I’m attending the BMW Performance Driving School at Thermal for a private driving lesson. This isn’t my first visit; I took lessons here in 2019 as a contestant for BMW’s Ultimate Driver Competition. The experience was a blast, so I’m back for more!
During the competition, my weak spot was finding speed out of the corners: Exiting the Thermal Club’s many hairpins, I’d trigger the F80 M3‘s ESP as I got on the gas at the apex. It was infuriating to be fighting with the computers as the leading cars pulled away!
In 2019 I trained on the polished skidpad too. I mastered long circular drifts around the skidpad’s circumference but struggled to complete the side-to-side transitions in the figure-eight exercise. Now that I’m back at the BMW Performance School, I hope to right the wrongs from last time!
For today I’ve requested instructor Chris Hill. Chris is a full-time employee of the BMW Performance Driving School and the same teacher that greatly improved my trail braking and drifting on my initial visit. Chris and I had 6 hours of one-on-one instruction in 2019, and after that, he promised me ESP-off laps (to see if the ESP was hindering my exits) if I returned for further lessons. I’m hoping to collect on that promise.
School starts at 9 am on a brilliantly sunny April morning. Chris vaguely remembers me from my Ultimate Driver Competition visit, but the promise has been forgotten, and he’s tentative about ESP-off exercises. I understand; Chris is responsible for the safety of the drivers and the cars, and he’d have a lot to explain if I spin into a barrier before lunchtime! He says that if I prove my mettle, I might get nanny-free laps later in the day. Fair enough!
I’d hoped that the 2021 (G80) M3s would be ready for today’s visit, but the school’s new fleet has yet to arrive. It’s back into the 2020 (F82) M4 for me! The golden lining is that I’ll be able to work on my driving technique without learning a new car too. Today I’ve only got 3 hours of instruction booked—at $450/hr, it was as much as I could afford—so all efficiencies are welcome. In addition to asking for Chris, I’ve also requested the Thermal Club’s Desert Palm circuit. This is another efficiency: I trained on Desert Palm and South Palm in 2019, and while I felt confused and lost on South Palm, each of Desert Palm’s 10 corners had a distinct look and challenging personality. I especially loved the gut-testing jump-chicane at turns 8 and 9 and the sphincter-clenching brake zone for turn 10.
Chris formulates a plan for my track and drifting goals, then we beeline to Desert Palm for hot lapping. Chris leads me around the Desert Palm, and although the corners are all familiar, I am hard-pressed to match the warm-up pace that Chris is setting. I need more time to ease into the speeds and acclimate to the M4.
Part of the problem is my car’s brake pedal; its firmness is inconsistent, and in some braking zones, the top of the pedal lacks strong stopping power. I radio my worries to Chris, and he borrows my M4 for a fast shake-down lap. To him, the brakes feel normal. (Perhaps I’m getting pad kick-back when I use the curbs?)
We do short sessions, just 5 or 6 laps—or 8 to 10 minutes—followed by talking and planning in the pits. In the first few sessions, Chris watches me from ahead and then has me pass to observe from behind. He notices that my braking is solid when I’m chasing him, but my exit speeds are compromised. When I’m leading, my braking is timid, but my exits are strong. He surmises that when I’m following, I’m accelerating in lockstep with the lead car, thereby getting on the gas too soon for my position and compromising the corner exit.
My surprise observation is that the 2020 M4’s ESP is greatly improved! Even with ESP fully on, I no longer notice the computer pulling power as I gas my way out of the corners. In 2019, there was a bump in acceleration once the steering was fully straightened. Today, that stair-step intervention can’t be found.
Actually, it’s better than that. The updated ESP lets me dance along the M4’s limits with only a few helpful nudges. My goal of mastering the M4’s ESP is moot, as the ESP is now a partner (rather than a hindrance) on the track.
(Chris says that the new MDM now allows skids. The BMW instructors discovered this after a few students almost spun their M4s when using MDM! The school no longer uses MDM as the default mode for trackwork; they prefer full-on ESP since it is as good as or better than old MDM.)
To break me of my monkey-see-monkey-do early gassing, Chris proposes I try driving alternate entries while exiting on the optimal path. The goal is to decouple the entries and exits so that if I make a mistake in the first half of the turn, I won’t continue the mistake into the second half.
I try the exercise both as the leader and as the follower. I’m starting to identify the right and wrong lines into the corners, but I don’t feel like I’m learning much about optimal corner exits. I keep thinking back to the corner-entry passing drills I did with GVC BMW CCA long ago; they too taught off-line entries with on-line exits. Is today’s work any different? I’m not sure that it is.
I reflect on what is new. Chris has me using the apex curbing to rotate the car and correct for early apexes. He also has me peeking at the speedometer at the track-out point to see if my exit speed has improved. These are techniques I’ve not tried before.
