“At the end of 2008, Sasha embarks on a much bigger challenge – testing to Rob Wilson’s highly regarded race car driving school, which many of today’s F1 drivers went through in their beginnings. Although he was driving a car with a steering wheel on the right for the first time in his life, the results were great, so he was invited to a month of testing in the Formula Renault UK team – Manor Competition. He leaves a remarkable impression (although he is riding in a single-seater formula for the first time) and receives an invitation to join the team next season. As the greats Kimmi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, and many others drove for Manor in previous years, Radola with excitement has accepted the invitation of a great team.”

“And that test is just beginning. The engines start, the pits hum, the cars start coming out towards the track with a noisy but relatively moderate “murmur”. They come to the exit line, and then – roar. The screaming cars disappear into the horizon at high speed and after a few seconds, with flaming tongues from the exhaust pipes, they are already braking in the first bend a few hundred meters away. Sitting in the car, Sasha receives the latest instructions from his mechanic Simon and other engineers. Despite a well-intentioned warning that his car will surely turn off at Sasha’s first drive out of the garage, due to F2 inexperience, Sasha, to their surprise, starts without any problems and a few moments later he is already running on the track at speeds higher than 280 km/h. And so it goes on, with several planned boxing entries to change tires, for a full hour, as long as each of the eight tests it will take in these two days lasts. We asked Sasha in the pits after the first hour of driving and after he seemingly cold-bloodedly got out of the car, the first words were, “Man, this is crazy! For the first time in my life I feel like I’m driving something really big, the real thing!”