As the ECO Racing Radical AER SR9 is now on the Petit Le Mans provisional entry list, we have asked a few questions to Ian Dawson, the Head of the ECO Racing programme and he has kindly given us some more information : “We had been working on this for some time and only really got all the funding in place at the last minute. It is for all private teams very hard time to do this but this whole program has been difficult from the start to show a production engine program in the top class.
We will produce a Press release next week when we have the 3rd driver in place. This was done but at the last moment some unforeseen circumstances meant he could not race so slight delay .
The car has mad great progress over the past few months and a significant step forwards in drivability and performance from the engine. Harri Toivonen has completed about 4 tests since May and one was a 3 hour run with out problems. AER have changed a number of things in the fuel system and then ECU which have really helped the engine. Chassis is still been very strong with no component issues .
The drivers for Petit have not tested the car and Hideki Noda is returning after driving for us in Laguna Seca in 2008. Simon Wright gave the car a systems shake down 2 weeks ago prior the the car being shipped to the USA by sea which all help the carbon footprint we are looking at.”
As Radical Sportscars has announced last month on their website here that a Radical SR9 “will become the first car constructed to 2011′s new LMP2 rules”, we asked Ian too his feelings about that : “The second chassis is being used to look at the PROPOSED LMP2 Production engine rules and we are working with the V8 Nissan engine from Graham Dale Jones. This seeemed a logical way forwards and Radical have assisted in advise on what looks like a very straight forward installation into our current layout.
We are not sure what the ACO have planned on the rules at the moment as the introduction of the LM prototypes produced by Oreca are now forming an other class.”
We do thank Ian Dawson and we are looking forward to some more good news.
Claude Foubert