It's David and Goliath just like with the old Mini

Mini returns to world rallying in 2011 facing the same big challenge as it did 50 years ago, but this time with the might of BMW and Prodrive behind it
By Rob Widdows

The Mini. We all love them. Whether car or fashion icon, both are indelibly lodged in our memories of the Swinging Sixties. Thanks to Alec Issigonis, the Austin and Morris Minis restored pride in the British motor industry. And it was John Cooper who packed a punch under the Mini’s little bonnet, producing a pocket rocket called the Cooper S.

But it was Paddy Hopkirk who made the Mini a legend in its lifetime, he and Henry Liddon famously sliding ’33 EJB’ through the snow to take the first of three wins for the Cooper S on the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964.

Now the Mini is back where it belongs. Thanks to new owner BMW, and to Prodrive, a Mini Countryman will contest the 2011 World Rally Championship. And just as it did nearly 50 years ago, it will be taking on the might of Citroen and Ford in the reinvigorated series.

The Mini remains a very British car, built in Oxford and developed for rallying by the Prodrive engineers in Banbury. Yes, the big decisions are made in Munich, but the little cars are still distinctly Minis, a half-century of heritage still there for all to see.

A decision to return to the world stage was made in a typically bold move by Prodrive boss David Richards. This was a brave decision by Richards, who identified the Countryman’s potential as a WRC contender and a customer car for privateers. Using the engineering talent that turned the Subaru Impreza into a title winner, Richards and his team started building a WRC Mini with a view to selling 20 customer cars and persuading parent company BMW to come on board as a partner for the 2011 series.

“I can honestly say that in 30 years of rallying I have never been so excited about or seen so much interest in a new World Rally Car,” he says. “When we started the project we never thought we’d be working so closely with Mini. At the start of 2009 we established a small but focused team of engineers with the task of developing a new car. They had complete freedom to design the ideal rally car to meet the new rules for 2011. For the first three months we did nothing but analysis, looking at cars from various manufacturers and measuring key elements like wheelbase, centre of gravity, weight and track. Then one of my team mentioned a new version of the Mini and I spoke to BMW, with whom I’d run race and rally programmes in the 1980s and ’90s.

“By the end of ’09 our focus was totally on the Countryman and we began applying our generic rally car design to this new Mini. At first there was a gentleman’s agreement, but now we have commitment from all levels within BMW and the engineering support has been extraordinary. They’ve shared all their technical and engineering data, while the Prodrive team has set about making the car as practical and economical as possible for use by private teams without compromising its performance.”

A team of engineers, some from the company’s Aston Martin projects, are led by Prodrive technical director David Lapworth, who masterminded the Subaru WRC campaigns. Lapworth, who began his career with Peugeot in 1981, is distinctly upbeat about the new car.

“In testing so far we are exceeding targets we set ourselves at the outset, and this is the best prepared and engineered rally car we’ve ever built at Prodrive,” he tells me. “The design is clean and simple, which helps when it comes to maintenance in remote locations, and that’s important if we’re to sell at least 20 customer cars. All four uprights are interchangeable, for example, as are the anti-roll bars, and we have a rollcage design which will make the Countryman extremely safe. We’re still working on the aerodynamics, but some parts are manufactured and ready. We’ll try to keep the full WRC aero package under wraps until just before our first rally in Sardinia in May, so that we can keep it away from our competitors. Meanwhile we continue to work through the test programme.”

On a grey, rainy day in Warwickshire, Kris Meeke is lapping Prodrive’s test track, the car disguised in a black and yellow livery that looks like a bad hotel carpet. Once sponsors are confirmed and colour schemes defined, it will look much more exciting. In the meantime the 2009 IRC champion is gathering data and familiarising himself with every little detail of the Countryman’s behaviour on wet asphalt. He must, by May, be able to drive it flat out instinctively, without distractions, one of the keys to speed over the special stages being total confidence in the machinery.

“The car feels really good, but we’re not near the final spec yet,” he says. “It’s a massive opportunity for me, and to get my big break with Prodrive and Mini is pretty special. But we’ll be remembered for results so we have to keep our eye on the ball. Having Dani [Sordo] in the team is a big challenge — we were team-mates [at Citroen] in 2005, and we have a good relationship, so it’s brilliant for me to test myself against someone of his calibre.”

For a few laps Meeke entertains a very special passenger, a man who made his name in the driving seat of a rallying Mini. When he steps out of the car, Paddy Hopkirk is beaming.

“Great little car, it feels right. He’s a magic driver, and no, I’m not saying that because he’s an Irishman,” says Hopkirk. “He does all his braking with his left foot, never uses the clutch. That’s different from my day. And the co-driver sits so low down; I kept pushing myself up in the seat to see where the road was going.”

So what made the Mini such an effective rally car back in its heyday? How did they take on the world and beat them?
“Well, it was quite outstandingly different from anything else. There were more powerful, expensive cars, but John Cooper made the `S’ go very well indeed. The big Fords used to pass us on the straights but we had the engine over the driving wheels, which gave us great traction in the corners. And being a small car, on the Monte with vertical walls of snow each side of the road we didn’t hit the banks when we went sideways.

“It was a freak thing, the right car at the right time, and it became a wonderful battle between David and Goliath. We had a superb team, led by Stuart Turner, and the BMC mechanics would work day and night, they’d lie down in wet ditches to change things, and we had the right tyres. It was very well organised. But this new car is looking good too, and it’s a British car, 60 per cent of it is British — the bodies come from Swindon and the engines from Birmingham. I think it’s a great thing that BMW has brought the Mini back to World Championship rallying. And they don’t do things lightly, do they?”

