It’s only 9:00 a.m. on the first day, and it’s already approaching 100º out on the tarmac of the new BMW Performance Center West at the Thermal Club near Palm Springs, California. The heat doesn’t bother me, though, because I am sitting in a freshly broken-in BMW F80 M3, and the air-conditioning is blowing nice and cold.
My instructor is sitting in the passenger seat; we have just finished the Correct, Pause, Recover exercise on the skid pad, handling a typical oversteer situation. He looks over at me says, “Seems like you have this down. Ready to try drifting?”
If you read my Roundel Weekly column back in April, you might recall that I was excited about drifting, and looking forward to the members-only two-day M School at the Thermal Club. But I was definitely not expecting it to be my very first exercise of the weekend! And there was no better way to start the weekend than by pushing my boundaries—I’m here to learn, right?—so I hammered the throttle and got the car sideways.
After a few failed attempts, I strung together a good run and drifted completely around the skid pad. My instructor complimented me, and we pulled off and got back in line. It felt great to learn a whole new skill, since over the last few years, it has been more about refining my driving technique and little improvements. I couldn’t wait to learn more!
Since the first couple of exercises were designed to get us familiar with the new M3 and M4, and see how they perform, the next one for my group was braking and turning. Most of us in the school were fairly experienced high-performance drivers, but only a few had any seat time in these new beasts from BMW. This was a great way to get familiar with just how quickly these cars can stop. And boy, can they ever stop!
The routine was to accelerate as quickly as we could until we reached a specified marker—the #3 sign going into a turn—and then brake to a complete stop. As we got more comfortable with the amount of force it takes to threshold-brake, we gradually moved closer and closer to the turn-in point. For this particular corner, that was a point just after the #2 marker.
One of the other great things about the BMW M School is that there are no compromises with the cars; the ones we were driving were outfitted with the carbon-ceramic brake option, and even after multiple stops in the heat, they consistently stopped like you were dropping an anchor.
Once we nailed down the braking, we moved on to practicing our brake release, turn-in, and corner-exit throttle application. By doing the same exercise over and over again in the same corner, I discovered that I was coming off the brakes too quickly; if I eased off the brake instead, and used a little trail-braking, the car went through the corner a little smoother, and I carried a hair more speed as I exited.
Just as I got it perfected, we were done with that exercise, and off to lunch.
After refueling our bodies and refreshing our minds in the cool meeting room, we piled back into the cars and headed back out to the track to run a small autocross. Our instructor led us through a lap, and after seeing the layout, I hoped that we all would be able to hold down our lunch—the course was under 30 seconds long, and it was all back-and-forth driving.
After we spent some time getting used to the track and running a few practice laps, it was go time—the clock was now running, and the times were official. We had six runs to lay down our best time. I came out hot and laid down a few low 27s before I got it all to click on one run and dropped into the 26s. I was excited to hear how I compared to the rest of the group later in the day!
Next up was a larger circuit that allowed for lap times in the mid-55-seconds range, with some high-speed sections. After our introductory laps, we were allowed to do some continuous lapping. It seemed like we were running forever before they called us in. Turned out they let us go for almost 30 minutes straight!
I really enjoyed these long sessions on the shorter tracks, where I was able to work on a few things. The instructors were stationed around the circuit, and watched as we passed by; if they saw something that needed a little guidance, they’d get on the radio and give us some coaching. After a few laps, it felt great when I would hear, “Perfect, Nate! That’s how you do it!”
We ended the day with a round of timed laps on the large circuit. This time they didn’t call out the lap times, so we’d have to wait until dinner to find out who won. We didn't have to wait long at all as we headed back to the resort and had just enough time to shower and get ready for dinner.
It was an amazing reception at the La Quinta resort! The dinner started with a fantastic cheese platter and a salad, with a porcini-crusted flat-iron steak with mushrooms for the main course, followed by an amazing deconstructed s’mores dessert.
The real dessert, though, was finding out that I was at the top of the timing sheet for both autocrosses!
The next morning we were all ready for another day of fun. Once again my group started on the skid pad, where we were treated to a new exercise called the cloverleaf. The object was to loop around groups of cones on the skid pad in a three-leaf clover pattern. It was more technical than the previous day, as there were braking zones and tight corners; you had to have a really good feel for the car’s weight transfer in order to be quick.
I tried several ways to improve my time, but ultimately I found that I had to be really light on the brakes, allow the car to coast into the corner, then grab a good amount of throttle to kick out the rear and get me pointed in the right direction.
The rest of the day is kind of a blur; I know we had a few very long sessions on a couple of different circuit configurations. I was just having so much fun and concentrating so hard on my driving that when they told us we were finished, it felt like we had only been out there for a couple of hours; in reality, we had pushed hard all day long in hundred-degree heat. Some of us were going to be pretty tired and sore on Monday!
At the end of the day, we were all presented with some great BMW Performance Center swag and a certificate of course completion. I am certain that most of us will be framing it and hanging it on the wall as a proud symbol of the amazing weekend, where we not only pushed some BMW M cars to their limits, but we stepped outside our own limits—and created new ones for ourselves.
It was great to experience a two-day M School with my fellow BMW CCA members. We all had a similar passion for the marque, and for performance driving, and we quickly felt like close friends. And that’s why most of us are in this Club: the camaraderie.
There are only two more members-only two-day M Schools left this year, October 10–11 at Thermal in Palm Springs and November 7–8 at the BMW Performance Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina. For more information on these schools, head over to https://www.bmwcca.org/nationalevents.—Nate Risch
