BMW Club San Diego Autocross Oct 26th at Qualcomm Stadium

Mike Joyce | November 14, 2008

As a result from the encouragement from a friend of mine, who also got a new BMW (a 335i sedan, 6spd – on the same exact day I got mine, no less). I signed up for the BMW of San Diego’s Autocross event that occurs in the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot.

The first thing you need to know about these sorts of events, is that they are all day, and fantastic fun. I was excited – my friend Kayvan also decided to attend at the last minute with his ‘08 alpine white M3.

With a mere 1250 miles on the clock on my M Roadster I was over the break-in period for the incredible 330hp S54 engine, but just. Not that it stopped me much prior to that anyways.

Upon showing up at the event (at a paltry 6:30am) we queued up in the inspection rows to make sure our cars didn’t explode. Because all of our cars were new, we passed with flying colors. The three of us paid our dues and ended up parking.

The parking lot was filled with a wide array of cars. To name a few: 2 997 Porsche GT3s, A Ferrari 360, a few miata’s and other race cars towed to the track. About 10 new M5’s, 2 M6’s and a few dozen M3’s with a handful of the new ones.

Austin, Kayvan and I were waiting for the drivers meeting, and a towed Miata showed up. Austin said to me: “Mike is that your guy?” it turns out that the man driving up towing that Miata was none other than a man by the name of Seth. An old friend of mine from San Diego that worked on my Mazdaspeed Protege equipping it with a front mount intercooler among other goodies.

I walked over to Seth and we chatted for a good 30 minutes until the drivers meeting started. After the drivers meeting we began to do runs, we were clumped up into 4 different groups and each group had a turn doing various things – like driving, resting, and working the track.

On your first 3 runs you have an instructor with you, the first lap is actually driven by the instructor, and the next 2 laps are driven by you – with the instructor giving you pointers. My instructor was very nice, she was helpful in helping me understand the track.

So the first thing that you need to know about driving an M Roadster, fast – is that it is incredibly hard to keep up with all of the machinery. The car is very lively, quick, and sensitive. It is setup to understeer if you aren’t brave. The only way to drive this thing fast is to drive very aggressively. That is, brake, gas + turn in. Doing anything less than this will cause a very boring understeer situation.

However, if you really concentrate – and trust the car to save you, it will. The differential in this car is amazing and even with the traction control totally off , the balance of the chassis, tires, and LSD keeps you from crashing. It is a roller-coaster sort of ride.

This car has 2 modes, granny-understeer driving and balls to the wall racing, there is no in between. When this car is in sport mode, with the traction control off it has a personality like a caged squirrel that just went through the paint mixer. It is crazed and ready to go. Grabbing on is a great wild ride. It is unlike any other fast car that I have ever driven.

Now the way the track was setup was excellent, much better than any other coned-like event I have ever been too. The longest part of the track is split up by a box-chicane but can be taken flat out if you are super brave. I got up to around 115 in this area (judging by my gearing position – at the top end of 3rd gear). The entry point to this long straight was a sweeping, long right hander that is taken at about 45mph, which means you launch out of it in second gear, sideways, all the way up until the shift point from second to third at around 75mph.

The track was a blast.

After another few rounds of laps it was rest time for me, and track-working time for Austin. During this time – Seth had decided it would be a good idea to scare me. He walked up to one of the race cars (and I do mean RACE cars) and goes up to the driver and says: “This is big Mike, take him for a wild ride”. The driver was one of the instructors and was in an E36 325is with an S54 engine (built by Seth) with a FULL roll cage (I literally had to crawl in and out of it).

This guy took me for a lap, and MY GOD this car was fast, in a straight line it wasn’t super-epic. But with the (hot) racing slicks, and incredible brakes it went around the corners with epic g-forces. The best word to describe is AGONY. He decided to take me for a few laps, after we came back in Seth was amused at my demeanor.

After this I went out to watch some of the cars running laps. The car I was particularly interested in was the Ferrari 360. Now it should be mentioned that Austin was working the track, and he was working a the end of the long straight described above.

I watch the 360 run around the track, and when he gets to the box in the straight, he loses the rear-end (probably going around 90-100mph) and spins out of control – smoke in the air v8 wailing. Oh, and it was heading in Austin’s general direction.

Austin later described this like the Indiana Jones scene where the giant rock-ball is rolling toward him, Austin bravely ran away and waited for the car to come to a stop. Hilarious.

After all of this fooling around it was time for the Timed Laps. I was grouped in a class called “M Stock” which consisted of M3’s, M5’s, M6’s – me being the only MZ4.

You get 3 shots a posting a time, the first two laps I clocked around 101 seconds, which is what everyone else was running. On the last lap, I posted a 99.9. At this point not a single person had beat the 100 second mark. I was stoked. After my class had run, two other guys in M3’s (one of them an instructor in the new M3) beat my time – I ended up in 3rd for the class.

Here are some snapshots of the results with my records highlighted.