It has been four years since I last took my 2011 BMW M3 to the track. I remembered that my M3 was good on the track, but I forgot exactly how good it is. The track is truly the M3’s spiritual home.
Today’s track day was at Thunderhill on the 3-mile track (CCW with the by-pass). The day started with light rain, which was just fine by me and the newish Michelin Pilot 4S tires I have on the car. These tires offer good wet grip with plenty of braking and lateral traction available. They are also very predictable as I relearned Thunderhill and my M3’s limits.
Out of prudence, I ran with MDM stability control on, and to my surprise, the system was pleasant to use today. (At the BMW Performance Center, I hated MDM in the F80 M3.) The system was especially helpful in the wet, and the few times it activated, I could already feel the rear starting to spin due to my sloppy throttle. When the MDM intervened, it stemmed mistakes that would have required a significant save from me.
Thunderhill has quite a few pucker-inducing corners, but in my first laps, I was most concerned with T15, as I’ve seen cars spin and auger into the pit wall here. In the wet, T15 was even more treacherous than usual, as curbing between T14 and T15 is painted and thus extra slippery in the wet, and the apex of T15 is enforced with a significant curb of its own. I was glad to have MDM’s assistance as I threaded the needle through this slippery and dangerous corner, and MDM did activate and save my bacon here at least once.
Today’s wrecks occurred in the T11, T12, T13 chicane that leads onto the back straight. T13 is off-camber and pushes cars toward the slippery grass on the edge of the track. A poor Ferrari 360 spun here and tagged the tire barrier. A Miata looped in T12 and was also collected by the wall. By keeping MDM on and straightening the chicane with a significant cut through T12, I was able to attack T13 without fear.
Thanks to the good wet grip of my Pilot Sport 4S tires, I greatly enjoyed the two rainy sessions at the beginning of the day, and I was able to keep up with higher horsepower cars like Corvette Stingrays and Audi TT RSes. I would have been happy to keep lapping in the rain all day long as the M3 is very well balanced and well behaved in the wet, but the weather had other plans. By my third session, the sun was starting to dry the track.
In the dry sessions, I worked on my lines and braking zones. By the end of the day, I was roaring into T1 at 125 mph. At that speed, T1 comes up quickly, and the braking zone, which crosses the pit-out blend line to further widen the track, feels quite compressed. I needed to constantly remind myself to keep my eyes up and towards the exit of T1, lest I become target fixated at the end of my braking zone and miss my apex out of fear of running off track.
(My fear was attributable to the M3’s brakes. For track days, the M3’s brakes are the car’s weakest link. I had track-spec PFC08 endurance pads in the front calipers and the OEM street pads in the rear calipers, but my setup was not immune to fade. After the first fast dry session, the brake pedal got softer and longer, which probably was a sign of me overworking the pads. If I strung multiple four or five hot laps together, the stopping power from the brakes would decrease by 10% or 20%, further hinting at overheated pads. I’d wager that the stock rear brake pads were overheated and that the PFC08 endurance pads probably wanted a more conservative use of the brake pedal. On the bright side, I never got pad judder, never significantly lost braking power, and never had the pedal go to the floor.)
T2 is Thunderhill’s Carousel. This corner is a lovely 10 seconds long, which is plenty of time to pull apart the pieces of the corner and enjoy each one. As the day progressed, I braked later and later for T2, doing a significant amount of my braking in the corner itself, using long trail-braking and practicing the smooth pedal release I’d been taught a BMW’s Performance Center West. The following 4 seconds of maintenance throttle as I trimmed down to the apex gave me ample time to feel and adjust the balance of the M3 with small throttle changes. When the M3’s engine is revving high, even the smallest throttle change is felt in the rear tire attitude and the cornering balance of the car. This is one of the joys of the M3! If I found my line to be wide in T2, a little lift of the throttle would tuck the M3’s nose down towards the apex. Post apex, the M3’s traction is very good out of T2. I could add lots of corner exit acceleration so long as I remembered to add gas smoothly; the electronic differential knows how to put the power down.
T3 is another clencher, as you enter it over a slight crest and as the corner is very off-camber. Entering T3, the M3 could feel squirrely and prone to spinning if I tried to brake over the crest and into the corner. I ultimately decided to do more of my braking before the crest, and then the M3’s suspension felt happy to pull me through the off-camber corner.
The transition from T3 to T4 is one of the tighter ones on Thunderhill and the one where the M3’s street suspension needs the most accommodation. Thunderhill is a smooth track, so I was driving in the M3’s firmest suspension mode (Sport), but the M3 still feels rolly and needs deliberate, smooth inputs when transitioning between stacked turns.
(The current generation F80 M3 also felt rolly once on the track at Thermal Club’s Desert Circuit. I think this is just the compromise between a street and track suspension.)
In the by-pass configuration, we were running today, T5 is found after a blind, up-and-over roller coaster crest. Most of the morning, I was cursing out loud as I crested this scary hill and dove towards T5, but by the end of the day, I found an entry point and angle over the hill that fed me cleanly into the turn. I was able to get up the guts to coast over the hill, too, instead of breaking over the top as I’d done at the beginning of the day.
