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Mini Trackday

by John Cooper

Back in Autumn 2003 I moved departments at work and I was very fortunate that the team I was leaving had a collection for a leaving present. I’m never sure whether it’s a huge complement or an insult, but the collection did quite well. This was back when I was considering buying a Mini Cooper S and so they very thoughtfully used the proceeds to buy me a Mini Cooper trackday!

The company holding the event offered it at 2 locations in the UK. Each included a number of different drives during the half day. The only difference between the 2 was that one included a few laps in a classic Mini Cooper whereas the other offered an E-type instead. As much as I would have enjoyed the classic Mini, it had to be the E-type.

As it was approaching winter, I decided to hold off booking the event until the weather would be better in spring. Due to the dates available I ended up taking the trackday in July.

In the meantime, I had indeed bought and taken delivery of my own Cooper S, but I didn’t expect this in anyway to lessen the occasion in any way. If anything I expected it to improve things as I was naturally completely comfortable with the car by the time the trackday came around and so I could just concentrate on the racing aspects.

So what actually happened on the day?

They run two sessions a day, morning and afternoon unsurprisingly. Fortunately as it later turned out with the weather, I was booked in for the morning session, which meant a 9:30 start. It turned out that they also run a Ferrari driving experience at the same track so when we got there, there must have been getting on for 60-80 drivers. Everyone got overalls on and met in the briefing room. There were 3 teams taking the Mini experience on this particular morning. From memory I think the teams were of about 8, but I was fortunate enough to be in the last team that had only 5 drivers in it. More driving and less watching I figured.

The briefing was very instructive and informative, and yet light-hearted at the same time.

Here we were taught the theory of the racing lines, something about the cars and about the etiquette on the track. Clearly the Ferraris would be much faster and so we were told the overtaking procedure. For us Mini drivers this was simply keep to your line and leave it to the Ferrari to find a safe time and place and to your instructor to use your indicators to wave them through. All sounded simple enough. We were now ready to start.

As I mentioned, the deal included a number of different drives on the day. Obviously with a number of teams the order had to be mixed up so that we weren’t all waiting for the same cars. Our itinerary was to be:

• 52-seater bus
• Autotest
• Demonstration laps
• Mini
• E-type
• High speed passenger laps in a Mini Cooper S

So to the bus. The great thing about this was that we all got to take along any spectators we had brought along, so we had a selection of family and friends on-board including my wife and our 2 boys. We were taken to a large open area where a number of cones marked out a number of gates forming a circuit. After a demonstration lap by our instructor (who knocked down a cone incidentally) we each took a go. This was surprisingly good fun. In some respects the driving itself was quite easy. All the controls were as on a car, just a lot larger. To many of you who may have driven trucks in the past this may seem like a dumb and obvious statement but it was a pleasant surprise and relief to me. No, the difficulty was the sheer size of the thing and judging the turning. I managed to get around knocking down only a single cone, which being the same as the instructor I was more than happy with.

Next came the autotest. Normally this would have been held in one of the Mini Coopers, but unfortunately one of these was out of action (they never actually told us why!) and so we were relegated to a Mk1 Golf. This was a fairly standard tight course of weaving around cones, reversing etc. Had I been in the Mini I’m sure that this would have been quite an easy event for me simply due to the familiarity with the car, but as it was, it was probably my worst due to my complete inability to locate first gear after reverse. Whilst I was moving forwards I think I was making good time, it was the bits in between when I was waving the gearstick around that cost me badly. We won’t say anymore about the autotest.

Now we got to the main event. We started this with the 3 or 4 demonstration laps in a Mini Cooper with the instructor. Throughout this he provided a running commentary of what he was doing and I was struck by the calmness in his voice. The track was conveniently marked out with boards indicating braking points, turning points. It all looked quite simple really.

Then it was time to put all of this theory into practise in the Mini Cooper. It all went well. What was quite disconcerting was that the instructor has all of the mirrors set so that he can keep an eye on what’s going behind leaving you to concentrate on what’s in front. Throughout the instructor kept coaching me though largely leaving me to get on with it and providing feedback on how it’s gone.

