It was a beautiful weekend to be at the track. (Actually, there are no bad weekends to be at the track. Except maybe when it snows — been there, done that.) Except for a brief deluge, it was sunny and warm all three days. I really appreciate the Friday IA days. I get more track time in that one day than I do in the rest of the weekend. So much in fact, that I almost ran out of gas.

The two videos below show the last run session on Sunday for the A Group. The groups all had about 12 students each which was an ideal size for this track. We were also fairly close in speed, with a few faster than the MINI (OK, most) and a few slower. This was also the first time I’ve run with another MINI on the track that wasn’t driven by an instructor. It was cool to see the difference in performance between the R53 (mine) and the R56. With about 20% more torque, the new turbo really pulls away on the straight.

The skidpad was interesting. I don’t know what BSR has done to it, but you’d think a skidpad was supposed to be slick. This one had an amazing amount of grip, even when soaked. We were hitting speeds above 42MPH before getting any understeer. It wouldn’t be a problem except there isn’t much run-off area when you start to spin or push outside of the wet zone. I managed to get the MINI to oversteer by increasing the pressure differential between the front and rear tires. When the tires were cold, it really came around with just a throttle lift. When the tires were hot, we had to induce it with the E-brake.