We took the afternoon off and drove the new convertible up to see the North American MINI Cooper Challenge at Summit Point, West Virginia.  Randy Webb won the first race and Steve Diniz won the second in a day of very exciting MINI racing at Summit Point.  Run in conjunction with the Phil Wicks Driving Academy and taking place during MINI Meet East, there was a pretty good turn-out for a mid-week event.  We got really lucky with the weather given all of the flooding of the past week.  We just caught the last two laps of the first race but were there for all of the second.

At the start of the second race, Steve Diniz got the jump on Randy Webb into the Karussel and took the early lead.  They were running neck-and-neck going into the back straight, but when the came out of the hairpin Randy was back in the lead and pulling away.  It was a very close race for the first 5 laps or so.  Steve seemed to have the advantage in cornering and Randy in horsepower.  Going into the Karussel, Steve was a little late on the brakes and took a brief off-course adventure around the outside of the turn.  He was very fortunate not to visit the tire barrier.  It looked like Randy had the second race wrapped up and then he disappeared on the backside of the course.  I heard he may have run out of gas which is a disappointing end to an excellent race.

Many more photos on Flickr.