| Ah, fun autocross results from Sunday:
I took the Justacooper out for a little test-and-tune on Sunday, in preparation for an upcoming DE... It's our suspension, brakes, etc. + Hankook RS-2s + our engine mods (head, cam). I ran in our class E, which is also known as the "Spec e36 M3 class". They are highly modded M3's (suspension, camber plates, go fast bits) running on RE-01R tires (their 'spec' tire of choice this year). We give up at least 80 whp (conservative estimate).
In the morning session, I was sitting in 2nd place, a mere 0.036 seconds in front of 3rd place. I found no extra time in the afternoon - for the day, I ran six 46.2xx times, so that's about all the car had in it. The first run was a warm-up (46.8xx), and the 7th run I blew (to the tune of a 46.4xx). One of the M3's and the M Roadster picked up time in the afternoon, so I ended up 4th in class. Had I been on V710's or Hoosiers, we would have been in 1st place quite handily...
When I mentioned that I should run in E next season on V710's or Hoosiers, the M3 drivers commented, "Oh, sure, so you can be that annoying MINI guy taking our fun spec class down again?" FWIW, we did run the Cooper in Class E during the 2006 season, on Michelin Pilot Sport Cups (not even a top-tier r-comp!) and took 2nd overall for the season.
Final results:
1st. #82 Matt 1997 BMW M3 44.838
2nd #5 Fernando 1997 Bmw M3 Black 45.652
3rd #6 Adrian 2000 Bmw M Roadster Cosmos 46.180
4th #697 Scott 2003 MINI Cooper 46.227
5th #279 Richie 1998 BMW M3 46.548
6th #10 Rob 2007 Bmw Z4 Coupe 3.0Si Montego 48.413
I was 20th fastest out of 50 cars, raw time... Cars around me included several Corvettes, other BMWs and Japan's finest...
We saw nice 4-wheel drifts around a fast lefthander until the camber caught us and slingshot the car out like a rocket... Much fun!
RMW tune to be done next Friday, before our track weekend at Eagles Canyon Raceway in Slidell, Texas... I can say the car is a beast!  | 
