MINI’s John Cooper Works Race Team Heads to Rally Colorado for ARA National Championship

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MINI USA and the John Cooper Works Race Team are back on gravel this weekend, heading to the American Rally Association (ARA) National Championship’s “Rally Colorado” event July 18–19. The rally takes place in and around Rangely, in Rio Blanco County, and marks the start of the second half of the 2026 ARA season.

Rally Colorado is one of the more demanding rounds on the calendar. Competitors will run 137 competitive miles across fast, twisting stages in the state’s northwest corner, mixing smooth gravel, clay, and hard-packed dirt with constant elevation changes and sweeping turns.

A strong first half of the season

This is MINI’s debut year in ARA National competition, and the John Cooper Works Race Team has made the most of it so far. The season opened with a class podium at the Sno*Drift Rally on February 6–7 in Atlanta, Michigan, followed by three more rounds:

• Rally in the 100 Acre Wood — March 13–14, Salem/Potosi, Missouri
• Olympus Rally — April 17–19, Shelton, Washington
• Southern Ohio Forest Rally — June 11–13, Chillicothe, Ohio

MINI USA is running the season with long-time partner LAP Motorsports, fielding two rally-prepped cars: a MINI John Cooper Works Countryman ALL4 in the Limited 4 Wheel Drive (L4WD) class, and a MINI John Cooper Works 2-Door in the Open 2 Wheel Drive (O2WD) class.

For Rally Colorado, the driver lineup is:

• David Quillen and Drew Quillen — MINI John Cooper Works 2-Door (O2WD)
• Luis Perocarpi and Felecia Killman — MINI John Cooper Works Countryman ALL4 (L4WD)

“We’re excited to take on the rally stages at Rally Colorado this weekend,” said Luis Perocarpi, team owner of LAP Motorsports. “Both the John Cooper Works 2-Door and the John Cooper Works Countryman ALL4 have consistently demonstrated their performance and toughness throughout the first half of the ARA season, and we look forward to building on that momentum over some of the most challenging and technical stages of the season.”

The cars: minimal mods, maximum character

ARA’s L4WD and O2WD classes allow only minimal modification from factory specification, mostly safety equipment, which means the John Cooper Works Countryman ALL4 and MINI John Cooper Works 2-Door are competing largely as they roll off the line. The Countryman ALL4 brings the size and all-road versatility of the current, larger MINI SUV, while the 2-Door leans on the short wheelbase and go-kart handling that’s been the brand’s calling card since the original Mini Cooper.

Dealer techs get pit crew duty

One of the more distinctive parts of the program: LAP Motorsports’ crew is supplemented at select rounds by technicians pulled from the MINI dealer network. Four top-performing MINI Dealer Technicians are selected to crew each race alongside the LAP team, giving retail staff hands-on time in a national rally program — a direct line between the dealership floor and the stages.

Rally roots go back to the original Mini Cooper

MINI’s rally credentials predate the John Cooper Works badge by decades. The classic Mini Cooper S, born from Alec Issigonis’s compact, fuel-efficient city car and reworked by John Cooper into a rally weapon, used its small footprint, front-wheel drive, and nimble handling to beat far more powerful V8 rivals on tight, icy mountain roads. That underdog formula delivered Monte Carlo Rally wins in 1964, 1965, and 1967, and the brand returned to top-level rally form in the 2010s with the MINI ALL4 Racing program at the Dakar Rally.

What’s left on the 2026 ARA calendar

After Rally Colorado, three rounds remain in the 2026 ARA National Championship season:

• Ojibwe Forests Rally — August 27–29, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
• Overmountain Rally Tennessee — September 18–19, Newport, Tennessee
• Lake Superior Performance Rally — October 9–10, Marquette, Michigan

Live stage updates are available at americanrallyassociation.org/live. More on the ARA and its partners is at AmericanRallyAssociation.org.

MINI and LAP Motorsports

MINI USA’s relationship with LAP Motorsports, founded and run by Luis Perocarpi, dates back to 2015, when the MINI John Cooper Works Race Team competed in IMSA ST, and more recently in the SRO and TC Americas classes of the World Challenge series. The move into rally is a new chapter for a partnership built on road-racing wins, aimed at putting MINI in front of a different kind of motorsport audience while staying true to the brand’s roots.

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