A 2013 BMW 520d touring with an automatic gearbox it's certainly not the top choice of anyone when thinking of Nürnurgring. Might be good for travelling 6000km, or to commute to work in a comfortable way. But may I dare to say that we had loads of fun with it on the Nüburgring? From the typical Nordschleife laps to three amazing sessions on the GP track, and a comfortable ride back to Portugal. Never would I have thought it could be so fun.
Pouring rain on the GP Track
We all know how unpredictable the weather can be on the Nürburgring, especially if you decide to go there at the end of Summer. On this trip we only got dry track on the first day, on the Nordschleife TF session. The rest of the trip was always wet to say the least. Fun part of this was that I was able to experience driving raining on track which was something I never did before, much less on the Nüburgring, and of course some scary situations as well!
Weird choice, fun results!
On a day to day basis I really love my car. It's comfortable, it has lots of gimmicks and economical. On track...well, that's a different story! It behaves almost like a boat, really. The brakes are not enough for its weight on a dry track, so in a sense it was good that it was raining, and as such I wouldn't be pushing so much on straights. Overall I was surprised in a positive way about it. It is much more stable in corners than I was hoping for with air springs in the back, and although the braking power is nothing to die for, it was quite resistant to fatigue. The short straw is without a doubt the cooling. More than once the oil temperature would go over the midpoint that I'm forever used to see when driving it. But not bad for a family car!
How was driving it in the rain?
Much, much better that I would've anticipated. It would have the ocasional slip every once in a while, and I can't say that some of them weren't on purpose. 😅
But it was quite nice. I drove it with traction control deactived completely, as I found that even on dynamic mode it would over correct me sometimes and not letting me accelerate when I was already straight. Found it quite predictable most of the times.
Most of the times?
That's right! I found myself going off track two times in the same session.
Both of the times I lost control of the car at the end of Kumho-Kurve, and ended up getting on the grass on the left side before getting into turn 12. Nothing very dramatic, but kind of scary going onto the grass and feeling powerless to stop the car. In the end ended up discovering that I cracked a rim one of those times, so fortunately that was the worst part of my grass encounters.
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