[jeffclev]

Took my M235i for a track day at Laguna Seca last Thursday and had a blast. Mine has the 8sp auto. This was my first time at Laguna, but I have done 10-12 track days at Thunderhill with front drive cars ('98 Dodge Neon ACR & '04 Dodge Neon SRT4) but last time was 8 years ago. I was rusty for sure!

Laguna is an awesome track with much elevation change. The fastest part of the track is a blind entry into turn 1 at the top of a crest, which is taken at full throttle (if you have the gonands to stay in it). Adding to the thrill is turn 2 a long sweeping hairpin. Definitely a good test of the brakes.

Ok, enough about the track. The car did much better than I expected:

Brakes: On the first session, when I was really slow, they had some serious fade about 6 laps into it. I had to back off my braking points. The instructor thought they might just be green as I had only 2300 miles on them. Sure enough, the rest of the day they were no problem even almost staying full throttle into 1 (108 mph). Pedal was soft, but not spongy. I was confident in the brakes - no issue.

Suspension: body roll did not bother me - not an issue for me. I did have some rear squirm braking from 105+ into 2, but that was fixed with lowering rear tire pressure (hot they were getting to 48psi, went to 42 hot which was 37 normal driving). All sessions l
I used Sport+ with "max traction" mode. As I got faster I saw the ESC light flicker pretty much everywhere. I did not feel it though and would not have known it was on without the light flashing. I was too chicken to turn it fully off though.

Auto trans: first session, I wanted to minimize what I needed to be thinking about, so I left it in Sport mode. Generally this worked ok, but 9 was a down hill "bowl" turn needing maintenance throttle. In this spot, it would up shift when I did not want it to. The remaining sessions I left it in manual mode. To my surprise, it worked absolutely perfectly! I only once hit the rev limiter and shifts were very quick in response to paddle inputs - both up and down. This was the best aspect of the car for me.

Tires: after lowering the rear pressure ~5psi, they worked well. No chunking, no sliding. Only occasional power over steer which was easily modulated. Disclaimer: I did not push it hard as I was using slow in, fast out mode. Max Gs in the .76 range.

Being rusty and conservative, I did not set any track records (by a long shot) but still had a great time and got to the point where I ALMOST did not lift going into 1 and hit 108 on 1 lap there. My best lap was 2:01.13 - super slow I know, but don't blame the car.

I have 2 sessions in Mlaptimer. PM me with your email and I will send them if you are interested. I downloaded the other member's here (Oyinko?) sessions and it is very interesting and informative to compare them to mine. If I return, I will have some things to try for improvement.

Oh yeah, also HOD has some z51 Stingrays for rides/drives as part of the deal that day. I decided to ride along to get good coaching on the line. That was cool, a very capable car!

[jeffclev]

Adding a couple of pics. The CLK Black series is my friend from work. He was doing 1:51-1:52 times - one of the fastest cars on our B group.

[dt20011]

Great write up...thanks for sharing!