The last time I drove a car around Snetterton was my M135i, five years ago. I'd booked this event in the knowledge that I came away last time having had fun but with the realisation that although the little M is a fast and fine handling road car, a track car it is not. I was curious to know if that is still the case.
Mr Yu, also of this parish, had told me just before I collected my car it was a much improved experience, even without the thousands of pounds of mods he's done to his. We'll come to that later.
We met up with Mike in Tyrrells and enjoyed a chat and some refreshments whilst waiting for the debrief. Sighting laps complete, bit of a yawn fest because there were a lot of cars out. Not sure why the caged Mini Cooper needed to do these laps 6" from my bumper, but because race car or something.
Anyway with that done we hung around while the 2nd sighting lap group went out, and then set about it properly. Immediately I could tell the M140 was stiffer and the tendency to roll-oversteer the M135i had was gone. In fact body control was much better all round. I had its adaptive suspension in the stiffer Sport setting and with manual gearbox control.
My car has the Bridgestone S001 runflat tyres, and Andy's was on the proper Michelin Pilot Super Sports. The difference was obvious - he was driving out of corners, where I was traction limited until almost all the lock was off and then it would pick up and fire down the straights. This wasn't much of a surprise. I had a little play in Sport+ with the traction off, and that just spun up a wheel with a bit of gentle oversteer without providing for any more forward motion. I left it on for the rest of the evening.
The brakes coped pretty well - much like last time. after about 3 laps the pedal went a bit soft and a bit long, but then didn't get any worse. The best I saw along the back straight was 125 mph - Andy was getting 130+, and it didn't have any problem hauling it up lap after lap.
I passed a few cars, mostly just through power, and caught and passed a couple of slower drivers, but with only 1100 miles on the car from new I had no intention of going 10/10ths and waved by far more than I went by. The point of the evening was just to experience what the car was like, rather than any kind of serious Track Work (tm).
I don't think I managed to be on track the same time as Mike - he was having issues with brake fade, which he may wish to elaborate on here, but that was likely to be a completely daft comparison anyway!
So in conclusion; yes the little M is better on track than it's predecessor, but without spending thousands on a diff, M4 lower control arms, sticker tyres and maybe uprating the brakes or at least fluid, it's never really going to be a track day car, and even then I'd suggest that money would be better spent on an actual track car. Perhaps if I had never experienced my Caterham or Lotus I would feel differently. But as it stands, I'll stick to bike track days I think. The rush is much higher and the running costs much lower.
Having thought about it - there's quite some parallel with my old 993 here. Fabulous road car, but a bit out of it's depth on the track (which is what lead me to chop it for the Elise Sport 190).
So once the evening ended, the 3 of us retired to the local curry house in Attleborough and enjoyed a couple of hours of car based chat and decent food. A very pleasant evening all round.
I don't know if Mike saw it out on track, but there was a chap in an Aventador SV out as well, whose helmeted noggin was above the top of the windscreen by a good 4" - rather him than me!
