2011 MINI Cooper S Clubman at Harris Hill (November 2019)2011 MINI Cooper S Clubman at Harris Hill (November 2019)
Ok, borrowed rather than stolen. As I was 1,500 miles away from home Steve Wright kindly let me drive his 2011 MINI Cooper S Clubman (R55) for a track day with the MINI Cooper clubs from San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Houston. It was my first time driving a MINI Cooper "in battle" and my first time at Harris Hill Raceway (H2R).
For the remainder of the day I switched to Steve Wright's 2011 MINI Cooper S Clubman. He has made some improvements to it, good for an estimated increase of 30 horsepower and 60 ft-lbs of torque. The suspension got some love, too, including a much-stiffer rear sway bay to reduce rear-end roll.
After the parade laps came a session of "warm" laps in groups of four cars, with the first being driven by one of the denizens of H2R to help new drivers learn the lines at moderate speed; the fastest lap during this session was 2:02.160. With no passing allowed one challenge came when someone ahead braked heavily for turn 5. I learned to anticpate this and backed off so I was able to practice the turn. The exit of turn 7 felt like a struggle to use the full track, an issue which disappeared once we were at speed.
 Best lap in first hot session |
 Best lap of the day |
After that we were unleashed and got to have some serious fun. My best lap time in the first hot session was 1:44.083 and included a top speed of 92.1 mph heading up to turn 4. My best lap of the day was in the last session, only slightly better at 1:43.832. By that time the tires were overinflated due to heat which undoubtedly cost some time.
This video (also on YouTube) shows the 1:43.832 lap along with the following lap, which included passing several other MINIs. (Video generated by the Track Addict app using my iPhone's built-in camera with additional data via a PLX KIWI 3 OBD adapter.)
Turn 5 felt much like Laguna Seca's turn 9, a fast, sweeping left turn after a blind turn and drop, though the drop isn't nearly as steep as The Corkscrew. The same approach worked well for this turn: don't brake but back off to half-throttle, then squeeze back to full throttle by the apex.
Turn 8 is a carousel, a style of turn which I always find to be challenging since the long entrance provides fewer clear clues to the ideal line. I worked up to faster entrances but need more practice to get comfortable with it.
For this car, the entire track uses third and four gears. At first, it
seemed that the upshift running up to turn 4
(the fastest stretch of the track) should be done after
turn 3, but that meant getting well above the
engine's power curve. I ended up shifting between turns 2 and 3, which
isn't ideal but seemed least bad. Given more time, I might have
experimented with staying in fourth gear for turn 2
as the car has plenty of torque, yet again similar to my Mazdaspeed.
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Copyright © 2019-2020 Karl L. Swartz. All rights reserved. |
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