POCKET ROCKET

GIANT INDUSTRIAL CONGLOMERATES FOR WHOM building cars is but one part of the corporate portfolio are nothing new. However, finding a minnow of a car company that makes racing cars, occasional road cars, karts, offroad trucks and aeroplanes is something of a novelty. But that’s 114-year-old Praga, based in Slovakia, whose R1 bonsai LMP racer won outright the 2020 Britcar Endurance series. Designed for high-end trackday use and highlevel competition, the R1 has the feel of a LMP3 car that’s been shrunk in the wash.

Not that the 195,000-euro (c£170,000) R1 feels much like a car at all. The ‘door’, if that’s what you can call it, feels more like threading yourself through a ship’s porthole window, and once you’ve slithered through, across and down into the cockpit your surroundings are no less alien. The R1 is the epitome