I drove 130MPH in an M3 at BMW’s Performance Driving School, and it was fun as hell

BMW’s Performance Driving School in Thermal is the second of two such schools. The other one located in Greer, South Carolina and opened more than 20 years ago. BMW decided to expand west and it set its roots down in the desert a few years ago.

At these schools, BMW offers various programs that provide optimum seat time, professional instruction and, as BMW puts it, “The Ultimate Driving Machine to take advantage of the setting.”

There are multiple programs available for people of all ages, among which are the One-Day M School, Two-Day M School, Advanced M School, and one or two day programs for teens and adults. Each program varies in the options it offers, which can include safety and control instruction all the way up to high speed exercises that put cars to their utmost limit.

When I visited the race club, I got to partake in some of these individual exercises that make up the programs. When you enter the Thermal Club, the first building you come up to is BMW’s center. Inside, I met up with my instructor, who quickly laid out our plans for the day: I was going to get to drive an M3 and see exactly what the complex had to offer.

Just in case you are unfamiliar with the M3, it comes with a 3.0-liter M twin turbo engine that produces 444 horsepower, 406-pound feet of torque and reaches a top speed of 155 miles per hour. It can also speed up to 60 miles per hour in a brisk 3.9 seconds. Needless to say, it is an impressive sports car.

That being said, there are many more cars to choose from. BMW has over 120 vehicles in its fleet, including the M2, M4, M5, 340i, M240i, X5 M, X6 M, X3Mi, M760i, 7 Series and M550i among others. Everyone one of these cars is stock, meaning they are the same cars you can find at a BMW dealer.

My time was split into two activities. The first was laps on a special polished concrete surface that is meant to teach you how to drift. This is super easy to do because while going around the special surface, you start slipping and sliding at anything over 20 miles per hour. That’s because while in a dry state, the coefficient of grip is similar to that of a wet road surface. When you wet the surface, you might as well be driving on an icy road. For the record, the surface was wet when I started to drive on it.

I’m not going to lie, I slid off course many times. I’m not much of a drifter and controlling the car is quite difficult. The great thing about the exercise is that you don’t have to do much to get the car to drift. Just give the car some gas and you’ll be driving sideways.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/06/17/bmw-performance-driving-school-first-drive/