We already knew that Ian Dawson had given up the ECO Racing BioDiesel project. However, he is still involved in sportscars racing and is now focused on the LMP2 category. He is currently the owner of two Radicals SR9 which will be powered by a Nissan engine, a production engine, built by IES, the IES 4.0 LTR. 

Ian Dawson has kindly given to us some comments about his new commitment : “We have completed around 1000 km testing and had various drivers in the car (the car has been testing at Spa and at Snetterton). All commented on how easy the car was and well balanced . A couple had raced FLM cars and felt that the Radical gave much better feed back and was very good over curbs with good traction. We have some small updates to front aero , damping and roll stiffness for the next test .

The car has been running on LMP 1 wheels as the new OZ LMP 2 wheels are not ready until the end of the month and as usual they just produce such a great wheel and in short time . We have gone to the wider front rim which we can see will be a big help with the development of the current tyres Dunlop and others have produced. Weight wise with the Production engine being heavier than the racing versions we are at 860 kg so this will be good for ballast .

Price wise the chassis and engine will be inside the ACO price cap and for this we can see with the car already in a position to race that it is a strong car with a lot of mileage rather than a new design.

One chassis is fully race ready now and the second is a new car we never raced and is waiting to install an engine kit which will take about six weeks from a financial commitment . These chassis have a different gearbox (hewland) and rear suspension as we originally built the cars to take the production V10 deiesl which now pays off as the wheel base is the same as and SR9 but the engine space is able to accommodate the new bread of production based motors .

We would like to sell the second car and the other will enter IMSA 3 rounds this year. It was great to see the Radical again finish LE MANS and this shows what we know : well driven, it is a very strong car.

I am very interested to work with new owners to work with us on the IMSA program in 2010 and in LMS if needed.”

We do thank Ian Dawson.

Claude Foubert