Henrietta's Home Page GRO

Rover Mini John Cooper LE S Works

Welcome to the part of GRO's Site devoted entirely to the latest car to race under the GRO banner. A Rover Mini John Cooper LE S Works, Henrietta as she is known, was purchased new in November 1999. That gave four months before the start of the 2000 season for running in and preparation. That should have been more than enough time, but nothing goes as planned.

A 'Brand New' Henrietta ready for her first Sprint.

In fact it was not until May 2000 at the Peterborough Motor Clubs Sprint at Silverstone's Stowe Circuit, that Henrietta finally made her competition debut. This was not an auspicious start to her racing career, finishing a lowly 6th out of 8 in class. However it was the start of a steep learning curve as I struggled to get to grips with racing a standard car on standard tyres. In the end however we made steady progress, found a few faults, and by the end of the season Henrietta was able to run "on the pace". We finished the season 4th out of 10 in class in the LCAMC Championship and 7th out of 42 in the Herts County Auto and Aero Club Championship.

Start Line Action. Goodwood July 2000

Since several of the problems mentioned were not recitified until after the end of the 2000 Championships I am hoping for better results in 2001. Our first event was on 25th of March and from now onwards I shall be updating the results table below regularly.

Update 30/10/2001 The August Bank Holiday meeting at Weathersfield proved to be the start of a disasterous end to the season for Henrietta and I. Weathersfield is a long (in excess of 4 miles) course, with mixture of complicated winding sections and some flat out straights and curves with a lot of heavy braking thrown in. This was the first time I had driven here and the complex and I feel poorly marked route meant that I did not expect a stunning result. What actually happened however was much worse than I expected. During the second practice run I noticed that Henrietta felt down on power, on returning to the paddock and removing my crash helmet I also noticed an unusual rattle coming from the engine at tick over. Since the rattle appeared to disappear above tick over I assumed that it and the power loss were due to a sensor or ECU fault and opted to take my first timed run. This really was a mistake as half way through the lap the engine began to rattle loudly and to "tighten up" although all the temperatures and pressures seemed normal. I backed off and retired after that run, leaving me in fifth place.

Things got worse, I took the car to the Rover dealer who had supplied it for repairs. After having the car for three days they basically refused to repair it, apparently concerned that the fault might be down to defective parts or assembly for which they might be liable. What annoyed me most about this was that they could have told me this on day one, not held my car for three days. As a result it was the following Monday before Minispeed at Brooklands were able to start work on Henrietta. A long tale of woe ensued when the engine was removed, in all the engine required new big ends, con rods, camshaft and followers. With that much to do, why not go the whole way and have in bored to 3rd oversize and new pistons as well. Minispeed did an excellent job and on Wednesday afternoon I had Henrietta back, trouble was she needed running in.

The end result was that I did both North Weald events at reduced RPM. The first on the 16th at 4000 and the second on the 23rd at 5000. The engine was still very tight on both events and not producing the kind of power it is today with only a few hundred more miles on it. As a result I managed a fourth on the 16th and fifth on the 23rd mind you that was almost fourth as I was only beaten by 1/100th of a second by a Metro Gti on the last run.

After those events I was leading the LCAMC Class Championship by 1 point and the AEMC Class Championship by 20 points. However, there were three events in October which I could not enter as I was in the USA. At this time I don't know if my main rivals entered any of these or how they did or if they have to discard any scores.

So that's this season finished, like me you will have to wait to see what happens with the Championships, check back in December when I may have an update on that and my plans for the 2002 season.

I have had a lot of requests for photos from this years events. Sadly due to family commitments I have had to go to most events this year alone. This makes personal photography difficult! Add to that the lack of "professional" photographers at meetings so far and I am a bit stuck. I do however have some video footage that I will try and get on line and hopefully some photos from the later events.

Sorry, I have still not suceeded in getting the video to work from the site. (Can anyone help please?) Nor have I managed to take or obtain any photographs this year.

Date	Venue and Club	Position/Number in Class
25th March 2001	Boro'19 North Weald Sprint	First out of Three Starters
15th April 2001	Green Belt North Weald Sprint	First out of Four Starters
20th May 2001	BARC Hethel Sprint	Entry Refused.
17th June 2001	Sevenoaks & District North Weald Sprint	Second out of Four Starters
7th July 2001	Maidstone & Mid Kent Lydden Sprint	Fourth out of Four Starters
8th July 2001	Harrow CC North Weald Slalom Sprint	Third out of Seven Starters
22nd July 2001	Sutton & Cheam Scorpion Sprint at Longcross	Third out of Four Starters NC
29th July 2001	Peterborough MC Silverstone Sprint.	First out of Three Starters
27th August 2001	West Essex Car Club Weathersfield Sprint	Fifth out of Six Starters
16th Sept' 2001	Harrow CC North Weald Sprint	Forth out of Six Starters
23rd Sept' 2001	Boro'19 North Weald Sprint	Fifth out of Seven Starters
	Final Results and Scores	NC = Non Championship Event
Championship	Position / Number in Class or Competition	Total Points Scored
LCAMC
AEMC
HCAAC