- MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR DRIVERS
- MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR DRIVER
- MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR UPGRADE
- MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR FULL
MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR FULL
The ABS-free brakes are great, enormously powerful but full of feel, and for a turbo, the engine is really quite flexible and keen to rev. Happily, when the car does slide there’s plenty of lock to catch it, and the power steering makes life easier. I’ve never competed in a front-wheel-drive car before, and the Mini is a very different animal from the Radical SR1 I raced in 2016 and the Ginetta G40 I had a couple of forays in before that, so there’s plenty I need to adapt to.įor example, the fact that although the front slick tyres get warm quite quickly, the rears stay cold, making the first few laps something of an adventure. I drive the car for the first time on a Thursday test day before the race weekend, with three sessions to get used to it.
Sending more than 255bhp through an aggressive front differential over the cambers of Oulton Park, one of Britain’s most contoured race tracks, gives the steering wheel plenty to think about. Mini doesn’t yet make an autonomous car, but the JCW Challenge’s steering certainly seems to have a mind of its own.Īccelerating out of the pits for the first time, the front wheels dart about like a hard-working sniffer dog. Budgets for a season’s racing are thought to vary from £20k to £60k.
MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR DRIVERS
Alternatively, drivers can hire a car from a team rather than own it outright. How much does a Mini Challenge race car cost?Ī brand-new JCW class car costs £41,950 +VAT, or a secondhand one from around £30k. Think of the Mini JCW Challenge car as a miniaturised BTCC car Rob Smith tells me that when he tested with a British Touring Car team last year, other than a bit more power and braking performance, the car felt virtually the same as the Mini, right down to the instrument panel. Mini’s trademark gigantic dial still remains in the centre of the dash, but now houses all of the switchgear. Inside, there’s one seat, a set of beautifully machined racing pedals and a carbonfibre dashboard with a Cosworth digital instrument panel and data logging system. Despite all this stripped-out weight-saving, a reassuringly chunky rollcage puts the grammes back on, to a kerbweight of around 1160kg including the driver. The doors are still steel, but have their inners replaced by carbonfibre panels. A Boeing-spec wing sprouts from the tailgate (although it doesn’t create much in the way of meaningful downforce), and certain body panels are changed to fibreglass – including the vent-slashed bonnet and ground-hugging front bumper.
MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR UPGRADE
Even the power steering is race-specific, with a different motor mounted on the steering column.Īn ECU upgrade bumps the 2.0-litre turbocharged engine’s power output up to around 255bhp, and it’s hooked up to a race-spec limited-slip differential and six-speed sequential Quaife gearbox – more on which in a bit. Suspension is taken care of by three-way adjustable Nitron dampers, with adjustable camber front and rear, and giant racing brakes at the front. Other than the bodyshell and the rear brakes, the race car shares very little with the JCW road car I drove to the circuit.
MINI RACING ADVENTURES FASTEST CAR DRIVER
Alongside the chrome Union Flag-wrapped car I’m driving, the team is running 2015 Mini Challenge champion Charlie Butler-Henderson, multiple race-winner Rob Smith and James Turkington, brother of double British Touring Car champ Colin.Įlsewhere on the grid, there’s current BTCC driver Jeff Smith (who’s racing in both championships on the same weekend, using a helicopter to get him from BTCC qualifying at Donington Park in time to do the same in the Mini), the Honda factory-backed BTCC outfit Team Dynamics runs two cars for Will and Henry Neal, sons of triple touring car champion Matt, and up and down the field there’s a host of champions and winners from other series in the UK and beyond.Īlthough each Mini Challenge car begins life on the production line at Cowley, it’s whisked away to a very different upbringing.
0 kommentar(er)
