Miniology Magazine Volume 2 Issue 1

‘One Family

One Race Team’

If any two brothers were destined to be involved with motorsport it would have to be the Napier brothers, Rory and Murray. With their father and Uncle competed in the Scottish Hillclimb Championship in the early 80s with a Phantom P75 Clubmans car you could say the duo were destined to drive!

However, it might surprise you that Rory got his competitive juices flowing using pedal power instead of an internal combustion engine. “I started out racing downhill mountain bike in early 2000,” he said. ”And even though I gained my driver’s license in 2003, I continued racing MTB until close of season 2004. My first car was a Mini that I still own, I used it daily and took it to the local ¼ mile drag strip at Crail for two years or so.”

By now it was 2017 and the car was ready to hit the track but bear in mind this was not a previously raced mini that had just been rebuilt so the Napier’s knew there might be some new car issues when they finally hit the track, so let’s look back at how they received the car and see what

they had to do to get it track ready. As we said above it was bought as a rolling chassis with few jobs to finish. The basics had been put together by the chassis builder Richard Billingham before passing into the hands of the first owner. He never finished the car, so it had never seen the track. Considering the quality of aluminum paneling and additional fab work Rory was quite glad he never completed it, but with all that paneling to revamp you can see how the rebuild timeline was extended.

Like many of the race spaceframe Minis out there, the Napier version has a non-standard powerplant, a 2001 Yamaha R1 bike motor on carbs but this one is placed up front in the original A-Series location. When asked if he knew why the Yamaha was placed up front, Rory replied, “Minis are FWD, ain’t they?”

Spaceframe (tubeframe) Minis tend to either use Mini components in the suspension or fabricated items. In this case there is a mix of Kent Auto Developments (KAD), Force Racing and Minisport components use in the suspension design. Missing from the suspension package were the dampers but that got sorted when the brothers obtained a trick set of Protec coilovers which have done an admirable job so far. Brakes were Tarox 6 pot calipers but that has since been changed out for a set of proven Minisport 4 pot calipers.

That brings us to the next chapter in the story, hitting the track in 2017, developing the car for hillclimb and sprints and that fateful day at Doune in June, 2018. Because the car was designed for sprints and hillclimbs the initial testing was done at Crail (I place I remember fondly from my karting days) which has a kart track as well as the drag strip and travelling a little bit further afield to the kart track at Boyndie, North West of Aberdeen which is one of the tracks on the Sprint Championship circuit. The brothers were happy with how things were progressing with the car until Murray had an off at Doune hilllcimb in Perthshire. Anyone who knows Doune will tell you it is an intimidating track with

Hen’s teeth or in other words, very rare Alleycat Minilite wheels

Packaging looks good, a Mini rad faces the proper direction.

no runoff in many parts of the track. “You have to make up a lot of time in the lower stretches of the track” said Murray before going on. “I was pushing hard and as I went thru Garden Gate the car just got away from me. It was disappointing after all the hard work we put into it to get back to the track but, that is racing as they say!” Rory made his feelings known saying, “I was just glad Murray was okay, cars can be fixed and I guess we are heading back to square one with the car now.”

With great plans to rebuild and get back racing the brothers plans got hit by another curved ball in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan is to rebuild lighter, faster and stronger, and considering the car currently only weighs 437kgs (960#) the brothers are going to have to think a lot about weight reduction, especially making sure it happens in the propoer location. The team will continue to compete in the Hills and Sprints locally and look into running further afield as well. The one modification that will alter the weight of the Mini is going to be adding a bigger fuel tank for track days, after all Scotland’s premier circuit is a mere stone’s throw away from their home base.

When it comes to thanking people, Rory made a huge point that he could not do this without the help of others. “My twin brother Murray who is co-owner and driver, makes this so much easier. Putting two funds into one car makes it a lot more cost effective. My Dad (also Rory), to me he is the engineering oracle, any query I have with changing this or that I usually run past him. Richard Reid – over the years he has put a lot of time into the car and the race weekends. And my uncle Roy Napier, he is my go to fabricator, hand is helping a lot with the current chassis rebuild. Not the least my cousin Ross Napier for getting me into the sport and generally being there for me when needed. All of the above come under the “Napier Bros Racing” banner. One family and one race team!