Excerpt from Chapter 18 –  Competition Upgrades for Your MINI

More Stopping Power

“The longer you can go fast, the faster you’ll go.” If some grizzled old racing or autocross veteran didn’t say that, someone should have. One of the basics of racing, whether on a road course or autocross course, is that brakes matter because they allow you to maintain higher speeds longer on the straights before you have to brake for the corner.

On a road course, one of the best ways of getting ahead of your competitor is by out-braking them on the corner. You stay door-handle to door-handle with them down the straight, then wait to hit your brakes until after they do and the corner is yours. On the autocross course, the longer you can stay at top speed before braking for the corner, the faster your time will be around the course.

As your driving gets faster, and start you probing the limits of your MINI’s stopping ability even after installing upgraded brake rotors and pads, it’s time to consider upgrading the brakes. Rest assured that there are a variety of options in the market for you to consider.

The easiest and least expensive upgrade is to install high-performance or racing brake pads for track use. Another excellent upgrade is to replace your brake lines for improved pressure. For better performance and quick recovery, you can replace your brake rotors with drilled and slottted brakes. And for the serious performance driver, there are several complete brake systems that incorporate upgraded versions of all these components.

Brake Conversion Kits

To make a car go, they say, there’s no substitute for horsepower. To coin another phrase, to make a car stop, there’s no substitute for surface area. The bigger the brake rotors and pads, the more effective the brakes are going to be at reining in those horses you’ve been stuffing under the bonnet.

If you want to maximize your stopping power, you can opt for a complete conversion kit for the front disc brakes—the ones that do most of the stopping—that will meet your needs for high-performance touring and autocross use, for frequent track days, and full-on racing. Of course, the look of custom aftermarket brake calipers and discs peeking through the wheel spokes give your MINI that serious competitive look.

Conversion kits from four different manufacturers—Wilwood, Stoptech, and Brembo—illustrate the range of performance and prices that are available in the MINI aftermarket. All four of these kits incorporate larger-than-stock rotors for increased surface area and better stopping power.

One note that we should make upfront: Because of their larger diameters, these kits can’t be used on 15- or 16-inch wheels and won’t fit all types of 17-inch wheels. When you consider ordering an upgraded brake kit, check with your supplier to make sure the kit you buy will fit the wheels you have on your MINI.

The Wilwood Big Brake kit is probably the most versatile of these kits as well as being quite inexpensive. The kit will fit the stock 17-inch MINI wheels, as well as most other 17-inch aftermarket wheels. Its stress-flow forged calipers incorporate four pistons to provide more aggressive and consistent stopping power than the standard two-piston calipers on the stock MINI. The brake pads in this kit are “Q” compound polymatrix brake pads for reduced noise and dust levels while providing high resistance to fade, long wear, and low rotor abrasion.

Vented iron rotors of 12.19 inch diameter add stopping power because they have a larger surface area than the stock rotors. Drilled and slotted, they also dissipate heat more readily than stock rotors, as well as dispersing brake dust to avoid irregular buildup of dust on the rotor faces. The kit includes high-quality mounting brackets and fastening hardware and is available for about $900 on some websites.

If you do opt to install an upgraded systems on your front brakes, we would recommend that you also upgrade the pads and rotors on your rear wheels to keep front-to-rear braking in balance. To complete the look, you can buy specialized spray paint to paint your rear brake calipers to match the front calipers.