It's an M-Sport, so it should have the better suspension. (The side accents have the barbs on them.)

 

M-Sport has the same suspension as the regular i4 does. However you can opt for adaptive on a M-sport.

 

Adaptive D.. regen should be set to the lowest possible setting on the track, charging the battery puts a lot of additional load on it.

 

Yeah, I noticed that. I did wonder about the additional heat load but would be more worried about the inconsistent braking behaviour (only during the lighter braking moments) on track

 

Cool video, thanks for sharing!

 

Neither the M50 nor the e40 were meant to record fast lap times here. Their top end speed is too low for the Nurburgring and its long straightaways. I believe the next gen electric quad motor M3 and M4 should have a much higher top end speed and be better suited for competitive track use.

 

Smooth driving is the key on Nurburgring.
Many hundred meters height difference, and a lot of fast curves.

Rudi Uhlenhaut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Uhlenhaut) said :
Fangio is always first to finish, with the least brake wear and the lowest value for "max rpm".
It seems to also be the key to drive the i4M50 on tracks like the Nurburgring.

Matthias Malmedie concluded that you could drive the i4M50 at 80 percent without problems with overheating
(and he has driven the Nurburgring 24 Hour in a BMW M2 - as a reference)

I think the i4M50 would make a decent time on Nurburgring if it was able to get to 300 kmh - like the M4 (also a heavy car).

There is other videos about i4M50 - that follows Porsche GT3's in the curved sections of Nurburgring.

It took me one Winter - until I became confident of how to handle the i4M50 on snow and ice. - now it is great fun.
I suspect the people preferring the i4 40 - just needed a few months more in the i4M50 to also become confident.

 

MSport seatbelts are epic in the UK

 

Another factor would be that the e40 has a different motor in the rear. The motor on the e40 is more powerful than the rear motor on the M50.

 

I’ve tracked my i4 m50 a couple of .. four track days.

Its the battery temp thats the first issue. Yeah what you see in Mishas video is the reality for i4 m50 as well. Actually i think this double motor overheats even quicker because of more power, more regen. You cannot set regen to 0 no matter how you configure your pedal. The car always uses regen first, friction brakes only when more stopping power is required.

the car could really use a track mode, one that lets you disable regen and also makes your car go nuts on cooling the battery. Seems like the car starts serious cooling at some limit and then eases off once you go below some threshold. Too bad those two are way too close to each other and its difficult to build up any temperature reserve once you start hitting the limiter.

Traction control is actually surprisingly okey for tracking. Other than the car nannying front wheel power when you got any degrees in the steering wheel. Only when the wheel is straight you get full power.

its all fun though!

Brakes have never been an issue for me.

My oem tires (michelin pilot sport 4) were crap though. Running Continental sport contact 7 now. Way better front end and way more grip. Awesome on street, okey on track. Yes, car eats tires like crazy.

 

6554

The motor on the e40 is more powerful than the rear motor on the M50.

Correct, the rear motor on the M50 is the same as the one on the eDrive35.

The car always uses regen first, friction brakes only when more stopping power is required.

Also correct but, if you're braking really hard - as you would expect to do when 'tracking' - most of the braking's going to come from the mechanical brakes. Recuperation isn't going to be the thing that overheats things. Thought experiment time...

When you use B mode and take your foot off the pedal, this is a little bit less deceleration than full recuperation can give. While significant for normal driving, it's not in any way the sort of braking that you'll be applying when 'tracking' so, given this, do you really think recuperation is overheating the battery?

The car can be set to zero recuperation: Put it in neutral while braking.

But the main point is that not even the M50 is a track car and that's fine because, with very few exceptions, track cars are rubbish road cars.

 

6554
Also correct but, if you're braking really hard - as you would expect to do when 'tracking' - most of the braking's going to come from the mechanical brakes. Recuperation isn't going to be the thing that overheats things. Thought experiment time...

i4 M50 gets 200 kW stopping from Regen only and even if you are stepping on the brakes, its still regenning with that 200 kW nevertheless. I know that after enough laps it goes into "too much sporty driving detected, disabling Regen" -mode, but I would like to have an option to use that from the start if I so wish.

And people doing thought experiments with "in track you always brake full power" don't really do tracking in my opinion... smooth is fast and weight transfer is a thing with this one.

But yeah, this car works better in tracks where you don't do any crazy 80->200->80 km/h like in Kymiring, Finland.

 

I’ve tracked both eDrive35 and M50.
I can confirm 100% motor overheats on rwd models (e35/e40) so fast it’s not funny. You can even get it to overheat on street just by accelerating and hitting brakes a few times over. You can even see motor temp on that one screen, it goes past a certain point and power gets reduced. M50 in “sport boost” will overheat as well so I just run basic sport mode for tracking. Even this can heat up but it’s not too bad. I’d be willing to guess xDrive40 is best trim since it has least power per motor. BMW obviously didn’t design the motor cooling to handle this. Very curious about future models using 800V system.

Also I disagree with wanting no regen on track. These cars are heavy and drain battery fast on track. Regen takes some pressure off the brakes and recovering energy helps battery last a bit longer.

Car performs amazing on track in my opinion, just needs track tires, car is garbage on street tires.

 

I’ve tracked both eDrive35 and M50.
I can confirm 100% motor overheats on rwd models (e35/e40) so fast it’s not funny. You can even get it to overheat on street just by accelerating and hitting brakes a few times over. You can even see motor temp on that one screen, it goes past a certain point and power gets reduced. M50 in “sport boost” will overheat as well so I just run basic sport mode for tracking. Even this can heat up but it’s not too bad. I’d be willing to guess xDrive40 is best trim since it has least power per motor. BMW obviously didn’t design the motor cooling to handle this. Very curious about future models using 800V system.

Also I disagree with wanting no regen on track. These cars are heavy and drain battery fast on track. Regen takes some pressure off the brakes and recovering energy helps battery last a bit longer.

Car performs amazing on track in my opinion, just needs track tires, car is garbage on street tires.

Also I disagree with wanting no regen on track. These cars are heavy and drain battery fast on track

Battery percentage has not been too much of an issue for me, can always recharge. I usually get two or three 15min sessions for the battery anyways. I mean that's a one warmup lap, one hot lap, one so-so and maybe another hotlap plus a cooldown. So three to five laps. Yeah when you are pushing you easily lose 10% a lap with this thing.

But yeah, what is a problem, is that it's quite impossible to get two hot laps in one 15 min session because regen overheats the car. I'm perfectly fine with using ragen if it doesn't overheat the car. And certainly, because of regen my standard brakes seem to cope just fine. Once the front pads are done I might use something else with bit more stopping power though.

In my experience, sport boost or not doesn't make any difference. I've tried with and without. Overheats just as fast. This experience was shared also by an another i4 M50 driver in our track group, so it's just not me.

Car performs amazing on track in my opinion, just needs track tires, car is garbage on street tires.

Yeah, usually front tires heat up fast and you start to lose lateral grip. Semi slicks do better with heat and also help you with rear stability, but I'm not running two sets, so I've optimized my life with one that's suitable for both, Continental Sport Contact 7. They respond nicely to steering and have very, very good longitudinal grip, but like I said, start to lose lateral grip with heat. And I'm totally destroying the outer edges of my front tires. About 3-3.2 bar for tire pressure works like a dream with these.

 

Nurburgring is a Racetrack, but also work as a public road - A lot of time to prepare braking, and a lot of time to put car in neutral if you want to,