After a long off season we attended our first event of the season at Auto club Speedway in Fontana. This was a NASA event and would be running the Roval course. That is enter at the exit of turn 4 through turn 1 and 2 part way down the back straight then a sharp left and right into the infield. It a fun course and fast. I like the best as it's only 15 minutes from home.

We had a leaky intake valve so we had the head rework during the off season. We also found the supercharger coating coming off the rotors and had the SC replaced. This combination seems to have cured our problem with low boost from last year. Thanks go out to MINI for help with the supercharger and to Jan with RMW for the head work.

This year we are competing with NASA in Performance Touring B. pretty much near the top in performance as A is the top class with the exception of unlimited.

It appears the class is quit competitive as Mothers Polish sponsors 6 new RX8. What a site to see their transporter and all the new RX8's lined up.

For Saturday we qualified 4th and finished 3rd in class and Sunday qualified 4th and finished 2nd in class 4th overall. What that means is I had RX8's all around me all the time. That would be 3 RX8's in front myself and 3 more behind. All the other cars, Honda's, a Camaro, Nissan, and a few BMW's were all to the rear.

I don't have a video as we were having problems with that but here are a few pictures I thought you'd all enjoy.






Thanks to Jan at RMW, The Bergman Companies, FES Auto for their Shift Light, a nice piece of equipment and Mini of Monrovia for all of their help and support.

 

Concratulations! Nice photos, car looks great.
Do you ever race with the GTS group?
I also had to replace a supercharger back in 2006 for the same coating problem. Should probably check it again.
We just race with the NASA GTS group in Texas, has a great time and got three 2nd place finished. The Porsche 996 was 4 sec/lap faster and was beating most GTS4 cars ahead.

 

I have thought of running GTS3 as most of the time NASA list this as an upgrade, Run PTB and GTS3 as they are different run groups. Checked the times of the GTS3 cars at Fontana and they are running 1.51/52's about 5 seconds faster then what I'm running. I'm running 225/45 17 Nittos and most of the GTS field is running Hoosiers that might get me better times.

MINI stepped up and helped with the Supercharger as the one I had had less then 20,000 miles on it, and in California they warranty it for 100,000 for street MINI's.. I argued that it should not have failed at 20,000 miles period.

 

100,000? As I recall, it says 70K in the manual (for CA). Did Mini extend it for some reason? I'm only aware of an extension to 100K for the oxygen sensor...

 

Nice results and very nice pictures. Serious air!

It is great to see a MINI being put to the test and doing well.

Keep us posted and more pictures and/or videos.

Don

 

Yep 100K not many people are aware

 

That's good to know.

You said "Mini stepped up and helped with the supercharger" which implies they were being kind and generous good-guys but it looks like they were just fulfilling their legal warranty obligation.