MINI Challenge Race Car Debuts in Australia
The Austrailan MINI Challenge series kicked off this weekend at Sydney’s Easter Creek race track and in doing debuted the new R56 MINI Challenge race car. We’ve got four videos of the race courtesy of our friends at Ausringers.com
2008 Australian MINI Challenge Rd1 Race 3 – part 1
2008 Australian MINI Challenge Rd1 Race 3 – part 2
2008 Australian MINI Challenge Rd1 Race 3 – part 3
You can also take a look at the weekend’s festivities via the following photos, courtesy of Chris Bevan and Flickr:
[pictobrowser chrisbevan 72157604081888731]
This would be a great support series for pro race events.
Fantastic videos, thanks to the Australian Mini fanatics for sharing it. Since we aren’t lucky enough to have our own series I will enjoying watching racers down under.
Thanks to Ausringers.com for sharing this with the rest of the Mini fans.
GAWD… what I would give to even run in the back of the pack!
Coming from an offroad racing background the lack of bushes, dust, whooptedoos and big ass 600HP trucks trying to run you over would be amazing.
What the hell is wrong with us Yanks that we can’t put together enough money and sponsors to do this. Maybe if Penske and other big USA racing names would stop using import talent, not intended as a slam, we’d have a chance. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe it’s just that not enough of us care anymore like when I was a young man, a gazillion years ago. LOL
>What the hell is wrong with us Yanks that we can’t put together enough money and sponsors to do this.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve muttered this sentence to myself over the years. I know the size of the country makes it harder but you’d think with a population of 300 million people we could get something together that doesn’t involved identical cars with 1963 technology driving around in circles.
I am completely with you guys on this. Of course the size of the county is difficult to deal with but believe that we could really something with the races here. It would also make a great series for semi-professional drivers and up-coming drivers both.
To be honest, I’m amazed that the series got off the ground in Australia. While 4 of the 8 rounds are in New South Wales, the other 4 races will take the cars to Tasmania, Victoria and as far away as Western Australia. Sydney (NSW) to Perth (WA) is some 4000kms (2500 miles) away, we’re a big country too. With a population of around 20 million people and a nationwide MINI sales tally just nudging past 2000 cars per year, I think Australia has done well to launch a MINI Challenge series.
I just hope it can really take off and generate some solid support. In race 3 yesterday the time between the winning car and the last car was around 1 minute and 20 seconds. For a very small field of just 15 cars that is not close enough. While it is early days yet, I hope the racing gets closer and tighter to ensure some chance of captivating what is already a very small audience.
Australia is almost the size of the continental US in land area, and has the population of New York State; Can’t see why we couldn’t get a series going even if it was regional.
Nice to see Chris’ Flickr set added, there’s some great shots in there.
My random thoughts on the state racing in the USA.
I’ve always heard that Australia is like the USA of my youth, 1960’s. Look how they attack things, like we used to, like the America’s Cup, look how many drivers are doing well in world wide racing, Moto GP, Super Cross and so on. I think it starts in the home with family support and then goes into corporate support. If you talk to most younger males in the USA, at least in my neighborhood, most never watch any form of motor sports and could give a sh….
As far as NASCAR goes, they did add a wing ;-), It’s true they use ancient technology, but those cars just aren’t that easy to drive, look at the drivers who have failed at it. Boring, yes, easy to drive, no. Champ cars, a joke, IRL, a bigger JOKE. Dwindling support for F1 when it was here at Indy. They used to say Champ Car was losing viewers because not enough American, hence the IRL series, drivers but even NASCAR has seen reduced ticket sales and that’s full of “Good Ol’ Boys”.
As far as the whole is USA too large? Regional used to be the norm but we used to have, at least in Southern California, many, many tracks. Now we have only a few. In SoCal all the tracks were lost because of population growth. Even Willow Springs has a lot of housing growth around it and that’s out in Bumphuc Egypt.
The answer, not a clue, I do feel that if Penske, Newman Haas and so on and other Corporate US companies would sponsor more series and US drivers it would help but Corporate US is in deep do do.
That’s my 2 cents.
Oh and thanx for fixing my links over at the News room, mucho appreciated. 🙂
<a>Round 2 of the MINI Challenge</a> starts on 4 April. I should be able to get along to see the action this time.
Some more TV highlights from the Eastern Creek round:
<a href="http://www.ausmotive.com/2008/04/05/eastern-creek-mini-challenge-highlights.html" rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.ausmotive.com/2008/04/05/eastern-creek-mini-challenge-highlights.html</a>