After a few more sessions, we shift to practicing early turn-ins paired with hard trail braking down to the apex. The earlier entries produce gentler lines, allowing me to turn in softer, slide my braking points forward, and trail brake into the corner. The late-braking elongates the straightaways and makes me carry more speed into the corner. I did this exercise with Chris in 2019; although it is disappointing to practice an old trick rather than learn a new one, the retraining is fair as I’m still working on carrying speed into corners.
The final session on Desert Palm lets me build my pace and get the M4 dancing on the limit of traction down to the apex. The car alternately threatens oversteer—when hard braking lightens its tail—or understeer—when I overwhelm a front tire by having it brake and turn at the same time. The M4 feels up on its toes, hypersensitive to abrupt inputs, and desirous of a smooth hand. The rubber is clinging to the road by the thinnest thread of traction! The M4 is delightful to drive like this; it’s highly communicative and hugely capable at the limit.
(My five sessions at Desert Palm reveal that I’m a 9-tenths driver: Most of the time, I’m leaving a bit of performance untapped. A real pro driver would be pushing over the limits so he’d find the max in each and every segment of the course.)
There are just a few corners of Desert Palm where the traction at all four corners is controlled by acceleration. T5—a long sweeping right-hander on the circuit’s north end—starts with understeer but then loses its banking after the apex. As the turn unwinds, the M4 is tempted to twitch, and gentle throttle extracts maximal grip from all four tires. Here, the helpful hand of the ESP is most apparent, keeping the car on the line indicated by my steering angle.
The other blatant ESP intervention occurs when I leave the T6 hairpin. This is the only second-gear corner, and the M4’s rear wants to slew sideways when the turbo torque spikes. In T6, the ESP abruptly grabs the brakes to check the slide.
(I lose 10 minutes of track time when race driver Boris Said III shows up with two septuagenarian companions and treats them to M5 drift laps of the track.)
We leave the Desert Palm circuit when the M4s are running on fumes. We brim the tanks at the pumps and then move to the polished skidpad for drift training. For 10 minutes, I warm up my brain by drifting circles around the perimeter of the skidpad. I remember to prefer throttle work when maintaining the drift, saving my steering inputs for last-ditch corrections. I try to keep my eyes up, looking 3 or 4 seconds ahead to where I want the car to be.
As soon as Chris is satisfied with my basics, he sets up two pivot cones to form a figure-eight. I’m not expected to drift the full eight right away; there is a stepping-stone exercise for me to try first. I will drift around one pivot cone and through the eight’s crossing, then correct—and end—the slide before the next pivot cone.
For 10 minutes, I practice the routine. I work on the slip angles I need to get around the pivot cones and on adding power and lessening the drift when crossing the skidpad. Easing out of the drift post-crossing is a controlled finish to each slide. (In 2019, I’d attempted wild pendulum transitions—with mixed success—on the figure-eight.)
When I have a modicum of consistency going, I link the drifts between the pivot points. At first, I try powering through the transition to keep the skid going, but this strategy makes me approach the next cone with too much speed, slinging me horribly wide.
Chris pauses my erratic orbits to teach me another fundamental skill. He puts a cone in the center of the skidpad and does donuts around it, explaining how gas can tighten or widen the drift. The key to a wider diameter drift is to gently add throttle and increase the car’s velocity without adding angle. For tighter donuts, I should lift off the throttle to slow the M4 and increase my skid. I practice, and it clicks. Soon I’m picking the radius of my donuts and spiraling towards (and away from) the center cone.
Chris then demonstrates how to manage the side-to-side drift transition with a hard kick to the brakes (and a measured release). Flipping the drift with braking is harder for me to master—I frequently overwhelm the front tires and provoke understeer. When I do brake through the transition, I have a more manageable entry speed for the next cone, and I can pivot tightly at slower speeds.
By the end of the hour, I am drifting the figure-eight multiple times over. It isn’t the prettiest or cleanest work—and many cones are maimed—but I’ve achieved my skidpad goals! (Sadly, Chris tells me that drifting on rough pavement is substantially different and requires relearning much of today’s work!)
And that ends my three hours of instruction at the BMW Performance Driving School. Since it took me over an hour to reacclimate to the M4 and Desert Palm, I feel like I could have used more time to break new ground. If I come again, I’ll be tempted to request the South Palm circuit—because Chris says it’s safer for ESP-off training. (I still love Desert Palm’s high-speed curb-jumping and hilly layout; South Palm is bland by comparison.) But I might be tempted to take drift classes on regular pavement first, as it would be good safety training for my track and street driving too, and tons of fun.
Today’s instruction revealed how my infrequent track access means that when I’m racing, I’m doing as much learning of the track as I am my own capabilities. If I could learn one circuit inside and out, then professional instruction might help me find the next critical skill for my driver development.
Mike's Steering Column 