My Straightpiped F10 M5 Experience on Virginia International Raceway

[RPiM5]

Greetings all and an early Happy Thanksgiving for those of you who live in America!

First of all I'd like to say that the next person I hear say that the F10 M5 is too heavy for the track I'm going to slap in the face!

Haha! No I'm just kidding, the F10 M5 is definitely too heavy for the track.

So I recently attended a High Performance Drivers Education event hosted by the Tarheel Chapter of the BMW CCA at Virginia Intl Raceway. The event itself was extremely well run despite challenging circumstances. We had to run the event from the South Paddock as the North Paddock was under construction. The South Paddock is very small and at times there would be traffic jams. We had over 300 cars attend this weekend. The event ran on Saturday and Sunday the 22nd and 23rd of November. The weather on Saturday was great with temps in the 50's but then on Sunday it turned to an icey cold hell, with temps dropping well below 32 degrees freezing and with the wind chill it was actually about 10 degrees outside. Brrrrrr!! My F10 M5 held up incredibly well the entire weekend, not a single problem. It did require that another bottle of oil be added as I was driving home though. I played with my tire pressures and made sure the wheels were properly torqued, but in the extremely cold weather the wheels simply did not get that hot.

I don't have a lot of media for you guys because I was too busy driving but my Dad did come to watch me race and he was able to shoot a little bit of video for me.

Now for the review.

VIR is a pretty awesome track, but I am not going to lie, after driving the Nurburgring, no other track will ever compare to it. At first I thought the track was so short, but then as I kept driving it, it seemed a lot more fun to me. I personally felt that the track is pretty easy to learn. We did the Full Course which is about 3.2 miles long. It should only take the experienced driver about a day to learn the racing line and get it down, which is what it took for me. In all, in about 2 days of driving I was able to get in about 40 laps on VIR.

Alright so I'm going to be brutally honest here. I feel that being untruthful in my experience wouldn't be fair to the community. Unfortunately I feel that my driving experience on VIR with the F10 M5 was a bit held back and nannied. My driving instructor was nice, and very experienced, with over 20 years of driving and instructing with the PCA, and a former M5 owner as well (but I never found out which generation), but at no point during the weekend did he let me drive to 100% of my driving ability or the M5's ability. This was mostly apparant on the back straight where an M5 or M6 can easily get up to 150mph, the fastest he let me go was about 130mph. I felt that at the 2-Day ///M School, they really teach you how to drive the M5, M6, and M3 to the MAX ability of those cars. I felt that my instructor held me back to 80% of what the F10 M5 could really do and to what I could really do as a driver. He got uncomfortable when we were on the back straight and accelerating, especially the first time I really went 100% on the throttle with nearly 600ft/lbs of torque at the crank propelling us forward. So many times he told me to slow down in the straight when I had plenty of more room to accelerate and then brake. I could also tell he did not understand how well the stock brakes on the F10 M5 work. I never braked more than 80% of maximum braking potential the entire weekend. I'm not trying to say that I wanted to pretend I was Vettel out there this weekend or anything like that, but I felt that if someone is going to really instruct me on my particular car then do so, don't just teach me the racing line. Part of this was out of my control because the CCA made me go into the lowest tiered group because I did not ever drive on VIR before and I had not done any HPDE events with that particular Chapter in the past. Their requirements for driving at a higher level group required that I have participated in 4 events with them previously and have driven on VIR before, so I was out of luck there. Like I said, it was a very well run event but they concentrated a lot on safety, which is a vastly different experience at other track events I've done in the past on the West Coast and especially the Nurburgring, where all you do is pay the ticket and get on the track. The majority of the club were driving a lot lower horsepower cars and a lot lighter cars. Too many E36 M3's to count. A lot of nice E46 M3's, there was one E63 M6, but with a stock exhaust (which I personally thought was a fail, let that V10 sing with an aftermarket exhaust, what's wrong with you?! Lol!). There was a dude there with a beautiful Audi R8 V8 with a Stassis Exhaust, sounded amazing! Then there happened to be 1 other F10 M5 there that was bone stock and belonged to one of the instructors. The owner of the other F10 M5 told me he put racing brake pads on it and was the only mod he'd done to the car. He looked at me like I was crazy when I told him I was running my stock brake pads with over 27,000 miles on them (The other F10 M5 owner was not a forum member by the way, and when I asked him, he had never even heard of Bimmerpost, for shame!!! Haha!). When I mentioned to many people that I met that weekend, that I also own a 2013 Fiat Abarth with suspension and ECU tune, a lot of them of were flabberghasted that I brought my F10 M5 instead, it just didn't seem to make any sense to them. It really just wasn't my kind of crowd and I felt a bit alienated as the guy with the "heavy" car on the track. Please don't get me wrong, I thought that everyone was super nice, we all had a great time, and I liked everyone, I just think that F10 M5 owners are a different breed. There's not exactly a boy-racer in most F10 M5 guys, I've always thought of myself (us) as a gentlemen racer. I guess the difference is that I don't JUST care about driving a proper racing line, I also care about how to handle a very high horsepower and high torque car on a track. I care to learn how to drive an M5 on a track. It's different. I've driven M3's and lighter cars on a track before and I feel it takes more skill to get the heavier cars in and out of the corners. (Flamesuit on ) Anyways, I'm grateful that I got to get on the track because in the end it was a blast, but I also don't feel that I learned as much as I could have and wanted to due to the nature of the event itself and the character of this particular BMW CCA Chapter.

