[Alpina_B3_Lux]

Originally Posted by 335rocks

Boz, it was nice meeting you. I did look for you at the end of the day, but I guess you were out in the M3 at that point. I'm back again at Silverstone GP this Saturday, so you're welcome to drop by. I'm sure it will be possible to get a passenger wrist band on the day for a small fee (pm me if you're interested). As you say, the new M3 is very nice and it can be pretty quick in the right hands, but it needs to be driven hard to extract the power and you need to upgrade the brakes if you plan to have more than a few laps of fun. You can get a 335i pretty close to this with the right mods and power wise you'll leave the M3 on the straights.

I agree. Throw a Quaife plus coilovers into the 335i and you'll be close to the M3 in cornering speeds, and pull away from it in the straights.

Originally Posted by 335rocks

The AP's are nice and you can really feel them when braking from high speeds and the road is dry. Tony's wasn't exactly a slow driver either and I had the pleasure of a few quick laps around the Ring with him. So I know what you mean!

The AP Racing brakes are great. IRRC Tony uses a track compound on the track, as opposed to the normal pad compound for the street. Having changed my stock brakes recently to a Performance Friction BBK I can assure it's a big difference. Vastly superior also to the M3 brakes.

Originally Posted by 335rocks

If I remember correctly Tony ran mostly with then just DTC on. With a diff this really allows you quite a bit of unleashed fun and still have ESP to keep the car pointing in the right direction. The other part is learning to feed in the power. With a few mods and a map this car has so much torque that you can spin up the wheels in 3rd if it's not fully dry.

In 3rd? I get a christmas tree in my dashboard even in 5th gear when it's not totally dry. In third gear I can provoke wheelspin at leisure even when it's dry and I'm on my summer tyres. The torque is addictive though.

Alpina_B3_Lux