Update Jul-2025 to May-2026:
I’m starting off with a blanket update across the cars. The past 12 months or so have been rather chaotic and traumatic. In the 2nd half of 2025, my mom fell ill and spent 2 months in ICU, and thereafter 1 month in rehab. Thankfully she pulled through challenge after challenge, and is doing much better. On the other end of the spectrum, my father-in-law was struggling with the fight against cancer, with his condition declining towards the end of 2025. Sadly, he succumbed to the knock-on effects of the disease in February this year. It’s been tough.
All this, coupled with 10-14hr work days since the beginning of last year, meant that everything else was on autopilot. I pretty much lost interest in anything car-related, and G Shift also took a back seat. I’ve also changed jobs this month, moving from a consulting role, to a permanent team member at one of my long-term clients. Life, as well as mood and motivation are changing for the better. So, moving on to actual car updates then…
Much the same as the 130i, there are no major updates for the M3. It has also been going about it’s business without fuss. No issues to report. As you will see above, the last car-related event in this car was the BMW Skidpan in May, followed by the Concours in July. With all that has happened, I have just not wanted to do anything.
Fast forward to April, and it was time for the BMW CCG’s 2nd Track Day, to be held at Red Star Raceway. I finally took the plunge and decided to enter. I’ve always wanted to take this car on the track (as I have done with all my other cars). Minimal prep was required, and the intention was to go have some fun and see how the car behaves in a safe and controlled environment. The track direction was also going to be anti-clockwise, so this would be something new for us to experience as well.
The day of the event, it was overcast, with some morning showers predicted, but it would clear up later in the day. It was an early start, and I arrived at the track around 7am. Registration, scrutineering and driver’s briefing completed, and it was time to start the day. During registration, I was classified in the “Slow Road Car” class. I had a good chuckle, because it’s rather hard to comprehend how a 300kw v8 performance car is slow. But it only takes a quick look around the pits to see what else was participating. The club had also invited Porsche Club Central for the day, so there were a good few GT3s, cup cars and others in the mix. These, as well as a couple of other exotics are what filled up the “Fast Road Car” class.
8am, and it’s time for our session. As we are getting into the car, the drizzling starts, and ramps up for a few minutes that you could hear the rain on the zinc roofing. What fun, new car, new track direction, and rain. This could be fun, or fast-track a delivery of some new underpants to the track via Uber connect. I almost didn’t want to go out, but I decided to go out, take it easy and learn the track. This actually worked out nicely, because I think only a handful of cars went out in this session. Suffice to say, it was quite slippery, any sort of moderate to heavy acceleration in corners was asking the back end to step out. Even on the back straight, changing from 2nd to 3rd and 3rd to 4th, the rear got twitchy. I left the gearbox in slush puppy mode, and elected not to test the limits too much.
There were 4 more sessions throughout the day, which were all dry. In these sessions, I was able to push a bit harder, probably to around 7 or 8 tenths. Whilst being on track, my sub-conscious must have been computing how much each manoeuvre would cost in terms of tyres, brakes, underpants, and other expenses, so I kept things fairly reigned in. Had lots of fun though. My brother-in-law and his friend also joined for the day, and had a couple of laps as passengers.
The car performed faultlessly throughout the day. It was really nice to be able to stretch its legs a bit, and also get to know the handling and grip limits. Being on road tyres, I was not expecting miracles, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. In the dry, when approaching the limits of grip, the car moves to gentle understeer, corrected by coming off the throttle and the nose tucks in again. In the wet, it’s pretty much a case of how brave you want to be, and I most certainly wanted to get home in one piece. Given we went in the opposite direction to what I’ve done in the other 2 cars, I can’t give a direct comparison. Unfortunately, the GoPro decided it didn’t want to work much on the day, so there isn’t a lot of footage available. Pit wall phone videos were also minimal, but I will share what I have.
Here is a shortened clip from Session #1 in the Wet. I did a couple of calmer laps initially, what you see below is where I picked up the pace a little bit:
Session #2, some footage before the GoPro batteries drained:
And lastly, a pit lane fly-by:
And some pics:
My pit neighbour for the day (Mr P Smit), not sure if he's active here on the forum anymore? (This is also what was in the Fast Road Car Class, lol). Also Mr Willie De Beer with his GT3 Cup Car:
My bucket-list car going out for some laps to keep the fluids circulating. I was too busy drooling to offer a deposit:
The trip back home was also uneventful. If anything, there was more tyre noise (from the scrubbing of the tyres), but that has also since normalised. In conclusion for the track day, my experience really does cement the notion that the M3 is a do-everything vehicle. Monday morning it was back to doing the school run and other general trips around town. Thanks to Bernard and the rest of the BMW CCG team for organising a great day.
Mileage currently approx. 129000kms. Next steps for this car are to replace the rear brakes, and a service. Thereafter, more Sheer Driving Pleasure I guess…
Thanks for reading.
Definetely not that you needed to reign things in... M3 makes all the right noises on the skid pan 
