What's the news?
This is our first look at what might be termed the MINI GP3 - but, to give it the proper name, it's the MINI John Cooper Works GP, 2020MY, and it debuted at the Nürburgring N24 race at the weekend.
This third GP, the ultimate iteration of any generation of modern MINI, is currently undergoing set-up runs on the Nordschleife as part of its development process, ahead of a market launch in 2020. Just 3,000 examples of the MINI JCW GP will be built and this disguised prototype is our clearest indication yet of how it will look. Presented for your consideration are the sizeable alloys, large air intakes and the bold spoiler perched atop the bootlid.
MINI is happy to confirm that the GP has a 'high-power engine', model-specific suspension technology and 'precisely defined' aerodynamics, so much so that while its immediate predecessor went round the Green Hell in 8m 23s, the new one - still in prototype guise, remember, with lots of fine-tuning on its chassis to come - has apparently already smashed the eight-minute barrier. Cripes!
So far, all MINI will say about the GP3's powerplant is it will be a TwinPower Turbo four-cylinder motor with 'more than 300hp'. We know fine well that it's the engine already used in the X2 M35i, which has been confirmed for the non-GP versions of the JCW Countryman and Clubman models - in those applications, it makes 306hp. Normally, the GP is a teensy-tiny bit more powerful than its contemporary stablemates, so either the GP3 will have 306hp but a huge weight reduction programme to make those horses count for a little more, or it might even be edging towards 320hp. Imagine that; a 320hp MINI...
Anything else?
Even though just 3,000 John Cooper Works GPs will be built this time around, that makes it positively common compared to its forebears. The original MINI Cooper S with John Cooper Works GP Kit, now affectionately (and retrospectively) known as the GP1, launched in 2006, while the GP2 appeared 2013; both of these were limited to 2,000 units apiece.