Pocket Rocket

Small car, powerful engine, razor-sharp handling and a technically demanding race track – the perfect recipe for a day of enthusiastic driving! We take the Mini Cooper S John Cooper Works edition to the Chennai racetrack to see if it really does handle like a go-kart.

- Ishan Raghava

It’s a fact that we don’t have enough race tracks in our country, but the few – three, that is – that we do have are all very different from each other. The shortest, and perhaps the most technical of them all – Kari Speedway at Coimbatore – is a delight for go-karts and small cars with its highly technical layout.

The Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida is a beast of a totally different dimension, with its Formula 1 approved layout, wide runoff areas and massive straights. In fact, when I discussed the BIC with Mini’s driving instructors, the consensus was clear – the BIC is no fun for anything south of 500bhp. It’s simply too big a track for cars with less power than half a tonne.

Now, I think it would be fair to say that the MMRT, outside Chennai, offers perhaps the best of both worlds. At 3.7 kilometres, it’s not massive, but it’s not small either. And with its fantastically technical layout – designed by the legendary Jackie Stewart – the MMRT is an absolutely thrilling track for just about anything.

Fittingly, then, Mini India chose to launch the new top dog of the Cooper S range – the John Cooper Works edition (JCW for short) – at the MMRT track. Now, having driven the previous Cooper S at BIC (which I thought could do with some more power), naturally I was brimming with anticipation at trying the JCW at the Chennai track.

Turn up the power

Positioned the top of the Mini range, the JCW boasts many unique features, the first of which is a more powerful engine. Producing 228bhp and 320Nm of torque from its turbocharged 2.0-litre unit, the JCW is no slouch – it’s capable of a 0 to 100km/h run in just 6.1 seconds. The engine is paired with an 8-speed automatic transmission that works rather well and also offers manual shifts via the steering-mounted paddle shifters.