As for the F10 M5 itself on the track, it was an experience I'll say that much! Especially with my straightpipes! I can definitely definitely say that an F10 M5 is NOT made for the track. Boy is it HEAVY, it's really nothing that anyone here hasn't heard before. In terms of track weapons, the F10 M5 is just a nuclear weapon, it obliterates the rear tires coming out of the turns with its ridiculous torque, and is a juggernaut going into the turns, very difficult to control the weight. If you get off line in the M5, the weight of the car will let you know! There's just nothing surgical about the M5 on the track. The steering feels numb yet extremely precise. I was running ATE Super Blue Racing Brake Fluid in my brake lines and I only ever got a little bit of brake fade and that was only towards the ends of the sessions. So I think the Super Blue helped a lot. My settings on the track were DSC ON (Like I said, my instructor wouldn't even allow me to go to MDM ), Sport+ on Throttle Response, Sport+ on Suspension, and Comfort on Steering, that I learned from ///M School. I've always run 100% stock suspension on my M5 as well, so yes there was body roll. DCT was set to S3 all weekend, and the Heads Up Display with the M View was completely MONEY! I really really loved the Heads Up Display on the track, shifting at the perfect moments became seemless and like second nature. With the straightpipes everyone was suffering from shell shock by the crack of the exhaust on the upshifts!!! It was incredible. There's one part of the track where you pass underneath a bridge and with the straightpipes it sounded like I was truly driving a Formula 1 car. I repeatedly had people come up to me after sessions and tell me that my M5 sounded insane, and even had one guy say that he loved driving behind me as it made him feel he was at the 24 hours of Le Mans. Win!

One very important aspect about the track experience that I must not fail to mention is what I did with the F10 M5 before and after the track. I had to drive 240 miles each way to get from Washington DC to VIR and then back again. I'll say right now that I was definitely not the fastest driver or maybe even the fastest car at the track this past weekend, but one thing I can guarantee is that no one drove to the track and drove home from the track in as much, comfort, convience, utility, style, and luxury as I did that weekend. I had a lot of stuff to carry in my car and the trunk space in the M5 more than obliged. In the 8 hours of driving I did from DC to VIR and back, I got to listen to my awesome music on my amazing Bang & Olufsen stereo system. When I finally got home to DC after the long hard (that's was she said ) weekend, I really felt well rested and not completely exhausted thanks to the amazing comfortable seats in the M5. Also, as I mentioned before, on Sunday the temperatures dropped to like 10 degrees F and we were driving on the track with all the windows down. I guarantee that no one else enjoyed a heated steering wheel, keeping their hands toasty warm on the track. Additionally, I was able to use my TMPS sensors on the track to monitor live readings of my tire temperatures and pressures right on my iDrive screen (I coded this though). It was so useful to see what pressures I needed to adjust in the tires after each session to get the best performance out of the tires. I also used the BMW M Lap Timer App on my iPhone5 with my M5 and it worked completely awesome! I was able to see exactly where I was on the track right on the dang iDrive screen, it was like a video game! Then I got to review how I performed each lap on my iPhone5, with complete history on throttle, G-Forces, and a multitude of other metrics from the M Lap Timer App. Everyone else had to use Harry Lap Timer Apps or whatever else there is. Also due to the really cold temperatures this past weekend, my tires hardly suffered any wear. I lost maybe 1/32 of treadwear, maybe 2/32 at most. PSS's FTW! After this past weekend, I can now say that no other car in the world can drive 240 miles to a racetrack in ultimate comfort and convenience, perform well against many different kinds of track oriented and dedicated cars, and then drive another 240 miles back home, while carrying a large cargo payload, and listening to music with the clarity of a concert hall. With the F10 M5 doing track days, it's not just about the performance on the track itself, but the performance of the vehicle before and after the track as well. I challenge anyone to do that in a track prepped, stripped out, and loud E92 M3 with suspension so stiff it rattles the fillings out of your teeth, and get home feeling like a million bucks. Lol!


