You Have to Watch a Twin Hayabusa-Swapped Mini Drag Race a Cross Kart

Liam Doran’s twin-hayabusa-engined Mini goes up against a custom Autograss racer.

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Enrico Punsalang

By: Enrico Punsalang

Jul 19, 2024 at 8:08am ET

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Autograss is a sport you may have never heard of before, but in the UK and Ireland, it’s a pretty big thing. It’s home to some insane builds, with a lot of them making use of motorcycle engines. Best of all, a lot of these Autograss race cars are based on compact cars like vintage Minis and Peugeots.

In fact, we’ve talked about one of these crazy racers before: Liam Doran’s Hayabusa-powered Mini. And to emphasize just how crazy this thing is, it’s powered by not one, but two Suzuki Hayabusa engines. The thing weighs in at 1,279 pounds, and dishes out a whopping 420 horsepower. It’s so crazy that it can pop wheelies on demand.

And so the logical next step would be for us to witness this thing go up against another similarly crazy machine. Luckily, the folks over at Hoonigan did just that. The vehicle it went up against? Well, yet another wild Autograss build—a custom, Class 8 racer that’s also powered by a Suzuki Hayabusa engine.

Owned by Kenny Smith, this racer may be powered by just one Hayabusa engine, but it’s super lightweight, tipping the scales at just 882 pounds. With around 200 ponies sent straight to the back wheels, this thing is definitely no slouch.

Hoonigan via YouTube

The two machines went head-to-head in a classic drag race, going out for three runs. Right at the start, Kenny’s lightweight racer popped a wheelie, while Liam’s Mini took an early lead. From there it was pretty much cut and dry, with the Mini taking the win. The quarter-mile times? 13.15 seconds for Kenny and 12.04 seconds for Liam. Pretty impressive considering these things weren’t exactly designed for drag racing.

Round two saw the tables turn, with Kenny’s Autograss racer crossing the quarter mile in 12.06 seconds and Liam’s Mini clocking in a time of 13.32 seconds. Kenny had a flawless launch, pulling a clean wheelie off the line, while Liam seemed to suffer from some clutch slippage at the start, which may have cost him the round.

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And so round three was the ultimate decider. Both cars launched hard off the line, lifting their front wheels off the ground. But it was clear that the Mini was able to stick the launch much better. Nevertheless, both cars would lift their front wheels off the ground as they reached peak power.

Round three was the closest of them all, with both cars clocking in sub-12-second runs. But Liam and his Mini would come out victorious with an 11.53-second run—just 0.35 seconds behind was Kenny’s Autograss racer.

After all was said and done it was clear that it didn’t really matter who the winner was. Both these machines are absolutely crazy, and require some insane skills to pilot even on a straight line.

And what better way to celebrate than with a bunch of donuts from the Mini, with Liam finishing off whatever was left of his tires for the day.