The MINI John Cooper Works has taken it's first win in it's S2000 guise.
The joint venture between Prodrive and BMW Motorsport, which made it's international debut on last month's Rally Portugal in the hands of privateers Daniel Olivera and Armindo Araujo.
Former European Rally Champion Andrea Navarra piloted the new car, run by Grifone team, to the first step of the podium on the opening round of the Italian Gravel Rally Championship Rally dell'Adriatico. Based near the coast town of Ancona, the MINI lead the 100Km event from the start, finishing 12.6 secs ahead of the Skoda Fabia S2000 of Skoda UK driver Andreas Mikkelsen.
The car was running a 30mm restrictor, instead of it's usual 33mm variant. The car ran this smaller restrictor to balance it's power output with the conventional S2000 cars.
“It’s a great honour for me to give MINI this first victory with Pirelli tyres and another milestone in our history together,” said the 1998 European Rally Champion. “It was a fantastic rally that was competitive from start to finish: we had to push hard but in the end we got the result that we wanted."
Navarra was pleased with the car, saying: "I really enjoyed driving the car: the turbo engine means that you can drive with the throttle all the time compared to a conventional Super 2000 car, where you are driving with the gears.”
Navarra hasn't registered for points in the series, but he will return on the Rally Costa Smeralda on the 6 May. The rally runs behind the main World Rally Championship event, on which the MINI World Rally Team will make it's debut.
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