First track day in the books. First time I've been on track in 5 years. It felt great to be out there again. The car did great and I didn't have a single issue all day. Weather was about as good as you could ask for. Mostly overcast and at the warmest it might have been low 60s but most of the day a little cooler. I'm hoping to get out to 1-2 more events this year. My goal is to run the other events at the same track. I'd rather be able to have somewhere consistent to go and try to improve instead of jumping in at 2-3 different tracks. My instructor was great. He has quite a bit of seat time in BMWs and he really let me figure things out on my own while providing some input where he felt it was necessary. I think I have the line down just right for 80% of the track and just 2-3 corners that could use some serious improvement. I actually think I'm leaving the most time on the table in the slowest corners.
The car is mostly the same as it's been for months. I did sell my full Supersprint partially because this track has a sound limit that I wasn't sure the exhaust would pass and it was generally a touch louder than I wanted anyways. Back to stock exhaust and my stage 1 Epic tune. I did sell the GTS wing and purchase a GT4 size one. GT4 size seems to suite the overall size of the E9x much better. I sold the Sportsters and finally have a pair of matching Recaro Pole Positions. I kind of wish I sprung for the leather/alcantara ones but I already had one black velour so the easiest/cheapest path forward was just one more matching seat instead of two more expensive versions.
After the track day I can really see the benefit of having a DCT car. It's one of the things I've struggled with a bit when I think about where I ultimately want to end up in E9x land. I still think if I could have my exact car but DCT I would take it over the 6MT despite the slight weight penalty. If it wasn't for having to find an acceptable similar car in DCT and then moving over a lot of parts (and possibly needing to have rod bearings done again) I'd probably make the jump. I still may some day but we'll see.
Wheels are also turning in my head about other things I'd like. I found myself walking away wanting the car less setup and being able to get better as a driver instead of endlessly throwing parts at the car. I still have a few ideas of things I'm likely to change. Granted I'm just getting my feet wet again there were a lot of "slower" cars out there moving around the track much more quickly than me so I know there is a lot of time to be gained just by getting more comfortable. For me when I think about what my favorite M cars look like visually it's always the E46 CSL that comes to mind. It makes me want to take a shot at doing something similar instead of the full track car with aero look. That also said, if I dumped my saved pics of E92 cars you'd find that 75% of them are track cars and it's hard to deny how good it looks with that setup too. I'm sure my path forward will end up being somewhere in the middle with some back and forth trying some different options.
