Nick Swift has been called the Master of the Mini, and for good reason. His Swiftune Racing exploits are the thing of legend over in the UK. He brings his various little minis out for a thrashing every year, and always puts on a heck of a show. He won last year’s all-mini race at the Goodwood Revival, for example.
This year he entered the little blue machine in a sprint race during the Goodwood Member’s Meeting, which was for Group 1 touring cars. The only catch is that the grid was reversed, so Swift had to start near the back and work his way through the slower cars. Sounds like a lot of hard work for him, but enjoyable video for us.
Seriously, you’ll want to click that play button.
While the video quality may be something more like 2004 than 2022, it’s still a great bit of video to sit down and watch for sixteen minutes of high-rev action. Group 1 action means mass production cars, as the FIA defined it, because each car in the class had to have sold at least 5,000 units in the prior 12 months. That means you had the big Euro monsters, like the Capri or BMW’s 3.0 CSL, and American giants like the Camaro Z28. There were also more compact cars that still make the mini look as tiny as it is, like Volkswagen’s Golf or Triumph’s Dolomite. As you can see from the group of cars through Swift’s windshield, it was as wide and varied as just about any racing series can be.
It’s impressive that the aptly-named Mr. Swift can catch up to, let alone pass, vehicles with between three and five liters of displacement, given that he’s working with less than 1.3 liters himself. This just goes to show what a capable and fantastic platform the mini was all those years ago.
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