Wow! What an event. Not only did we have almost 20 MINIs on the track but we had the presidents of three area clubs in attendance as well. Thanks to Dreyer & Reinbold MINI for hosting us and Stephan and George for setting everything up.

The day started early for us leaving from Chicago. We managed to get out of the city around 6:30 and make it to the dealer by just after 9:15. Dreyer & Reinbold MINI had Krispy Kreme and juice waiting for us plus, and might I add more importantly, available restrooms. From there we headed down I465 to the Speedway. We had a great time (and got tons of looks) passing everything from of Corvettes to Ferraris who were lining up outside to be let in for the afternoon session. A nice aftermarket exhaust definitely pays it's dividends in a situation like that 🙂 When we finally got the speedway they had us line up and turn in our tickets – as you can tell it was a great photo op.

After that we headed through tunnel 10 – another place where that Remus exhaust paid dividends 🙂

We entered the track on the back stretch. Once on there I quickly learned the trick of slowing down as much as possible on straights so I could dive into the turns. Because of this I managed to reach the limits of adhesion several times around the corners 🙂 Once we made it to turn one (on the Indy circuit) it finally hit me that I was actually driving on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Seeing the scoring tower and the pagoda was really unbelievable.

That first turn that looks like such a sharp end to the front stretch when you see Montoya on the track was almost a gentle sweeper in the MINI. From there I managed to get a couple more tire screeching corners in before being directed in with the rest of the pack to the infield. Once there, as all MINI owners do, we chatted about our cars for awhile before heading inside. Being part of the car club group we were offered a buffet lunch in one of the suites next to the timing tower where we caught the last half of the F1 race in Montreal. We were also offered a behind the scenes tour of the scoring and timing areas plus the press room – which is more of a “center” than a room.

All said it was a fantastic time. Hopefully we can get an even larger contingent of MINIs next year.