LAP TIMES AREN'T EVERYTHING. THE TANGIBLE ASPECTS OF the way a car delivers its performance can't be measured to the nearest tenth. So why, might you ask, do we regularly put the latest entrants in the world of fast cars against the clock around our favourite circuits and then share the results on evo's YouTube channel? Well, because lap times do have their place, providing a simple, objective measure of progress and relative performance.
Moreover - and somewhat ironically the subjective elements of a car tend to crystallise when you strap in, lid on, and leave nothing on the table. Driving on the limit around a circuit is often the only way to reveal those last few elusive layers of a car's behaviour, what the engineers were thinking, and sometimes what they've thought too little about. The machine is laid bare, in other words. If your name is Sutcliffe or Bovingdon, its true potential on track is also realised - admittedly this matters more in a Cayman GT4 than a two-ton super-saloon, but still we'd all like to know, wouldn't we?
Bedford Autodrome's West Circuit and Anglesey's Coastal Circuit have hosted countless evo hot lap runs over the years, and in recent times numerous new models have found out exactly where they rank amongst their rivals on our lap-time leaderboards (see page 127). Read on as we take a look at some of the highlights, and head to youtube.com/evo to see the action in full.
BMW M3 Competition xDrive
A quick car should be capable anywhere, but the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2-shod, xDrive-equipped G80 BMW M3 took a particular liking to Bedford Autodrome's West Circuit. Somehow, the G80 M3 manages to turn traditional performance car thinking on its head. It's bulkier than its predecessors, it uses a torque-converter auto in place of a dual-clutch 'box and it weighs a not inconsiderable 1780kg, and yet particularly in xDrive form, it's the best M3 in recent memory.
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