Aiming for the Championship

Hello, I'm Lawrence Davey. This year I have been asked to give you love:mini readers an insight to my MINI Challenge season. 

I have been racing for 23 years, starting in karts at the age of 8 years old. Throughout my career I have been lucky enough to race at some of the best circuits in the UK and America.

As I said, I started in karts and moved into car racing in 1997 in Ministox on the short ovals. At the end of year 2000 I moved into Legends Cars and in the 12 years I raced in the Legends, I became a double UK National Champion, and raced in the World Finals at Infinion Raceway (2006) and Las Vegas (2009) and was ranked 2nd in the world for a number of years. I also won the 2013 Sunoco Grand Am challenge and won a drive in Daytona supporting the Rolex 24 hour race.

I joined the MINI Challenge grid in 2013, after 12 years of racing rear wheel drive cars I had a lot to learn and got to grips with the MINI very quickly. In my first season in the R56 I finished 7th and in 2014 I finished 4th in the Championship, also winning the Best of British award along the way.

In 2015 I stepped up to the new F56 Gen3 JCW and had a tough start to the season with technical issues but finished the season 4th in the championship. 

This season I am staying with the JCW F56 to have a go at winning the championship. The team have worked hard over the winter to secure two new sponsors.  We have signed Creative Racing Finance and Cooper Tonbridge MINI for 2016 and beyond. The car was liveried up and was at the Autosport Show in January on one of the Alcon Brakes stand. There have been a few upgrades to the car for this season, including a new remap so we have more power (265 bhp). Also we have now got adjustable rear control arms, bonnet vents and we have moved onto Dunlop tyres.

I have some testing booked in before the start of the season, and this will give us time to get a good set up on the car before the first weekend at Donington Park. As well as racing in the MINI Challenge, I also run a team with my father. This season will also see us run two Cooper S class R56 cars and a Cooper class car. So we have a very busy season planned for this year.

Race weekends can be very busy so together with my father, we have found a couple of very good mechanics to work on the cars. I don’t really get that nervous before a race, but when you’re sitting on the start line and you can hear all the other cars around you waiting for the lights to go off, that’s when I feel it. Before MINI Challenge I have only ever done standing starts, so I am still getting used to this. I do watch videos of previous starts, just to see what differences I have made and if they worked or not. I have found if I make a bad start then a good solid first lap will pull you back up and make up for it, but the downside is taking risks and possibly damage. 

We tend to have 15 minutes for qualifying and 3x 20 minute races so we have a fair bit of time to get overtaking done. But as the cars are all equal on power it is just down to driver skill and sometimes you need your rivals to make some mistakes.

This season is looking to be an exciting one, with 32 registered drivers in the JCW F56 class. So the start of the season will be good to get some solid points on the board and to stay out of trouble. If you come to any of the rounds make sure to drop by and say hello.

Lawrence Davey