• Scottish veteran 'excited' by Hussarya GT following test drives

• Successful test sessions at UK circuits end development

• Reid plans to race Poland's new GT contender during 2017 season

• He endorses the car as a potent safe and fast option for amateur racers

LONDON, November 25th 2016

Reid is best known as a British Touring Car Championship frontrunner with Nissan and Ford during the series' heyday in the 1990s. The Scot also finished on the podium at Le Mans in a Porsche 962 and beat future Formula 1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve to a national Formula 3 title during his successful career racing in Japan.

Now Reid, who remains as active as ever racing GTs and historics at the age of 59, has been contributing his vast experience to the test and development work of the Polish Arrinera GT, which is due to make its race debut next year.

'I'm very impressed by the project,' he said. 'The personnel Arrinera have hired are the right people – very professional and of great quality. Engineer Mike Rowe I remember from way back in the 1980s and we speak the same language. He's great to work with.

'The quality of build is also very high and the Polish team of designers behind the car are clearly highly qualified and a credit to the standard of engineering education in Poland.'

Reid is optimistic that the Hussarya can achieve Arrinera's target of becoming established as a strong, safe and fast alternative to used premium-brand racing cars for amateur racing drivers.

'The car is very quick,' he said. 'I've tested in the dry and in the wet, most recently at Donington and Snetterton, and it went really well. Because it is mid-engined, it has the kind of handling balance I really like. It is stable and predictable and is perfect for amateur drivers who want to jump in and go quickly straight away. Porsches and Ferraris require time and experience to drive properly, but this is much more straightforward and all for a price significantly less than a GT3 car.

The car is priced at US$229,000, with an obligatory spares package for an additional US$69,000.

'I'm very excited to be involved in the project and the plan is for me to race the car next year, although in which series and where is yet to be decided,' Reid added. 'There are plenty of series for which it will be eligible including the GT Cup and Britcar in the UK, and in national series around Europe.'

The Hussarya is powered by an LS7 V8 engine pushing out 500bhp and is mated to a six-speed Hewland sequential racing gearbox operated by paddle shifts. It features a modular steel spaceframe chassis, bespoke pushrod suspension with Öhlins four-way adjustable dampers, Alcon brakes with 380mm discs and six-pot mono bloc calipers all round. Bosch racing ABS and traction control are standard equipment. The car is built to FIA GT3 specification.

Piotr R. Frankowski, Arrinera Racing's CEO, an experienced race driver and multiple Goodwood Festival of Speed participant, has also tested the car at Silverstone and Snetterton. He said: 'We definitely want this car to inspire confidence, to give amateur drivers a more shallow learning curve. Simultaneously, the Arrinera will reward the superior skill of professional drivers, especially in difficult conditions where our superior balance and predictable handling will allow them to safely push the envelope.'

The Arrinera Hussarya GT made its world debut at the 2016 Autosport International Show in Birmingham and became the first Polish supercar to run at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July. The car's body is designed by Pavlo Burkatskyy with aerodynamics by Professor Janusz Piechna of Warsaw Technical University, and the mechanicals are engineered by Krzysztof Stelmaszczuk. It is built in Cambridgeshire with many components manufactured in Poland, including the carbon fibre skin.

Beyond Arrinera's racing ambitions, a road-legal track day version is in the pipeline and will be launched later next year.

Photo credit: Arrinera Racing
posted on conceptcarz.com

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