You can get to it through IMSA TV or search YouTube.
Here is a link to IMSA TV post of the race:
https://imsatv.imsa.com/video/032018...-120-broadcast

 

Or were you looking for this race:

enjoy!

 

 

Nice that you have kept those.

That was an impressive time back that. Looking back at it from what we have now it is amazing that they could race those cars, especially with the poor brakes they had. The MINIs today probably have more/better brakes than any of those cars had.

I never saw any of those races, but I did read about them in Road&Track. The Ford GT was such a fantastic car that I dreamed of owning one. The best I got to that was a very accurate Revel model that I put together. It had rubber tires, working doors and engine hatch, suspension and engine with the intertwined headers that I had to put together. I wish I still had that.

 

Not MINI related but Sebring. Bob Wolleck was a famous car racer that won the 24 Hrs of Daytona four times in a Porsche. He was French, loved to ski and ride a bicycle. You think about all the times he flirted with death driving those cars and then back in 2001 when he was 58 he was riding his bicycle back from the track to his hotel room and was killed when a van hit him from behind.

 

I remember that...sad day at Sebring it was. Everyone was devastated when they heard about it. He was a very likable guy & very popular.

 

Sorry to hear that, especially considering I ride bikes, too.

I have a friend who got me into doing track events (HPDEs) and once told me that the most dangerous part of doing a track event was driving to the track and driving back home...

And back then texting wasn’t as popular as it is now and just wait for when a self driving car decides to take a left turn in front of you.

Sorry for the rant.

 

Well, MINI did it again. They won the ST class at 4 hrs at Watkins Glen. The heat was up there (in the 90s), so this was a real test of the machines and the drivers. They would have taken 1st and 2nd had the 2nd place MINI not have an issue on the last lap.

It is sad to see the ST class disappear from the IMSA racing format as it has such close ties to the street version of the cars and brand identification. It is fun to walk around them and say thatI have those brakes or some other component. And there may be some correlation between how those cars perform and a version of that car that you might take on the track. While the TCR cars are still street car based, they are more heavily modified and not something that I might have. Also, the WTCR races seem to be run more as a rallycross (bumper cars), complete with a “Joker Loop” and I have no interest in watching NASCAR style sports car racing with a contrived way to screw things up for the lead car and driver..

 

 

+1

 

JCW shirt no, but a 4' x 8' poster I do have. That's it below on my porch.

 

Very Nice!

 

 

 

Very cool.

 

indeed

 

MINI had it in the bag at the Canadian Motorsport Park this past weekend (just watched the race on YouTube). A 1st place finish was just 6 laps away. Then it happened. The yellow bumblebee pull off the track to end the day in disappointment. This was after a similar ending to the 73 MINI just a little bit earlier in the race and similar to the failure at WGI a week before. This left the 37 MINI to pick up the pieces for a 2nd place finish. While second is nothing to sneeze at, the 1st would have been outstanding because of the way it would have come; by driving skill, not by the failure of others. I know, a win is a win, but this would have come with boastful pride. Mark Pumbo put the moves on the BMW who had been in 1st, made a great pass and was walking away with the race. Classic racing at its best. And then classic racing failure. They showed the LAP team at the pits and you could see the reluctant acceptance of the 2nd place finish. The thing is that, when the MINIs are doing really well, the announcers take notice and they bring attention to the ST class of cars.

There was something said about “driveshaft failure”. This has been a reoccurring problem this year, which has been unfortunate. I wonder what is different this year as compared to the past 2 years?

It was also noted during the race that one of the MINI drivers is just 16 years old. He ran in the first stint and was doing the job. Wow! I hope he and the Pumbos get rides next year somewhere in the IMSA races. They have done really well for MINI and deserve a chance to continue on. Maybe in TCR? BTY - I looked up the cars for TCR and neither BMW nor MINI are in the international mix. I thought I had read that BWM was to be playing in TCR. I guess not, at least not now. Hey, has anyone seen what LAP has planned for next year?

Say, is anyone headed to LRP next weekend? While I would love to, i will be attending a previous commitment elsewhere.

 

 

My guess would be that there is no money in showing or promoting the ST class of cars, and people want more, better, faster; hence the TRC replacements. Watkins Glen had a 3 year contract to do the Indy Car racing there. Guess what - In the first 2 years WGI didn’t draw the crowds Indy Car wanted so they cancelled the race this year. This is one of the classic tracks that all of the racers want to run on and real race fans want to watch them on. But no. Like a lot of things now-a-days, it is all about the money, the sport comes secondary. Just look at what has happened to F1. Half the races are on on city streets now (probably at the expense of the city) where there is hardly any place for real fans to watch; just high priced rooms for the money people to party in. The BIG money draw. A big turn around from the sixties when it was all about the sport, fans and money came as a bonus.

Yes, it is a shame that they couldn’t or wouldn’t figure out a way to keep ST class racing in IMSA.

 

Yay!!!! #73 won Lime Rock!!! #52 was 3rd! #37 4th! All the MINI's were FAST today!

 

Woo Hooo!

Looking forward to seeing it when it is posted.

 

It would be interesting to have population figures for the areas around each of the road course tracks here in the US. I grew up in Central New York and there is not any large cities or metro/areas nearby unless you consider Rochester that is just over 1,000,000 close to the Glen.

Tickets for 1st Tier auto racing are not cheap. In our area the local toll road agency said "we are not getting the cars needed on the new 540 Extension so we are going to raise the prices up." Great, chase even more people away. For me it makes sense to lower the prices so more people will use the road and would think this would work on race tickets. Make money off the concessions and with more people it would be logical to assume you could. More people get more buzz and then more people watch.

But then I am just some old guy that has a cute car with Chevy Cobalt Brembo brakes on it.