The new Praga R1R is the road-legal LMP-style supercar you thought could never happen. EVO recently tested one, and the R1R is so much like an actual race car it may be a victim of its own design.
The fundamental question surrounding a car like the Praga R1R is, probably, “does it actually need to be street legal?”
Just because you can make a LMP-style racing car for the street, should you? The R1R is literally a race car with some lights and mirrors fitted to let you drive it from the garage to the racetrack. At a whopping cost of £150,000, you could probably afford the cost of hauling a track-only car around.
Not only that, but this thing should probably only be driven on the track, and only by somebody who really knows what they’re doing. Here’s the technical stuff from EVO’s write-up on the car:
Power comes from a 2-litre four-cylinder F4R 832 Renaultsport engine (from a Clio 200) with Praga’s own turbocharging system applied. It produces 390bhp at 6750rpm and 391lb ft at 4200rpm and drives through a sequential paddle-operated Hewland ‘box with a centrifugal clutch that means pulling away is simply a case of slowly building up the revs… The R1R weighs 670kg so performance with the engine running full boost (you can turn it down to around 330bhp) is suitably nutty. Think sub-3 to 60mph. More impressive still is the downforce, the R1R producing more than its total mass by 124mph.
As Jethero Bovingdon points out in the video, does it look like he’s in a street car? No, it doesn’t. Because it’s not a street car. It’s a racing car with some bits, and I’m not sure there’s a road anywhere in the world that you could actually drive the R1R to and use its full potential.
The thing belongs on a racetrack, but I guess the street-legality makes it that much easier to show up to Cars & Coffee on Sunday morning.