Senna Summerbell enters Radical Caribbean Cup

Jamaica’s Senna Summerbell, son of five-time Caribbean Motor Racing Champion (CMRC) David, will join the grid for the third season of the Radical Caribbean Cup (RCC) which will get under way at Bushy Park Barbados next month. Entries for the Bushy Park Motorsports Inc (BPMSI) Race Meet on Sunday, July 10, open today (Wednesday) at Motorsport Services, Haggatt Hall and will close next Friday, July 1.

 A third-generation racing driver – grandfather David was also a successful competitor - 20-year-old Senna will become the third Summerbell to race at Bushy Park. Father David was a CMRC race-winner and 10-time podium finisher at the St Philip facility, and the first Champion in the Suzuki Challenge Series Swift Cup in 2015, in which he was later joined by Senna’s older sister Samantha.

Senna started racing karts in 2008 and has four Jamaican titles to his name - Rotax MiniMax Champion, Rotax Junior Champion twice and the Rotax Senior Champion in 2018, when he progressed to racing cars. More widespread recognition came when he was named the Jamaica Millennium Motoring Club (JMMC) Winner of the FIA Americas Award 2017 in the Junior category and placed fifth in the 2018 E-Kart Rotax World Championship in Brazil, the first Jamaican to race an electric kart at that level.

His first race car was a Mitsubishi Mivec, in which he competed in the Improved Production (IP) class in 2018, winning races in IP2 and IP3, then also raced in ThunderSport in 2019, the last season before the pandemic brought racing to a halt; he was ThunderSport 1 Class Champion and IP2 Champion in 2019. This year, he has been at the wheel of a Tropical Battery-sponsored Radical SR8, in which he won two of the three Thundersport races when racing resumed after a nearly three-year break at the Jamaica Race Drivers Club (JRDC) ‘Radical Invasion’ at Dover Raceway on Easter Monday, beating Reigning Champion Kyle Gregg in the process.

Looking forward to his first races on the 2.01-kilometre International Circuit, Senna said: “It will be a great experience for me as I have never raced a circuit car outside of Jamaica before. My expectations are just to do my best and see what results I can get. The driver line-up in this race is very experienced and they know the track like the backs of their hands. It will be my first race for the RCC season so hopefully I can salvage a good result and by the next event I should be on my ‘A’ game. Anything can happen, though, so let’s hope for an extraordinary weekend.”

With the start of the 2022 RCC already postponed twice because of the pandemic, the season has been shortened: there will now be four rounds, with BPMSI organising rounds two and three at Bushy Park on August 27/28 and October 9, with the final hosted by the Guyana Motor Racing & Sports Club (GMRSC) at its South Dakota facility on November 12/13. The format will be as before, with Practice and Qualifying followed by three races, with points scored towards the Driver’s Championship and also the Nations Cup.

Only one round of the 2020 RCC was run, which did not constitute a championship, so there was no new name to add to the roll of honour. In the previous two seasons, there had been eight different winners in 24 races, with 2018 Champion Stuart Maloney of Barbados the most successful over the two years, claiming seven victories and a further six podium finishes. Despite failing to win a race in his debut season, Jamaica’s William Myers beat the Reigning Champion to the 2019 crown by seven points after an impressively consistent performance netted him nine podium finishes.

RCC Championship co-ordinator Kurt Seabra said: “It is great that we can restart the Radical Caribbean Cup. Fast Parts Caribbean has been a leader in introducing emerging Caribbean talent to their driver line-up and this continues with Senna. I look forward to seeing if he can emulate the success of his countryman William Myers. We are really looking forward to the action”

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