7:50am – Got in around 7:30pm ET yesterday, 6h 15m drive from Pulaski to Greer, SC. Terrible traffic in Atlanta. Got a good night of sleep, woke up early. About to leave hotel and head to the Performance Center. Updates to follow.
—
4:45pm – Back at the hotel. Activities today included slalom course, ABS braking exercise, skidpad, another slalom, oval skidpad/mini-race, powerslides, and timed autocross. I had the best autox single run time, but only by a couple tenths. I’m exhausted.

Morning started out slow, classroom session was overly simplistic and nothing new (define apex, etc.) and the first few exercises were easy, but looking back built up both confidence in the car and set some benchmarks for the rest of the day. I’m the youngest in the group by quite a few years. Many in the class don’t even own BMWs. One of the instructors does WERA road racing. Going to get dinner and get some sleep. More tomorrow.
—
Day 2: Wow! Delayed posting this, I’m back at work, but what an awesome time. Due to special circumstances, we got bumped up to M3s from the 330is we drove on day 1. Amazing cars, and I may be convinced on SMG now. More slalom, skidpad, emergency braking, emergency lane change, just at faster speeds. Also more autox. Then we got to test-drive the Z4M Roadster, M5, M6, 760Li, 650Ci, and X5 4.8L on the autox course. After that we took the X5s out to the off-road course for a bit of fun.
Continue reading →

So it looks like I’m going to the BMW Performance Driving School on September 15-16 (tentative, date subject to change).

I think this will be a bit low-key: emphasis on car control, maybe a bit of skidpad. Not really an advanced track school or anything, but hey, its a(n expensive) freebie.

This is in Spartanburg, SC at the BMW Performance Center. I may try to work in a drive through Deal’s Gap on the way there or back. Or I may decide to fly and skip the 8 hour drive there & back.

Update Dates confirmed, hotel reservation made.