Welcome to my love:mini racing diary, I'm Hamish Brandon

All photos courtesy David Young Photography

Welcome to my love:mini racing diary, I'm Hamish Brandon. As this is my first entry I think a good starting point would be to give you some background info on me and the race series.

With no karting or race experience I started racing in the Scottish MINI Cooper Cup which was a great foundation with a move to MINI Challenge in 2013 - a natural progression.

After finishing 2nd in the Cooper class and 2nd overall in my first season I stepped up to the more powerful JCW class in 2014. Last season was very much a learning year and the plan was always to stay with JCWs for two seasons.

The JCW class is based on the R56 Cooper S and with some modifications power output is approx. 225bhp. The main components such as suspension, wheels, tyres, engine upgrades are all ‘control’ parts ensuring the cars remain to the same spec with results very much down to setup and driver ability - and for me this was a big part of choosing the MINI Challenge in my development as a racer.

As most racers will complain, the winter months tend to be long and drawn-out as we look forward to getting back out on track. Fortunately I haven’t had much of a break from track activities as I’ve been coaching a couple of new drivers to the MINI Challenge Cooper Class - Jon Attard and Adam Davey - both in their first season of racing so I’m very excited to see how they develop.

This year sees me move to a new team ‘IN:MINI’ where we will run as ‘Panda Racing IN:MINI’; Panda Racing supplies motorsport and performance Parts and Accessories (Panda standing for P and A).

The guys have now prepped the car ready to undertake some testing which will begin late March/early April ready for the first round at Donington at the end of April.

We had our first day together on the 18th February where we represented the MINI Challenge at the Media Day held at Brands Hatch. The event showcases the different race series' which run on the MSV programme. It was a good day and we managed to give a good number of some passenger laps to the press to give them a taste of the JCW’s capabilities.

I’m really looking forward to working with the guys at IN:MINI as they’re a great bunch and know their stuff: having prepared the championship winning JCW in 2013 with my friend Chris Smiley.

If you haven’t managed to get to a MINI Challenge round, I’d definitely highly recommend it.  The drivers are a friendly bunch and the series is very professionally run… if you do, don’t forget to swing by and say ‘hi’.

Next instalment I should have more info on our build up to the first round and in the meantime should you have any questions or comments it would be great to hear from you.

For more information on Panda Racing and Hamish please visit
www.PandaRacing.com / www.HamishBrandon.com, ‘like’ the Facebook pages www.Facebook.com/PandaRacing and www.Facebook.com/HamishBrandonRacing or follow @PandaRacingTeam / @HamishB on Twitter.