Hurrah! Mini is bringing manual gearboxes back to endurance racing

Are you a fully paid-up member of the ‘save the manuals’ brigade? We certainly are here at TG, and the latest little bit of news from Mini has us very excited indeed. 

You see, Mini has announced that its partner Bulldog Racing will run two cars at the Nürburgring 24 Hours later this month, and one of them will be sporting a proper manual gearbox. Rejoice!

Yep, a team of drivers (which includes Brit racer Charlie Cooper, grandson of the legendary John Cooper who started the whole fast Mini thing) will be rowing gears in a modern race car for 24 whole hours at the Nürburgring. We’re extremely jealous. 

Mini isn’t releasing any technical details of the manual John Cooper Works just yet, but we know that it’ll compete in the VT2-FWD class for lightly-modified 2.0-litre turbo production cars. 

It’ll be wearing number 126 if you want to keep track of how it’s doing on 20 and 21 May, while the second Mini will be the bewinged red #112 that raced last year in the SP3T class.