VIDEO: VLN6, very M3, much dogfight, such sadness.

Well, we did it. Kind of. Thanks to Milltek and Lite-Blox, we ‘upgraded’ from our broken and fire damaged Fiesta ST to a 1994 E36 M3 and went toe-to-toe with the modern (and not so modern)  competitors in class V5.

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That’s 3.0-litre, naturally aspirated, production-based cars, if you’re wondering. Of five races so far this year, four have been won by the Thiemann E36 M3, so the fact that we were facing Z4s, E92s and Caymans didn’t really upset us.

I mean, just LOOK at the Manheller car we were driving:

280hp of naturally-aspirated M-Power, sent to the back wheels, no ESP or computer problems to be seen. We were excited…

Qualifying was a mixed bag, I drove just one full lap of the Nordschleife, and thanks to some bad accidents, there was no point trying to set a time. I handed it over to the next driver, Marcus, and finally in stepped Luke. After so many laps in our Nitron-equipped Fiesta, I’ll be honest the Bilsteins on the M3 felt pretty unrefined. But the car was good,

RACE FACE

Luke made the start, and it was HECTIC…

Place by place, he clawed us up from our 9th place qualification to 5th in class. It was great driving, and Kjetil could hear over the radio that #GoLukeGo was having an awesome time.

I couldn’t wait to step in!

But just one lap before we could swap, disaster, once again, struck us hard. This time it was a differential bush, and in the time it took Luke to bring the car back to the pits, the loose differential had pulled apart the welds on the subframe.

The guys at Manheller did their best, but by the time it was repaired, there was only a few laps left. Technically, we DNF’d. Again.

BUT WE WILL BE BACK… (IN A BOXER)

 

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