[lucid]

I auto-X'ed it yesterday. Loads of fun. It was a test and tune event, so not a competition. The senior instructor who was running the whole event had a chipped 400hp 135 with coilovers and 245/17 wheels. I timed him run a couple of 52ish laps when pushing hard. A heavily moded E36 M3 driven by another instructor was also running 52ish laps. My best lap was 54ish. An Elise driven by yet another instructor ran 50ish. I let yet another instructor drive my car, which resulted in a 53ish lap. This was my first auto-cross ever. So, the 2 seconds the instructor had on me in the 135 should really be attributed to driver differences, which pretty much means the M3 kind of matches a heavily moded 135 in auto-X (well, also, I chose to pull sideways drifts around the hairpin cone for fun as opposed to doing it the right way, which probably cost a few tenths). Not bad for the M3 overall vs. the moded 135 in autocross given the size and weight differences.