Michael LaGrasta

This weekend's scheduled Mini track day at Spring Mountain was canceled, leaving me in Vegas with plenty of extra time for gambling and sight seeing. So I have no news about the qualifiers for the North American Mini Cooper Challenge. I did take some time and drive up to the Valley of Fire state park. It's Nevada's first state park and it's full of these crazy red rock vistas. Apparently, it was once all underwater.

Well, after a brief but annoying shipping delay. The Mini has got a new set of wheels and tires for the street. They are 18" Motegi Racing SP-10's in Hyper-Black...whatever color that is. So after so many years of wanting to buy aftermarket wheels for one of my cars, I have finally done it. All it took was a catastrophic failure of an overpriced OEM wheel

So I'm minding my own business driving down the road and all of the sudden this huge piece of broken concrete bounces out from under some semi truck and right at my car. I had nowhere to go and got on the brakes, but it still ended up getting under my front tire. The was a huge bang and instantly my tire pressure sensor lit up. After being towed home on a flat bed tow truck, I was able to pull the wheel and inspect the damage. This is what I found.Wow! That is one bent wheel. So I guess I'm finally going to be ordering some aftermarket wheels like I've always wanted to.