Original Mini Cooper Thinks Second Time Is a Charm, Ends Up Facing the Wrong Way

As it happens every week, the regular drivers with more or less regular cars flocking to have a go on the Nordschleife provide us with some memorable material that we can analyze and learn from.

Let’s take the case of this very nice example of an original Mini Cooper blasting its way on the painted track. Judging by the number plates, the driver came all the way from the United Kingdom, so he must have dreamed about this moment for a long time.

When you first go out on a circuit, everybody will tell you to go slowly, get to know the track first, and then gradually start to build up speed and push yourself and the car closer to the limit. On the Nurburgring, though, trying to learn the track is a bit futile, as the 14.2-mile long circuit (22.8 kilometers) is sprinkled with countless corners (apparently literally, as nobody seems to agree on how many of them there are).

But after completing a lap or two, you start to feel a non-existing pressure urging you to go faster and faster. If you tackled a corner with 50 mph (80 km/) the first time, on your second pass you either do it at 51 mph (82 km/h) or you go home. It’s an unwritten rule of amateur track driving.

And this Mini Cooper driver seems to know it very well. We see him go through that very same bend very cleanly, composed, without pushing it. Maybe it was the Volkswagen Tiguan driving in front and not common sense holding him back, who knows?

On his second run, though, the two-man Mini Cooper drastically oversteers. But since it’s a Mini, the drift is easily kept under control and the car only ends up facing the other way while slowly rolling backwards. The track is eerily barren for a touristenfahrten day, so nothing dramatic happens.

We have no idea whether that was really just his second pass through that succession of corners or he’s been there countless times before, but that’s exactly the point we’re trying to make. It doesn’t really matter how many times you’ve driven through a bend, there’s always the possibility of going over the top and ending up over- or understeering. That’s exactly why you need to carefully probe around for the limit, and once you find it, settle for that and never cross it.