... And it was awesome. The car is so different when it can actually grip the road...

I ran it in Waterloo, Iowa with the Iowa Region SCCA, which apparently has a few past/present National Champions. The course was fantastic.

I was 4 seconds off of Roger Christoferson's FS Camaro on the ~60 second course, so I still have a lot of room for improvement. I think the only reason that I was that close was that there was a slalom that he had to take "the long way" around, while the smaller cars were able to get through the tight exit that the alternate entrance forced on you, but it allowed you to essentially turn a 4 cone slalom into a 2 cone wiggle.

The Mini is different then my previous Civic. It really doesn't seem to do that well in the sweepers. It seems to really start letting go by the time you're getting towards the end of the corner. My Civic would never loose the front end on a sweeper, in fact it was usually harder to make the car stop oversteering. I guess I'll just have to slow down more for sweepers in the Mini The mini runs through transistions and slaloms in a way that my civic could only dream of, though.

Pointless post, I was just really pumped about how much fun the car was on a grippy surface!