I had the honor of instructing for the National Capital Chapter at the Main Track at Summit Point this past weekend, March 21 and 22.

I took the M3 racecar for the weekend.  We just installed a new engine and I wanted to iron out any kinks.  I had a new set of wheels and tires to try out also.  A set of Jongbloed wheels and Hoosier Koni challenge tires.

The first day, Saturday, I had two students.  A “C” and “D” student.  My “C” student, Lenny, had some trouble with his car that morning so my only student to start off with was Ed.  He had a 2004 M3.  Hmm, I own one of these.  It was even the same color as mine, Carbon Black.  Ed only had 3 days of track experience and none of those were on Summit Point Main.  I started by showing him the line, which he picked up very quickly.  After that I worked on his vision.  I reminded him as we negotiated the track, where his eyes should be, or where he should be looking.  This smoothed out his steering inputs and his speed picked up nicely.  He was one of the fastest drivers in his group.  There was one other driver that was comparable in speed and he was driving a Corvette Z06.  The two had fun playing cat and mouse throughout the weekend.

By lunch, Lenny was back with his car.  He was driving a beautiful 1976 2002.  This car had a S-14 transplant done by Korman Engineering.  Lenny had plenty of track time on Summit Main but never with the BMW club.  All his experience had been with F.A.T.T. (Friday at the Track) with B.S.R.  His first run session was an “off line” exercise.  He had no idea what to do because he missed the class session that explained the exercise.  After a few laps he figured out what everyone was doing.  He was a bit taken aback at the other students driving all over the track, not even close to being online. 

I was able to take Ed out for the instructor’s session on Saturday.  The M3 was running very well until the afternoon session where it started to miss intermittently.  By the last session it was running too poorly to drive.  It acted like a coil was breaking down.  Since I had put in new plugs and plug connectors earlier that week, I decided to go to the shop that night and pick up some spare ignition coils.  The next morning I swapped out the coils and I still had a miss.  So I pulled number 1 spark plug and found the problem.  The brand new plugs were defective.  The porcelain had broken in the plugs causing the misfire.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have spare plugs so I loaded the car back in the trailer.  That was it for the weekend for my racecar.

Another driver had some problems with his brakes on his 95 M3.  His rotors were warped and needed another set.  Luckily I had a pair of Euro “M” floating rotors in my trailer.  He had a spare set of pads.  In between sessions we were able to do a brake swap right there in the paddock.  He was very pleased.  His day went much better after that was taken care of.

Sunday was a lot of the same.  Both my students improved nicely.  They both had their rival student they could chase around the track.  It made for a very entertaining as well as enlightening day for both my students.  Gerry was nice enough to let me take his E-30 M3 out for a session with the “A” group.  I had just installed a S-52 drive train in the car.  This was its first time out on the track.  We still have a few things to iron out.  His oil temp was running a bit high and the tachometer was off.  He is going to drop it off so we can work these things out.  Other than that the car ran and handled beautifully!  Gerry had to experiment with tire pressure to get the car to handle the way he liked.  This only took him a session or two to dial in.  He is a seasoned driver and knows this E-30 very well.

This was Pete Reads first event as Chief instructor with NCC.  He did a simply fabulous job.  Everything ran like clockwork and was very safely organized.  There was only one incident with an E-30 M3, Woody Hair’s old car.  Paul Blinken was the instructor and said his student turned in too early for turn 9 and dropped two wheels.  Instead of riding it out like Paul was telling his student, the student tried to pull the car back onto the road.  Definite no no!  The car ended up spinning into the inside wall and ended up on its side.  No one was hurt thank goodness, well maybe the driver’s ego.  The car looked totaled to me. This was a very clean car.  Not too many of these around in this good a shape, so it was a very sad thing to see.

I saw a lot of my clients at this event.  Let’s see, Bruce Smith was there with his E-46 M3, Mark Padovan and his wife Shelly.  Mark with his E-36 M3 and Shelly with her new Z4 “M” Coupe.  David Small with his very impressive 330CI, George Hovis with his E-30, George Baird and his E-36 M3 along with his buddy Steve Kauffman with his E-36 M3.  There were others and it was great to see them all.  Can’t wait for the next event, which for me will be in late April with the Del Val Chapter at the Jefferson Circuit.  Hope to see you trackside!