MONSTER MINI MAKES ITS DEBUT

Racing novice Les Stanton is aiming to make more outings this year with his unique Mini Estate after debuting the car at Brands Hatch last weekend.

Stourbridge-based Stanton, 36, has been building the spaceframe racer for the last six years through his Extrememinis.co.uk business. It features a Yamaha R1 bike engine producing 292bhp and is rear-wheel driven.

Stanton made his racing debut on what was the car’s first ever outing in the Mini Festival’s Fastest Mini in the World event. He qualified sixth but failed to finish either race due to technical gremlins.

“The car is just brilliant to drive,” said Stanton. “We opted for the estate bodyshell as it gives us six inches extra of wheelbase, which really helps the car cope with the extra power as a standard Mini chassis just wouldn’t handle it.

“The front and rear subframes are from a Z Car chassis and we’ve got various bits of Lotus Elise in there too, such as the pedal box, so it’s a real hybrid.

“It was a tough, but brilliant weekend. Small things like leads popping off cost us, but we’ve got plenty of development to do with the car still.

“We want to run it more this year but we’re searching for the right championship to do as it’s quite hard to find the right regulations to run something like this.”