Day one is in the books and I’m beat. It was intense. We crammed a lot into one day. The BMW facility here in Spartanburg is first rate. They run a complete performance center with a road course and two skid pads.
We headed out for the track around 9 AM. We spent a little time in the class room learning about heal-toe, cornering technique, and skid control. Then it was time to head out for drills. We drove a mix of M3 SMG, M3 six-speed, and M5 SMG. 15 brand new M cars. These cars are simply amazing in a track setting. You couldn’t ask for better cars to learn performance driving.
Heal-Toe Drill
My first drill was learning heal-toe technique. I’ve tried to do this before with limited success. It was perhaps the hardest thing to do. It sounds complicated and is just as much in practice. It does make a difference in exiting a corner but it certainly gets you doing alot of things all at once. I was also hurt by braking way too late into corners. I’ve always had that problem. So between the dance of heal-toe and fighting the car after braking late, this drill was tough
Cornering
The second drill was to work on cornering technique. This was all in 2nd gear in M3 SMG’s. You learn to brake hard, ease up, and turn in very late. Of course I tended to dive into the corners too early but by the end of the drill, I was doing much better. As a bonus, I got my first real seat time in an SMG. My only previous experience was a short run in a 540. The track shows how useful SMG is. No heal toe - the computer does it perfect every time. It is better on the track as you concentrate on fewer things.
Skid Pad
After lunch, it was off to the skid pad. This was kind of tough going out on a full stomach. One of the instructors is a competitive “drift” racer. Basically, he likes to throw cars sideways. I had a pretty intense ride with him as he did a full powerslide around the entire arc. Then it was our turn. We ran in M5 SMG’s with DSC turned off. It was easy to throw the backend out. Give it a blip of throttle and off you would go. We learned how to focus your attention back on the inside of the arc and to control the steering back into the skid before correcting. I struggled a bit on it as sometimes I would give too much throttle and turn the car around 180. But I did get a few pretty good skids going. I bailed out on the long ones when I should have kept riding it. This was a pretty darn fun drill considering you were throwing around an $80,000 car.
Autocross
After some more classroom time, we started to put everything together in the autocross drill using the M3 6-speed. This was one of my favorites. We ran a course that started on a straightaway at around 60-70 MPH (they had some chicanes in to keep our speed down). You came hard into a 90 degree left before entering the skid pad. Then half-way around the skid pad (which was still wet) and into a series of turns followed by a short slalom. Back around a couple more turns and into the straightaway. This is where you started to open the cars up. I thought I was doing pretty well until the instructor got in. I never realized how hard you can ride your brakes. He would accelerate up to the last moment, hard on the brakes then letting up and accelerating out of of the turns. He then rode a couple laps in the passenger seat and started to push my speed up.
Skid Pad II
Next, it was back to a bigger skid pad with the M5’s. This time, we ran two cars at a time in a race to do laps around a wet oval. Very cool. You had to balance acceleration and slide control while keeping your speed up enough to win the race. After the races, we all got a chance to try full on drifting. I couldn’t hold the drift for too long but did finish up with a full 360 spin. Not sure I can pull that off again!
Time Trials
Back to the M3 SMG’s and into short course time trials. All second gear, working on corner turn in points and finishing by stopping in a precise spot. I was middle of the pack running the course in a little over 50 seconds. Best in our group was 48s. Best of the day was 45s by some visiting M5 engineers (so they don’t count).
Autocross Time Trials
The day ended with a fun event where everyone ran two full timed laps on the autocross. Everyone was getting pretty tired but it was a blast putting it all together and pushing everything hard. I was around 7 or 8 out of 15 running at around 55 seconds. Best here was about 52 seconds.
We finished up with a great dinner and some time to chat with the instructors and the visiting M5 engineers. The BMW guys have been amazing. They have been extremely supportive and told us to live by the motto NYC: Not Your Car. They told us to treat it somewhere between our own car and a rental. The opportunity to push cars like these is amazing.
Tomorrow is the Michelin test track where everything will be increased another level. Early start but should be another great day. Now to convince my wife to let me buy an M3 SMG …
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