G Street! MINI SE
 

We have a 2022 MINI SE doing well on Pax overall in my region running in G Street with good Extreme Summer tires. Driver has some experience but is new to driving a MINI and an electric car, he says the charge holds up to the event with plenty of extra power for fun runs and getting home.

Plus the MINI SE is one of the least expensive basic Electric cars for now.

Wow!

Cheers,

Charlie

We will keep an eye on the new SE but it looks good for GS class. Only Extreme Summer tires and it goes and handles well.
Our courses are short, tight, and busy. Not much top speed or distance, 30 sec usually with a crossover or two and 3 tight U turns. Miatas do well.

GRM just did an article on this. here. I imagine the new Civic Si would be tough competition

I'll be taking my '23 SE for my first autoX next weekend. Do you know the standard alignment settings are?

Alignment shops will have the OEM specs for the MINI SE. There isn't much you can adjust for front negative camber which is likely about -0.5 degrees. Toe setting can be adjusted both front and rear.

OEM alignment is slightly toe in for better wear, for autocross you can set front toe to Zero or even slight toe out for quicker turning response if your course has sharper turns. So front toe maybe 1/16" toe out or zero toe.

Rear camber you want the least negative you can adjust for but it will be more negative than the fronts or about -1 degree. More negative in the rear isn't going to help you in autocross on the FWD car so you want to minimize camber.
Rear toe setting is fully adjustable, aim for mild toe in for straight line stability like 1/8" toe in or within OEM specs is OK.

In G Street class you cannot add suspension mod parts to adjust alignment, you are limited to OEM parts. In general more front negative camber is helpful to use more of your front tires during turning. Tire wear will be better when you run more front negative camber. For street driving it is the opposite, mild camber helps with tire wear and more negative camber will wear out inner treads of the front tire fast. Toe settings in front also can wear out tires if our of OEM spec range for street driving.

I've always done my own alignments. The shops seem to charge over $100 around here. Since I may well not want to run the same settings for daily driving as weekend warring, I was hoping to find the standard specs. It's preferable to measuring my car before I start playing with it. That won't give tolerances. I'm hoping to find a happy medium for rear camber and toe, which are a PITA to set compared to front toe. At least on my R53 they are.

delete
 

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In our region we see the MINI SE do very well within G Street class at each event, easily top 10 on Pax overall. All that is needed are good tires.

My times at my first event were, well, awful. I 100% blamed the tyres :)
2nd event, somewhat less crap. Still must be the tyres :)
3rd event, with some nice smelly RT660s and wondering what excuse I'd need to make now: Middle of the field on pax, top noob, 2nd fastest Mini driver. Faster outright than two of the three Porsches. Yeah, I'm certain that tyres were 100% the problem in events 1 and 2. ;)
I almost spun in my 3rd event and didn't like how much the back was swinging around. I'm playing with settings and learning how to drive less crappy. I have maxed out the rear camber for next event, I'll try that. Easy enough to reverse at an the event. Dunno if I can keep this rate of progress up, though. ;) There's a very quick driver in a GS Mazdaspeed3 that I'm not beating next weekend. :(