Racing

I recently did the BMW Performance Driving School. I took the M1 School, two full days of instructor-driven learning, with 3 other friends down in the Palm Springs, California area.

It’s kinda like training to be a race car driver. They do not coddle you. If anything, they make fun of you for sucking. At first, I found it terrifying. In the very first exercise, we learned we would be driving these cars at their absolute limits. Full accelerator, and to my surprise, full braking. There is more subtlety to it, but you’re essentially flooring it on straights and then smashing the breaks before turns. It took me a while to get anywhere near comfortable with that idea. We topped out at speeds of maybe 145 mph, which was also exhilarating, but the braking to me was still the most intense. I had to sit out a few laps here and there as I was just shaken.

By the end, I was embracing it and really didn’t want to stop. It had to end though, of course, partially because it’s friggin expensive. We learned that they essentially get one two-day M school out of a pair of tires, and maybe a handful of sessions out of the brakes. We’re essentially trashing the cars!

When I got back home I started watching Netflix’s Drive to Survive about F1 racing so now I’m a big fan of that like apparently everyone else in the world. Never thought I’d be a racing guy but here we are.