In late March, MINI Mania and Hooked-on Driving teamed up to present a “Hooked-on MINIS” day at Thunderhill Racetrack, a great 3.5 mile road course maintained by SCCA about 75 miles north of Sacramento, CA (If you’ve seen any ads for Cadillac or Mazda filmed at a completely treeless track, they were shot at Thunderhill).
Running with the advanced group, I was able to get a couple of complete laps of the track with no traffic in my 2006 Dinan Stage 5 MCS, the car that MINI USA has provided to MC2 Magazine as our project car this year.
The laps were captured on video using my standard pocket Nikon Coolpix S3 digital pocket camera, with a 2 gig SD card, and mounted to my rearview mirror using a chasecam.com Universal Camera Mount, a very well-designed mount that costs only $40.
Enjoy the video and listen for that wonderful Dinan/supercharger howl as the car runs up to 7000 rpm on the straights, before the JCW brakes rein it in.
Gary Anderson
Editor, MC2 Magazine
Awesome video Gary! That looks like one fun track. I especially love that elevation change in the middle of those twisties! VERY cool and thanks for sharing!
Dinan stage 5, wow you are pouring the money into that MINI.. as the MINI makes the apex …you can hear …cha-ching….cha-ching.
Great job gary.
“MTTS” MCC from MTTS