MINI Challenge Round 1 Donington Park
23rd-24th April 2016
23rd-24th April 2016
Words & Photos David Young
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| Chris Smith leading the pack around Redgate |
The teams, well most of them, had spent the last two days testing at Donington and some teams had spent a lot of the season break trying out the new Dunlop tyres and rear adjustable suspension introduced this year. Last year’s JCWs, of which 5 were racing, have been rebadged to be Cooper S class cars, (which they were originally) and they would be racing with the 17 R50 MINI Coopers.
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| Nathan Harrison in new JCW, with extra boost |
First surprise of the F56 season has to be the performance of Nathan Harrison (Coastal Racing), last year’s Cooper Champion, he set the fastest lap in Qualifying. Next up was Chris Smith (Excelr8) returning from a year out from racing and then, new to the MINI Challenge, Brett Smith (Eurotech), followed by last year’s Champ Charlie Butler-Henderson, (MINI UK VIP) and then BTCC racer Jeff Smith (Eurotech). Welcome back Arthur Forster, returning from 5 years away from the MINI Challenge, he only picked up his new JCW on Thursday, he was really just using the weekend to shakedown the car and understand set ups.
Second surprise has to be the time it takes to get heat into the rear Dunlop tyres. I suppose (not being a tyre technician) the vast amount of grip the front end has and the very hard rear suspension does not work the rear tyres hard enough to get heat into them, this was also added to the fact that Donington Circuit is not very abrasive and it was only 5°C most of the day.
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| The start of the first JCW race. 30 cars |
The stewards had a word with all drivers asking all to calm down, they introduced 2 green flag laps for Sunday to try and get more heat into the tyres. The restarted race was shortened to 17 minutes (10 laps). A spectacular race with 3 groups of racing cars pulling away from the rest.
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| Charlie Butler-Henderson leading the way from team mate Rob Smith |
Sunday morning and it is even colder but sunny. Start of Race 2 was something to forget. Bence Balogh in his Bumble Bee decorated car was elbowed onto the grass at McClean’s, Jono Brown’s car lost rear end grip and took Neil Newstead out rolling into the barrier, cars all over the place, red flags out. Due to the heavy hits to the Armco and number of cars off the organisers decided to abandon the race. Possibly to be re-run as the last race of the day.
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| Chris Smith going into the Craner Curves |
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| Neil Newstead before his spectacular roll |
Well after the excitement of the F56 JCW the S and Cooper class was a well behaved series of racing. Steve Cocker (Oakfield Racing) was fastest in practice and had led all 3 races. He did however have turbo trouble most of the weekend even after replacing it twice with a brand new unit. A great shame as he was the quickest car in class the whole weekend. Tim Porter had Neil Newstead’s “old” S and was learning how to drive it, (bloody quickly in my opinion). Scott Adam ran well in Lawrence Davey’s old “S” run by LDR. Started well but sounded like a tractor by the end of the 3rd race. Scott Jeffs had a great weekend, 2nd in qualifying, 2nd in Race 1, 1st in the last 2 races. I do have to say had Steve Cocker’s turbo been behaving itself those 1st would have been 2nd, a great bit of racing nonetheless.
The Coopers class was hotly contested with Max Bladon wining all 3 races as well as quickest in qualifying. Josh Gollin was close behind with 2 2nds and a 3rd, Brad Hutchinson scoring a 2nd, a 3rd and a DNF. Piers Prior showed a lot of verve in his car debit.
Cooper S
Coopers
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| Max Blandon on his way to 3 wins out of 3 races |
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