyder and made Blyton Park feel as epic as Spa-francorchamps on a sunny day. I’ll never forget trying to beat the lap time set the previous year by the 650S GT3. We missed out by three-tenths but my face is still aching from the smile and I’m still hoarse from all the whooping and hollering. The combination of real, tangible downforce, unbelievable approachability and a 3-litre V8 that produces 440bhp and revs to 10,500rpm was genuinely extraordinary. It’s hard to imagine a car more thrilling.

Today the new Radical SR10 has even bigger