Bradley Gravett suffered one of the the most challenging weekends of his time in the Vertu MINI CHALLENGE at Oulton Park as the 2024 season reached the half-way stage. Bradley headed to the Cheshire circuit on the back of a hectic weekend at Snetterton in which he had equalled his best result of the season to date and picked up a brace of top six finishes. Things didn’t start well for the EXCELR8 Motorsport racer in Friday practice however, with a gearbox issue in the opening session leaving him well off the pace having been able to put just six...

Bradley Gravett enjoyed another strong weekend on track as he returned to the podium during the latest Vertu Motors MINI CHALLENGE rounds at Oulton Park. Bradley made the trip to the Cheshire circuit on the back of two strong meetings at Brands Hatch and Snetterton, where a maiden top-three finish was followed by the highest-scoring weekend of his racing career to date. A busy Friday testing programme saw Bradley work through a number of set-up changes on his EXCELR8 Motorsport-run car, all geared towards maximising his chances of success during the only double-header event of the season. That work paid...

After an impressive performance at Snetterton, Bradley and the entire Gravett Racing team are feeling positive and eager to continue their strong momentum as they head into Round 4 of the MINI Challenge JCW series at Oulton Park this coming weekend. With consistent front-running results and a new personal best in points scoring, Bradley is determined to secure another well-deserved podium finish. The previous round at Snetterton showcased Bradley's remarkable talent and determination. Despite not having driven the circuit for over 12 months, he displayed exceptional pace and racecraft, narrowly missing out on podium finishes in all three races. Unfortunately,...

So Oulton Park, as you know, it just happened, and wow, did we have another blinding weekend of MINI Challenge racing. Having now fully recovered from the frustrations of our DNF in the final race of the weekend at Brands Hatch a couple of weeks back, I went into Oulton Park with precisely the same positivity as I did at the start of the previous two rounds and boy, did it pay dividends. As Oulton Park is around 180 miles away, we decided early last week that it would be best to get ourselves up and into the Oulton Park,...

So it's race week for round three of the MINI Challenge, and this time we'll be heading on up north to the Cheshire based circuit, Oulton Park, which, as you may already know, is my favourite track on the British Touring Car calendar. Oulton Park is absolutely stunning and by far one of the best-kept circuits I've ever visited. Of course, you only really fully appreciate all its glory when on a track walk and not doing 100mph, but I'd describe the track as top-end golf course beauty, with perfectly cut grass, hundreds of stunningly mature trees and actual flowing...

Oulton Park; I think we can quite definitely call that another headline-worthy event for the MINI Challenge JCWs. Having decided once again to travel up early Friday morning, we arrived at the circuit around 9 am; it worked out pretty well as our first session wasn't until around midday, so we had more than enough time to get everything sorted out. We pretty much picked up from where we left off with setup from our previous Oulton Park test day a couple of weeks back when I liked it most, although we did make an additional damping change to the...

Yep, these race weekends are starting to hit us thick and fast now, with Brands Hatch only a couple of weeks back, Oulton Park this weekend, and Knockhill only two weeks from now. But, there's only one thing I am thinking about right now: Oulton Park. As I have said many times before, Oulton Park is one of my favourite tracks, not only because it's just a fantastic and challenging circuit to drive, but because it's actually just a beautiful place to visit, not just the track but the surrounding areas too; they must pay their greenkeepers a fair wage;...

Oulton Park, well, I have to say that overall, we're all very pleased with how it went and what we learned. As you know, we were very much treating this day as a true 'test day' to allow us the opportunity to make some dramatic setup adjustments to the car to see what it does, and that's precisely what we did, and we learnt some interesting things along the way. Despite Oulton Park being around a 3-hour drive, we decided that we didn't fancy a night in a Travel Lodge on the Thursday night and concluded that driving up at...

Just a quick one from me to let you know that we're back out in the MINI tomorrow at Oulton Park to bag in a test day pre our race weekend later this month. Oulton Park is a circuit I know and like, very much, and actually in the past have been pretty quick at, as last year in the Cooper, on my first MINI Challenge race weekend, in very tricky conditions, I managed to qualify eighth. But, despite that, with the long break between Brands Hatch last time out and Oulton Park in a couple of weeks, we felt...