They do not. But why did the men from Munich decide to join the fray, to challenge Citroen and Ford on a very public world stage? BMW board member Ian Robertson is unequivocal in his response.

“Mini is going back to its roots. In the early days success in motor sport gave the Mini its sporty image and we want to demonstrate the sportiness of the cars to today’s generation of drivers. Importantly, the new regulations mean that the gap to the top is smaller than it would have been and we want to annoy the opposition as soon as possible. Our goal, of course, is the championship, but we have to learn as much as possible within a short time in order to make on our rivals. up ground on our rivals. Experience is important, and with Prodrive we start at a high level. They are familiar with success in the WRC, but it will be a lot of hard work. We’ll do six rallies this year and then in 2012 we’ll compete for the full season.”

BMW failed to conquer the world in Formula 1 despite a significant cash investment in the pinnacle of the sport. Robertson does not talk about the budget for Mini’s return to its roots, but says the costs are manageable and that the WRC has an “excellent cost/performance ratio”.

“Costs have fallen significantly since the introduction of the FIA Super 2000 regulations, and we have assumed those costs will be approximately 25 per cent lower than in previous years,” he says. “This was a huge influence on our decision to get involved, and the sale of customer cars also has a positive effect on the total calculation. There is a big TV and media presence in the WRC, and we are keen to reinforce the key values of the brand. Also, with the Countryman, we have the first Mini with four-wheel drive which makes it predestined for competing in the WRC.”

Another reason, of course, is that 2WD Minis are below the minimum length required in the WRC rules, but let’s not be picky…
At Prodrive, the mood is upbeat. Lapworth, walking me round the car in a break from testing, is buoyant about the team he has assembled around him in the aftermath of losing the Subaru deal following so much success.

“We have some terrific new young engineers as well as some of the guys from the old team,” he tells me, “and the enthusiasm is the best it’s ever been. But look, beating Citroen will not be easy. [Sebastien] Loeb is the best we’ve ever seen and Citroen’s resources are far, far bigger. And they don’t do customer cars, so they are totally focused on just two cars with a budget that could be as much as five times greater than the other teams. For us, and for M-Sport with the Fords, we would not have a programme without selling customer cars. But on the right day we’ll get there, and we can produce a car that will beat them. We’ve done an enormous amount of research, put in a huge amount of hard work, while both Kris and Dani Sordo — who worked together at the Citroen Junior team — say the car feels right straight out of the box, just like we had with the Impreza.

“It’s vital that we give them a car in which they feel totally at ease, one they can take over bumps flat out without worrying about what it’s going to do next. They need to be able to jump in it, listen to the pace notes, watch the road and drive as fast as they dare. It’s got be intuitive when they’re approaching a sixth-gear corner on a changeable surface, and so far they say it’s easy to drive and responds well to their input. That gives the driver a great deal of confidence. We have yet to bolt on the full aero package but our predictions, our calculations are looking good. But people have to recognise we are a small team, it’s David and Goliath just like it was for the old Mini, and it’s a brand-new car which will inevitably take time to be a winner.”

Pinned up on the workshop noticeboard in Banbury is a Prodrive mantra, ‘Perfection is not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.’ Lap worth and his engineers have kept this in mind while building the Countryman.

“We do not want complicated solutions,” he says. “We’ve kept this car as simple as possible. The new S2000 rules have done away with a lot of the electronics, and the transmission, for example, has to be on the approved list. We use the X-Trac six-speed sequential, with some of our own input, and the whole concept is deliberately simple. The 1.6-litre turbo engine was developed by BMW for use in a variety of cars. So a lot of the complexity has gone out of the cars, but beating Citroen or Ford will not be simple and that’s where we hope to capitalise on the detailed research and development we did long before we even decided to go with the Mini. This is the same in all sport — football may look like just kicking a ball around, but it’s tough to beat a team like Manchester United.”

Richards, a hard-headed businessman, is surprisingly misty-eyed about the BMW partnership. But he is, you must remember, a rally man through and through, having co-driven An Vatanen to the 1981 world title. Sure, he wanted another F1 team, but maybe he’d settle for his Prodrive Mini winning the WRC.

“The original red and white Mini captured the world’s imagination and won what was then the most challenging race in the world, the Monte Carlo Rally,” says DR. “People still talk about that with great fondness. I believe the new Mini will do the same for today’s generation of rally fans. So many people have told me they’ll be cheering us on. I’m sure this will lead to a rejuvenation of interest in the championship.”

It will be interesting to see what happens when the MINI WRC Team gets to the Rally d’Italia Sardegna in May. By the time you read this Citroen and Ford will have squared up in Sweden and seen how they stand. They will meet three more times — in Mexico at the start of March and then in Portugal and Jordan — before the Mini attempts to drop a cat among the pigeons. Meanwhile Prodrive continues to put the car through its paces while keeping a watchful eye on how the opposition develops.

Will we see a return to the good old days? It’s simply too soon to say. The all-conquering Citroen C4 has, thanks to the rule changes, been wheeled away into early retirement. The new Ford Fiesta has shown promising speed in testing. The Mini has been in development for two years. And there are new Michelin and DMACK tyres for the new season. Maybe, just maybe, Mr Loeb will have more ‘cars in his mirrors’ than for many a year. Let’s hope so, because that’s just what the World Rally Championship needs right now, wherever your loyalties lie.