NHIS with Herb Chambers MINI

Yesterday I was back at NHIS in Loudon, for an event sponsored by Herb Chambers MINI of Boston and organized by Skip Barber School instructors.
Two “cone track” layouts were provided – on one you could drive MINIs provided by Herb Chambers (including, if you waited long enough, the new JCW version of R56 MCS); the other was available for you to drive your own car on. Sadly, neither layout was as “complex” or fun as the auto-x layouts that Boston BMWCCA set up during the recent MINI of Peabody sponsored events (see here and here).

At almost the same time that George, Jayne and I arrived in GP1717 and GP0203, Dave pulled in with GP0191 (Dave’s friend owned a rather larger vehicle):

We first headed to the “drive Herb Chambers MINI” layout – where everyone else was too! The popularity of this – especially for (presumably) prospective MINI owners that had arrived in some other car – meant a long wait and, for me at least, some disappointment. There was only time to do two laps around the track – on the first you were learning the route (there were no laid-down marker cones to indicate the course), and on the second just as you were getting in to the swing of things, you had to slow and finish).

Now and then, further limiting drive time, the instructors decided to take over the driving and “burn rubber” while taking two randomly selected people as passengers (similar to what happened during the Herb Chambers R56 launch back in February). We decided to head over to the second cone layout, where we could drive our GPs – a little more fun but again, the layout consisted basically of a circle with a couple of tight corners, and one “chicane” of two cones to take left/right (or right/left if you preferred!). An amazing go-kart showed up, brought by some teenagers who hoped to drive the layout, but unfortunately could not be allowed to since there was no emergency services on standby …

Here’s lots more pictures: