Greetings. You have found the Chicago MINI Club's official website. The site will feature information on upcoming events as well as photos of past events. For members of the club it will serve as a place to catch up on postings regarding weekly and at times daily information about the club and its activities. For non-members it's a good way to better understand what the club has to offer Chicago area MINI owners.

While the site will eventually feature it's own bulletin boards (powered by MCO) we're temporarily using the “Midwest” forum as found on MCO. This isn't an ideal solution but it will allow us to communicate through either the comment section on posts or through the board directly.

Also of note most of the Chicago specific information found on Bridger.us/MINI will be cross posted here. As always for non-Chicago specific news MINI news and information check out Bridger.us/MINI.

If you have comments or suggestions feel free to let us know in the comment section below or by emailing the club at info@chicagominiclub.com. If you have any ideas on club related posts don't hesitate to email one of our board members listed on the lower right side of the page.

This bit of news comes from Aaron Geiger, president of STLMINI.com:

I finally have details on our reception for the other Mini club members that will be in town for the track day.

Date: Saturday, August 30th, 2003

Location: Gateway International Raceway (gatewayraceway.com/mapDirections.html for directions)

When you arrive at the gate, tell them you are a guest of the Midwest Driver track day. The cost to enter the track is $5. They will give you an armband denoting that you are a visitor.

Beforenoon, park in the visitor parking labeled on the map. After noon, you can park in the Novice parking area.

Reception will be in theMediaCenter(green building on the attached map)

Time: 5:00PM-7:00PM, immediately following the end of the track day. If you aren't participating at the track, please arrive at the track at4pmor so. This will ensure that you get in, in case Gateway closes the main gate.

This will be a dinner/reception for Midwest Mini club members. There will be several people from the KC club, theChicagoclub, and the Indy club at the track day. Come join us for a meet and greet casual dinner. It's a great opportunity to meet members of other clubs and talk Minis! Food and drinks will be provided. Thanks to the Phil Wicks Driving Academy for co-sponsoring this event with the St. Louis Mini Club!

RSVP is requested (send to aaron@stlmini.com) but NOT required. All Mini club members and their families are welcome.

During lunch, the driving academy will offer a $10 lead-follow drive around the track open to the public. The time slot for this is11:55am-12:15pm. If you are interested, arrive at the track around11amand go to the media center. Ask to register for the public track session during lunch. The concession stand will be open for lunch.

Everyone is welcome to visit the track at any time during the day. You can check out some cool cars (including 15 Minis) and see what the driving academy is all about. The $5 entrance fee lets you in for the entire day.

One other interesting note; the last event of the track day is a 5-lap Mini demonstration session. This will happen between4-5pm. We should have around 15 Minis on the track at once!

If you have any questions, please let me know. On the day of the event, you can call me at 314-713-1075 if you need info or help with anything.

We hope to see all of you there…Motor On!

Aaron Geiger
Co-founder-St. Louis Mini Club

Posted by Maxwell:

I would like to encourage anyone with a free Saturday up his or her sleeve to try to make it up to Phil Wicks' Midwest Driver event August 30th.

For anyone who wasn't able to make it to the latest Chicago MINI Motoring Club meeting, it will be a multi-part class. The class is at Gateway International Raceway, just north of St. Louis on the Illinois side. It is essentially an entire day running from 8 am to 5 pm. It begins with some MC/MCS-specific class-time discussing your car and its functions, followed by some in-car practice with braking, skids, emergency maneuvers and general driving technique, and then finally we are out on the track, which is actually located on the infield of Gateway
International and utilizes part of the main oval for one portion. (You can check out the lay of the land at www.gatewayraceway.com/mapOval.html — the gray portion is the main part of the track we will be using.)

As has been previously mentioned, the regular price of $275 is lowered to $220 for all Chicago Mini Motoring Club members (and members of other MINI club as well). Also, if you have had some track time or a driving school class in the past, then you may wish to take the intermediate level class which will include more track time and costs only $140 instead of the usual $175. They also require a DOT approved helmet for everyone, so any motorcycle helmet will do–I've got a spare or two in my basement if anyone needs one.

Finally, to anyone from the Chicagoland area who is interested, I am going to be spending the night in a hotel in Collinsville Friday and Saturday night. To all those who plan to go, you should let me know as soon as possible if you have not already made reservations. If we get a few people
together who all want to spend the night there, we can probably qualify for a group rate.

If you have not yet signed up, but you do plan to attend, I recommend calling Phil, and getting your name on the list; then just fill out the entry form on his site and send it in via snail-mail.

Contact information:

Me:
Maxwell Heathcott (aka Chitown_COOP)
mheathcott@hotmail.com

Phil Wicks/Midwest Driver:
midwestdriver.com
racerwicks@aol.com
(314) 330-6449

Hope to see a lot of you there!