A few friends of mine made the trip over to MINI United 2009. I am still waiting to see some of their pics but fellow Sunshine MINIs member, mk1coopers, who is over there posted some pretty sweet photos that I think are worth a look at. Check out the link below for more!

MINI United 2009 Thread @ SSM

I just got back from a day at the track at Homestead-Miami Speedway where I got to see the 3 RSR Motorsports MINIs put on quite an impressive showing! The three RSR MINIs finished 7th, 12th and 17th in a full field of 30 cars. Randy Pobst, who you might remember took my MINI out for a spin at Daytona, finished 1st in the Compass360 Racing Honda Civic Si. It is important to note that fuel mileage played a part in the MINIs final results. The yellow 198 RSR MINI driven by Burrows/Hopwood was running 4th when they had to pit for fuel, which placed them at the very back of the field when they returned to the track under caution. Within 20 minutes, the #198 had made its way through the field in amazing fashion back up to 7th!! It reminded me of an old Herbie movie watching the MINI race through the field. What a great show!

After the race, Randy and the team were great hosts to the MINIacs who showed up to cheer them on. They made time to answer our questions and give us a run down of how the MINIs were handling throughout the race (which obviously they were handling pretty well). It turns out the MINIs may be allowed to run an extra gallon of fuel in the future, which would have helped them stay out longer today and probably finish in the top 3. The RSR pinball machine was also running, providing entertainment for all ages.

I have TONS of photos and video to sort through and should be posting them soon, so check back shortly!

Thanks to the AWESOME work of Colour Tech South Photography, I finally have some photos of the last Daytona track weekend to share. I have to say, this year’s photos blow last year’s away! GREAT JOB Henry! Click HERE for the gallery to see more!

[ Daytona 2008 Gallery ]

I finally had a chance to post up photos from last weekend’s Mickey & MINI 4 event. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I had my exposure setting on my camera all messed up so if some of the photos are a little light, that is why (sorry about that). I also included a weekend recap below to let you know what we did and hoping that you realize that, if you didn’t go this year, you just HAVE to go next year . Enjoy!

Even though Mickey and MINI 4 officially kicked off on Friday the 26th, there were quite a few of us that arrived a day early to beat the rush and get things ready for the MINIac invasion that was to come. A nice group of us went to dinner Thursday night at Trail’s End restaurant at Disney’s Fort Wilderness. The food was good and the conversation was even better. Disney fireworks topped the night off in splendid fashion.

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Another Mickey & MINI is in the record books and this year was the best one yet!! With 300 of the best MINIacs this side of the Mississippi, Orlando was THE place to be this weekend. It was so nice to see familiar faces from last year and so cool to see so many new faces who, for some, this was their first MINI event ever! I plan on having a full weekend recap once I get my photos retouched (darn camera lens got mucked up and now there are spots on most of my photos ).

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I am also working on a video from the weekend as well. For now, enjoy the group photo from our Saturday Morning Motoring adventure which led us to the main EPCOT parking lot in front of Spaceship Earth. There were 68 MINIs/Minis that made up this photo. If you look close, you will see we had to double them up and create a second row. Sadly, I am short and did not have a tall platform to get an aerial shot to get all the cars in both rows in the shot (hmmm…. there is always next year ).

As many of you know, Team Minspeed likes to get things done on the track. While most of us are happy running around the track in our daily drivers in non-competition-style HPDE sessions, a few of us want to take things to the next level and get the adrenaline rush that comes with actual “racing”. For those who are so inclined, some safety modifications must be made. Here is a video of Team Minspeed member, Greg “beaner” showing off his newly installed custom roll cage in his 2006 MINI Cooper S, “Earl”, which will be ready for competitive racing shortly!

[ Roll Cage Photo Gallery ]
[ Download MINI “Earl” Desktop Wallpaper ]

It sure was hard getting up today and having to get back to the grind after this weekend. I was pretty wiped, but managed to sort through my photos (all 359 of them!). Don’t worry, I cut them down to the best 140 pics . This gave me my first chance to do something like this with iPhoto on the Mac - pretty cool piece of software by the way.

Next on the list to tackle is sorting through all the video footage and finish my review of the weekend (what I liked, what could be improved for next time, etc.). For now, enjoy the photos.

[ MTTS 2008 Miami Photo Gallery ]

Huge props go out to Sarah from SunshineMINIs.org for being the first person to catch photos of MTTS 2008-related items here in Florida. Sarah snapped this photo in the Oaks Mall parking lot in Gainesville. Nice find Sarah!

For those heading down to MTTS tomorrow, if you see a Chili Red Cooper S with a Team Minspeed banner on the front, make sure to stop by and say hi! See you at MTTS!!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of hanging out with JAMM - the Jacksonville Area MINI Motorers while I was up in the St. Augustine area. We had about 20 MINIacs take over the Prince of Wales British Pub off of St. George St. in St. Augustine on Saturday. What a great group of people! We had people from as far north as Georgia and also a few from Orlando come out for some great food and good times. A huge thanks to all who came out and showed me and my family a great time. It is so cool that you can go to almost any city and find MINIacs willing to come out and hang. We have the coolest group of people .

[ Photo Gallery ]

It has been way too long since we added a new edition to the MotoringFun Desktop Wallpaper Collection. This latest entry comes to us from Darren M. Tai, who took this awesome shot recently in the Orlando, FL area. Funny thing is that I actually know the previous owner of that Mini pickup truck in the back! What a small world . Thanks Darren!!

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