I've decided that I won't be driving my F10 M5 on any track under 3 miles long or without a long straightaway in the future. Like I said the F10 M5 is just too heavy for the corners. I even felt that way about the M6 but to a lesser extent. I would still track an M6 more regularly than an M5 if I owned one though. In military terms, you don't get into a dogfight in a supersonic strategic jet bomber. No, you go full burner (afterburner) and simply outrun the enemy fighter aircraft. This is what the F10 M5 is on the track. It's not made for dogfights in tight turns. If I seriously wanted to get into tracking I'd get a much lighter car with respectable horsepower. What that would be exactly, I don't know as there are so many options to choose from. I think if I wanted to do it more seriously, I'd get a modded Z06 Vette, or a stripped out supercharged E92 M3, maybe even a Porsche. Something along those lines. Heck, I'd even rather track a modded E60 M5 than an F10 M5, this is unless the F10 was heavily heavily modified with an extreme weight stripping diet.

Now that I've said that, I'd like to make two more points. These are about the Competition Package and the Carbon Ceramic Brakes. IF one were to track the F10 M5 more than a minimum minimum minimum, 2 times a year, I would definitely say that the Competition Package is worth it and the CCB's are DEFINITELY worth it. Not that either of those things would make you a better driver, cause they won't, but you would definitely get a more track oriented experience with those options. What do I mean by that you say? I mean that the Comp Package would most likely make the experience of tracking the M5 more enjoyable. Less body roll, a little more horsepower, better sounding exhaust, and better steering feel on the track. With the CCB's, just knowing that you can brake 100%, foot to the floor, at every single turn without fear of fade, would be just SO much more comforting. As always say though, for the street, the Comp Package is more of a waste of money, unless you really really wanted the 601M's and a lower sitting suspension. For the CCB's on the street, they are really great for not cleaning your wheels hardly ever, not to mention the extremely long life you can get out of them if you don't track a lot.



Overall, if I had to rank the best things about tracking my particular F10 M5 this past weekend at VIR it would have to be in this order:

1. Straightpipes! Incredible! Pure Le Mans I tell ya!
2. Feeling the acceleration from the S63tu, and getting to stretch the M5's legs legally.
3. Learning how to drive VIR
4. Becoming a better driver on a racetrack and learning the racing line even better.
5. The drive to and from the track. It really is just a fantastic private jet when cruising.

Things I didn't like so much:

1. The weight of the M5. Almost makes me want to get an E60 M5 for tracking instead.
2. Disappointing learning experience due to the Tarheel Chapter rules. Too many slow drivers in my group.
3. The cold freezing frigid weather. Brrrrrrr!
4. People looking at me like I'm from Mars when I told them I own a Fiat Abarth and didn't bring it to the track instead of the M5.
5. Last but not least, driving through the entire state of Virginia to get to VIR. I'm convinced VA State Troopers are former SS Gestapo. Luckily I didn't get pulled over by any but I guess that's one good thing about the M5. It's so understated.

As I always say, this is just my experience and my opinions. Others may vary.

Oh yeah, in the video go to 3:00 mins. Right under the bridge. So awesome!

[Rohardi]

Nice! Great write up Dave!

[Bokke]

Right on Dave!!

I would like to drive that track!

[GOLFFRR]

love to see members REALLY enjoying their cars! car sounds insane in the video. Can only imagine what it sounds like in person

[boots]

First thumbs up for style. Glad you had a great time. It's sad your instructor was too stingy with not allowing you to put the foot down. Maybe they were told to have speed limits. Guess on the track it's heavy when you can really go fast. But overall you got to share lots of stuff some of us gave not experienced. Personally I think your straight pipes scared the hell out of your instructor.

