The MINI John Cooper Works GP recently hit the Nurburgring as part of Sport Auto’s ‘Supertest’ and laid down an impressive time of 8:03.86.
Unveiled towards the end of last year, the JCW GP is powered by a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder with 301 hp and can accelerate to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 5.2 seconds. Unlike some other hot hatches on the market, such as the Hyundai i30 N and Honda Civic Type R, the GP isn’t sold with a six-speed manual and instead offered exclusively with an 8-speed Steptronic transmission.
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The example tested by Sport Auto and driven by Nurburgring expert Christian Gebhardt came outfitted with Hanook Ventus TD tires and looked right at home at the difficult track.
On paper, a time of 8:03.86 may not sound all that impressive, especially when you consider that the hot hatch record is currently held by the Renault Megane R.S. Trophy-R at 7:40.10, which broke the previous record of 7:43.8 set by the Honda Civic Type R.
However, it is worth remembering that those laps were set by Renault and Honda respectively and automakers often spend days at the circuit fine-tuning their cars to gain the slightest advantage. By comparison, Sport Auto does a single hot lap and calls it a day. It has been reported that, during development of the car, MINI sent out a team to the ‘Green Hell’ with the JCW GP and clocked a time of 7:56.69, but this has never been confirmed.