A couple of years ago my wife went on a similar event, but this time rallying. I remember in the briefing session they predicted that the women would do better and sure enough the 2 women in the class had the best 2 lap times at the end of the day. This was easily explainable as the women listen and do as they are told whereas the men think they know it all and do what they think is right.

Bearing this in mind, I tried to get in touch with my feminine side and listen and apply what I was being told. And sure enough it all seems to come together, and when it does it feels extremely good. If you get it right you can feel that you are working with the car and that it will follow the natural lines rather than having to fight the car. With each lap you get a bit more confident and take the corners that bit faster and yet it feels that bit safer and smoother. You have to concentrate so hard that I couldn’t tell you how many laps we did, but I guess it was the usual 3 or 4. I would have loved to have had another 10 to keep improving.

At the end of this end of particular discipline the instructor seemed very happy with how I had done and commented that he thought I was used to driving a fast car. I’m not really sure what he meant by this. As I got out he started to complete my scorecard, which I was told I would get back later.

It wasn’t long before I was called over for my turn in the E-type, which was going to be my personal highlight of the day. The first thing I noticed was just how ‘compact’ the driving position is. They have an upper height limit of 6’3” (coincidentally my height) for this event and I could see exactly why. Even with the seat as far back as it would go, with a crash helmet on, my head was touching the roof, a position that was far from being comfortable. Also there is very little room for your feet.

The immediate difference you notice after the Mini is the weight of the steering and the brakes. We had been warned to expect this and personally it wasn’t too unusual after the Morris Minor but I can imagine it being quite a shock to some. (Don’t worry I’m not trying to draw too many comparisons between a Morris Minor and a track prepared E-type.) What did surprise me was that we appeared to be taking a slightly different line to that we’d been taught in the Mini. I’m not sure whether this was to do with the car or the fact that we had a different instructor. Unfortunately I didn’t think to clarify this point at the time.

To be honest I probably didn’t appreciate the E-type as much as I expected to purely due to the fact that you’re concentrating so much on braking points and turning points that you don’t get time to stop and think, “Hey, I’m in an E-type”. I can imagine that having one for a more leisurely drive around the country lanes on a summer’s day would be a completely different experience. Having said this, it was still fantastic and is now firmly at the top of my Christmas list!

Incidentally, the earlier sessions in the day had involved quite a lot of waiting around, and one of the reasons given for this was that the E-type was a slow car and it was taking some time for everyone to get their go in it. This did seem to be supported by the fact that the traffic did seem to back up behind the E-type in the tight chicane section of the circuit and the instructor’s repeated requests for me to slow down as we approached this section of the track.

The final part of the event was the high-speed passenger laps in the Mini Cooper S. Before we started I made a point of asking the driver whether this was a standard car, (i.e. the same as my own) and I was assured that it was. I’m still not convinced that he was telling me the truth as I’m sure that mine doesn’t go that fast! It was a truly exhilarating experience. I felt that he was driving right on the edge all or the time. After having had it drummed into us to brake at the big board saying ‘BRAKE’, all of a sudden we were flying past these. Corners where we had been slowing he was taking flat out.

The day ended with picking up your scorecard and your complimentary photo of you with the Mini. I scored 95/100. On the face of it a very respectable score, though I suspect that nobody every scores less than 90. The only other scores I was aware of were a youngish couple in my team. He scored 94 and she scored 96 – remember what I said about women drivers! I’m not sure who drove home that day.

Throughout the day a professional photographer was snapping away and you had the opportunity to buy prints at £15 each with a discount, which escapes me for buying more. Having my own amateur 8-year-old photographer with me I only went for the single shot of me wrestling the E-type through the chicane.

The final thing to say about the event is about the logistics at the track. The only thing I have to compare against was the rally track that my wife went where it was a grubby portakabin with a coffee machine. By contrast the Mini event was much better organised with a reasonably priced American style diner for the spectators and a raised viewing point for the track.

For completeness, I should also say something about the Ferrari driving event going on at the same time. I didn’t count but there must have been 6 or 8 Ferraris on the day as well as Lamborghini (Diablo I think, though please feel free to correct me) and a brand new Bentley Continental GT which made a brief appearance.

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