[alexey21]

I look at your M5 Dave and I get jealous! I wish I had such a loud car.

As for the track use. Buy a Porsche, its fun and more engaging. That is why I bought a Porsche for the winter, and am having so much fun in it. I do miss the M5, I sometimes peak into the garage and see how the M is doing. Cant wait till Spring.

I do have a question... How did the tires perform at that temperature vs warm weather temperature?

[bobafettt]

Awesome!

[RPiM5]

Originally Posted by alexey21

I look at your M5 Dave and I get jealous! I wish I had such a loud car.

As for the track use. Buy a Porsche, its fun and more engaging. That is why I bought a Porsche for the winter, and am having so much fun in it. I do miss the M5, I sometimes peak into the garage and see how the M is doing. Cant wait till Spring.

I do have a question... How did the tires perform at that temperature vs warm weather temperature?

Yes good question and I forgot to mention that. In each session of driving I would usually get in about 6 or 7 laps in about 25 to 30 minutes of tracking. At those freezing temperatures we experienced on Sunday it would literally take up to 6 laps for the tires to finally heat up to a respectable temperature. When I say respectable, I'm still only talking about 70 degree tire temps. When I used to drive my M5 on canyon and mountain roads in San Diego, I would typically see tires temps around 120 degrees. So you really have to be careful when driving the car hard under 32 degrees F. At the end of Saturday was when I was pushing the car the hardest, I couldn't really push it as hard on Sunday due to the temps and the tires taking a long time to heat up. Although the turbos absolutely loved the cold air!

[B-1Pilot]

looks like a great time!

[Jay-K]

FTW.

[mstmng]

i like your smile when u push it under the bridge

[Hoopumpers]

Nice write up Dave! lots of traffic out there

[SEWELLGT]

Looks like fun but 300 cars??? No thanks, way too many for one weekend.

[shahano]

Does the tire temp and pressure come as stock or was that a code to give it these figures. Its fricking awesomee. Could you tell me how you did it?

[Hoopumpers]

In the US for some strange reason the tire temp/pressure function must be coded on. Great feature, though I would definitely recommend using a physical gauge as well at the track.

[shahano]

Originally Posted by Hoopumpers

In the US for some strange reason the tire temp/pressure function must be coded on. Great feature, though I would definitely recommend using a physical gauge as well at the track.

My car is in the middle east. All it says is if there is a flat or not and nothing else. Can i code this on to my car as well?

[mstmng]

Originally Posted by shahano

My car is in the middle east. All it says is if there is a flat or not and nothing else. Can i code this on to my car as well?

uk comes stock

[SANguru]

I've driven VIR in a rental car and it's great track! Looked like you had some fun

couple things to note.. try not to "dive over" to set up the turns.. you unsettle the car setting up for the next corner making you slower. The 2nd thing is slow your hands down. There is a lot of to quick steering inputs which also unsettles it.

In general for CCA track days in the novice run group, they do limit your speeds. That's why I stopped going to those. But do remember 1st time you go to any track is focusing on the fundamentals. Learning the line, braking points, etc. Speed will come naturally when you get more familiar.

[turbo8765]

What were you hitting on the front straight? Was your instructor also limiting your speed there?

As you know there's a crest on the back straight immediately before the braking zone for 14. Asking a novice group driver to not crest the hill just before the braking zone at 150mph is not unreasonable. It's probably wise.

BTW, the shifts sounded absolutely ridiculous from the paddock. The video doesn't really do the sound justice.

[dhirm5]

Awesome, Dave. Looking forward to doing stuff like this in the future.

Did you buy track day insurance?

[richard in NC]

VIR is always a great track to drive. Hate that you were limited. I've only done Porsche PCA events there and ran solo the last time. BMW CCA would probably still consider me a novice.
I did use early braking on the back straight but ran flat out until then and hit 135 in an e60 550i.
PS at 1-2 events per year it's taken a while (and an M School) to properly turn in and balance a big car.
It's an accomplishment to do so as compared to a much lighter track focused car.

[richard in NC]

Worse was the "no MDM" rule. I'm sure the car and you are better off to learn to drive the car, not depending on full nanny controls.
If DSC didn't flash, you weren't pushing hard enough. If it flashed constantly you were over driving it.