Hey guys, I got a last minute chance to attend MINI's performance driving track event tomorrow. Has anyone been to one of these? I'd love to hear what I might be in for. The website doesn't make it sound particularly exciting:

Worst case scenario, there's free food.

 

Perhaps this might help!
http://new.minimania.com/article/259...ing_Techniques

or perhaps:
http://mini-cooper-parts.blogspot.co...1_archive.html

 

Well, to give this thread a conclusion, I'll talk a bit about the day.

The group that owns all of the German import dealers here (Audi, Porsche, VW, BMW, MINI.) brought in a driver to give instruction. His resume was pretty impressive... test driver and engineer for Porsche, AMG, Toyota F1, etc.

There were several cars to play with:

2012 Cooper S auto
2012 Cooper S manual
2012 Coupe auto
2012 Roadster S manual
2012 CMS All4 auto
2012 Clubman S auto

The day started with an emergency braking test... hit 50km/h, slam on the brakes, etc. After that they did an emergency brakeless lane change in a little cone course. Everyone got two shots at both of these.

After that there was a time trial autocross course. I've never done AutoX before and I found it a little tough to know which direction to go, but I didn't take out any cones and it was a lot of fun.

Next up was the actual race track. For this I was driving the Cooper S manual. Two people to a car with a driver switch after every driver had a chance to do two laps behind the instructor, giving you a chance to go as fast as you felt up to. It's a fairly small track, but a TON of fun. It was pouring rain, so it was easy to reach the limits of grip, which was fun. I did pretty good and didn't hit any walls or cones, and kept a pretty quick pace.

I've never been on a track before, and I'm really glad I had the chance to do it. Great fun