I believe Dave was kind enough to repost my brief and somewhat incomprehensible message that I had written about Mission MINI while in the airport in Frankfurt.

Well, after some rest I finally have finsihed uploading the rest of my pictures to my Mission MINI website, and added some descriptions to give a better feel of just what was going on. In a while some of my team members will have pages up too, I'll add links as they go online.

Sometime soon I hope to have some videos posted.

The page can be reached here:

Kendall's Mission MINI Site

 

Great pictures Kendall.

I'm looking forward to seeing the video.

 

Thanks Kendall. It was very exciting reading your descriptions and following along with the story. Wish I could have been there! But hey, maybe I'll end up in the North Pole instead.

 

Great shots, great site - thanks for sharing!

There's a lot of MINIacs that thought of entering, or hoped to be in your shoes. Have fun for all of us - but don't get your hopes up about winning.

Know why?

Cause CANADA ROCKS!! The win is ours - yep - it's in the bag! We've got a Gold Medal Olympian leading our crew.

So have a beer and relax - drive hard, and have fun - but you won't beat the Canucks!

_________________
=R= #3077
My Sharona (Waiting to be released from the BMW compound in Toronto): LY/B MCS, Stripes, Premium & Sport Packs, Sunroof & Leather. Cold Pack is included in Canada, eh?

 

awesome website/pics - im sure you're having a total blast!

have fun, we hope to hear back from you soon...

go Team USA!

 

Dude, I hate to disappoint you but Team Canada didn't win! We had a bit of a handicap with a member who didn't know how to drive a standard but insisting on driving (until she hit a parked car). We're talking not knowing which pedal is which and starting off in reverse or 3rd gear, etc. I'm just glad that we didn't hit a ped.

Trackday was incredible. I can still remember the instructors yelling, "supa!" for mowing down pylongs and screams of teammates in the car when I did a 180 degree reverse spin turn ("Hollywood" or "Rockford" turn).

Was a ginormous amount of fun. Cheers to BMW/Mini!

 

Wow, you guys hit a parked car? I hadn't heard that anyone hit anything, apart from one of the press the rolled their MCS on track day (they day after ours) doing the bootlegger (hollywood turn you spoke of). They came away unscratched and even the MINI was OK once uprighted.

 

Did you hear which magazine/publication the driver was from?

 

Whoa - Canada had a non-standard driver driving? How did that (let's be nice) bozo ever get on the team?

Oh well, my sentiments were in the right place. Gotta cheer for the home-team!

Thanks for the update - too bad about our loss. Any other news worth sharing? Curious minds want to know.....

_________________
=R= #3077
My Sharona (Waiting to be released from the BMW compound in Toronto): LY/B MCS, Stripes, Premium & Sport Packs, Sunroof & Leather. Cold Pack is included in Canada, eh?

 

>>Did you hear which magazine/publication the driver was from?

No, I think they didn't want to embarass anyone from the press! I believe the details were that they accidentally hit the gas instead of the clutch when doing a reverse 180, and just ended up heading off the road while trying to spin...

Apprently two cameras got the roll on tape, but I doubt we'll ever see that footage!! It's really too bad too, as from the sound of things it would insipre a lot of confidence in people seeing how well the car and driver made out. But I can understand they wouldn't want to put any kind of negative spin around the whole event.

 

Yeah, I figured it would probably be on the hush hush, but thought it might be worth asking, just in case that little jem of information was known.

Glad you had a great time. I'll PM you after posting this BTW.

 

SHE hit a side mirror on a parked car with our mirror late on day 1. She was looking at the shifter to shift (because she didn't know how to drive a stickshift) instead of watching where she was going. Big bang but no damage (just a slight paint swap) on either cars. She freaked out and jumped in the back seat.

We had some other adventures like getting air from hopping off a curb racing out of a parking garage (by the sushi restuarant on La Rambla) which set off the low tire pressure warning light (just needed to be reset - tires were fine other than being shagged from a day @ the race track) and tested the undercarriage protection plate, 180 Hollywood turn near Placa de Catalunya to change direction when we accidentally charged into a 1-way street (bad sattelite uplink on the pre-production navigation PDA), handbrake turn @ 120 km/h near Juan's car wash to make a corner (bad human navigation), pullling 200+ km/h in a train of 5 MCS to get to the docks for the finale, and many, many smokey burnouts to impress Barcelonean girls.

There were some escapades on the race track also. Some teams had people toss their cookies in their cars (first day in the cars!) from drinking heavily the night before and getting throw around in the back seat during hard cornering, braking, and accelerating. Some passengers had their sunglasses fly off their faces and banged their heads/limbs during 180 spin turn exercise, the Austrian celebrity/actress went 4x4-ing on the long track (in front of the main tent) when I accidentally (who am I kidding, intentionally) pressured her by riding her rear bumper (gotta love her though, she never too her foot off the gas), a can of Red Bull burst in our car from getting thrown around on the floor (those cupholders don't work for the slim Red Bull cans) so it had to be throw out the sunroof mid-corner on the long course, etc.

There were some action out of the cars too. Team Canada closed every restaurant and bar with the French & Luxembourg crew and did our share to improve international relations. [img]c:temppixelsa.jpg[/img]