On a scorching hot Monday morning, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park was alive with the sounds of sports cars taking to the track for a DriveTeq lapping day. I had the opportunity to turn my first laps in DriveTeq’s No. 822 BMW 135i, codenamed ‘Marilyn‘.
With Doc Waleed guiding me, I went out for the morning session at a track I know very well, but in a car very different from what I was used to. The BMW had paddle shifters, and weighed about 1000 pounds more than the ’99 NB Miata I first learned to drive Mosport in. This meant very different handling characteristics, with the car being prone to understeer in corner entry, a different challenge behind the wheel.
With Waleed’s coaching, I became more comfortable behind the wheel as the day went along. The BMW is a well prepared race car, with full telemetry available to the driver showing live lap time tracking, water and oil temperature, and even a speedometer, which I was not accustomed to from F1200. I found myself nearly hitting 200 km/h on the Andretti Strait, before lifting off for Turn 8. By the afternoon I was given the reigns to go out by myself, where I worked lap after lap to go faster, even managing to pass several Porsches, a Maserati, a Lotus and a McLaren.
When I was first learning to race in karts, I was told that the last second of lap time is the hardest to make up, which means that everything before it is comparatively easy. In the first sessions in the No. 822 BMW I saw big improvements in lap times. As the day went along, I got faster (by several seconds) from the first session to the final session.
The DriveTeq team left me with homework to do, to think about how I could make this car work better for me next time I hopped in the driver’s seat. I’m looking forward to showing my work when we’re back at Mosport for the Enduro Elite series.
Big thanks to Doc Waleed for being my right seat mentor and helping me get acclimatized to this bigger, powerful Bimmer. In fact thanks to the entore DriveTeq team including Rick, Gerry and Matt for giving me this incredibel opportunity to drive a modern sports car and attempt endurance racing for the first time.
This is going to be a real challenge!
~ by Daniel Demaras ~
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