Happy New Year everyone! Picked up my first Mini in August, GP3 #1187. By the time I had to put it away from the winter I managed a bit over 3000 miles. Looking forward to starting up autocrosssing in April.

 

congrats and welcome post pics...

 

Welcome to NAM! Congratulations on the GP3. Tell us a bit about it and what you have done to put 3000 miles on it, already.

Here is a Thread recommendation of a person I follow who is currently autocrossing a F56 JCW. While I know there are differences between the JCW and your GP, there are also some similarities in how to extract performance from them. You will find it different from the Focus ST that you had before.

I am also thinking that Mid-Ohio race track might not be too far from SW Pa and I hear that it is a great MINI track. Just thinking out loud here said the track junky...

And, yes, Pictures

Enjoy and Motor On

 

Mid Ohio is about 3 hours, Pitt International Race Complex is 15 minutes away.

I mostly used it to commute to work until November. I wanted to get the engine broken in before the spring. Couple of short road/exploration trips around the area as well and there you go.

I'll take a look through the autocross thread. At this point i'm looking at an Eventuri intake, and a second set of wheels so I don't muck up the somewhat hard to come by originals. I'm not going to go too crazy with the mods as I do want to drive it, say in the Mini Takes the States this summer if that happens.

And for pictures...

So funny story, I wasn't in the market to replace my ST Focus, until my dad(1724 on the right) mentioned in passing his Mini dealer had someone back out of the GP3. Since Ford quite making the Focus, and I had bought mine when Ford was trying to get rid of the Focus, mine was worth what I paid for it. Couple days later, with only having ridden in my dad's GP3, I picked up 1187 and left the ST behind.

 

Welcome to the Forum.
MOTD is 4/28/21 https://www.minisonthedragon.com/ This guy will be there, unless work calls me else where.

 

Unfortunately that's in the middle of an outage at work. This year April/May and October/November are unavailable for any fun.

 

sounds like time for a new job because you’re missing both MOTD and MSSD which is in October.

 

Great Picture!

Great MINI story too. MINIs just seem grab people like that. We got our first MINI from just having sat in one on the showroom floor...

I think you are right about the GP and mods... It has a lot of good-handling mods already built in, and the fact the GP has a mechanical LSD and that you have or can put on tires that are 2 to 3 size wider than what I have on my JCW should make a big difference in comparison.

I had heard of Pitt International from people in the company I used to work for. The company is based in Pittsburgh and I was in a branch office here in NY. I thought about going there as part of doing a business trip, but was never able to put it together. It seems that Watkins Glen wouldn’t be out of the question for you, either, but a bit of a hike (~5hrs). If you are ever in the mood to try it, I get there a few times a year.

 

Every job/career has a downside.

 

I was just playing, but that is some bad timing

 

Roughly 6 hours to Watkins Glen.


I've been twice now for the Vintage race in the fall. Beautiful piece of country and the backroad drive through the Allegheny National Forest is nice.

 

Once every three years there are two outages, the other two years its either spring or fall. Makes for a rough year but the overtime is great.

 

Great Picture!
I have seen a few of that sort of vintage race cars at some of the events I have gone to. The are really works of art...

WGI is about a 4 hr drive for me. I go to multi-day events which makes the trip worthwhile. It is a beautiful track and countryside and I always enjoy it.