The next challenging corner was T8, one of the faster corners of the course and looks tighter than it is. All day long, I struggled with confidence in T8, and I ultimately ended up yelling to myself to keep my eyes up and down the track so that I could see just how open the corner is. During the wet sessions, I did not want to use T8’s generous runoff because the runoff is painted, and that pinched my turn. In the dry, I eventually made use of the runoff and found I could carry much more speed. I suspect I could do T8 without braking, but I never found the balls to try. T8 has a minor curb at its apex, and the M3’s tires and suspension were never bothered if I used it.
T9, like T8, is more open than it appears, but it has the added fear factor of a blind crest. For T9, you enter with a tight left and then you can see nothing but the sky as the track climbs and summits the hill and then dives into a lengthy straightaway. In the rain, the hill’s crest is severe enough that MDM would activate if I was accelerating hard while the road dropped away.
T10 is a fairly conventional left-hander, which is only complicated by its downhill entry and slightly hidden apex.
T11, T12 and T13 are the track’s chicane. There is no braking marker for T11, and I often braked too late for this corner. There is enough pavement between T11 and T13 that I could ignore T12 and just accelerate through the paved runoff. (I always love short-cutting corners this way!) The runoff is bumpy, but the M3’s suspension does not mind. MDM would trigger over one significant bump in not-T12, but a slight modification to my route could avoid that.
Thunderhill’s final hairpin has two radii and is called T14 and T15. Some of my hardest threshold braking was into T14, the tighter of the two corners, and I had to tickle the ABS threshold without going too deep into ABS, as there is enough skidding time in the M3’s ABS programming that the car would unstably edge to one side or the other as I jammed on the brakes. I tried to trail brake into the apex of T14, but often I’d started braking too late and would run wide of the clipping point. The acceleration onto the front straight actually starts just after T14’s apex, and to make the widest path through T15 and onto the straight, I had to straddle the painted runoff between T14 and T15. This painted pavement was extra slippery in the rain, and if I added too much power while crossing the wet paint I’d oversteer. But when I managed to straddle it just right and avoid the widest swaths of paint, I felt like a hero.
In the wet and in the dry, the M3 was a joy on the race track. While the suspension allows a modest amount of roll, the car grips and grips and grips. The M3’s DCT feels clunky and tired in town, but on the racetrack, at high RPM, the shifts are as sharp and precise as ever. (The fourth most aggressive shift setting has the best combination of quick shifts and smooth shifts, letting me change gears with immunity mid-corner if needed.) I never wished for a manual gearbox as I raced around the track; I was happy to avoid the dance steps and instead focus on my lines and braking zones.
As ever, the M3’s engine is the star of the show. The naturally aspirated V8 is clearly race-bred, and its precision and response feel second to none around Thunderhill. The car’s 414 hp was all I wanted, and I had enough speed at the end of each straight to frighten me. Since track work keeps the engine’s revs high, I never wanted for torque either.
I never really fell in love with the F80 M3s at BMW’s Performance Center West. They handled the track beautifully but had too much MDM interference and felt too artificial in their steering and sound.
I am completely in love with my 2011 E90 M3 on the track. Really, it is the steering and engine which make the E90 a winner. Its steering feels more natural and communicates a greater spectrum of feedback, and the whole car is up on its toes and talkative when you are braking or cornering at the car’s limits. The V8 sounds great and relishes high-RPM running. It is more immediately reactive than the newer I6 twin-turbo, and it delivers torque smoother. This smoother torque delivery lets the E90’s play better with MDM. (At Thunderhill, MDM rarely pulled power as I was exiting a corner, and when it did pull power, it was reining in an unwanted slide. At Thermal, the F80 M3 pulled power on almost every corner and never allowed me the leash to fully use the rear tire traction.)
The PS4S tires were impressive and wonderful. They weren’t too sensitive to tire pressure changes, and they never got greasy. The tradeoff is that they wore heavily in today’s dry session.
There are two things I miss from the F80 M3 at the track. First is the ceramic brakes: These were nearly flawless and indefatigable at Thermal. I am not sure I would want to pay for them (or for a rotor and pad replacement), but boy, do they work well! The E90 M3’s brakes are not up to track duty without a pad change, and for brake-heavy tracks like Laguna Seca, you’ll want sturdier equipment. The second, less necessary, improvement I’d want to steal from the F80 M3 is its better-bolstered seat; my arms and knee are sore after bracing myself all day long!
The E90 M3 is nice as a normal car, fine as a 7/10ths canyon car, but incredible as a track experience. Ideally, it would get a big brake kit so that I could drive straight off the street and onto the track without swapping pads, but short of that, I loved my M3 at Thunderhill. Now I just need to decide if I am comfortable enough with the substantial maintenance costs of the E90 to keep it beyond my warranty and continue using it on the track.
Mike's Steering Column 