Category: M3

The Day I Became a Stunt Driver

The…. one day I got weirdly lucky and landed a stunt driving gig because I wouldn’t let the company’s guy drive my car. Yes, it’s a technicality but dammit I’m the guy driving in a commercial!

I was at Utah Motorsports Campus showing the worker ladies how TopDrift works and they let told me someone was looking for a nice car to film while drifting. There is a drift club in Salt Lake City but I guess their cars were too beat up for prime time.

The client turned out to be Xinsurance, a company who claims they will insure anything. To make the point clear, they show all kinds of extreme sports and the voice over keeps saying “THIS is covered, THIS is covered” etc. The video shoot at UMC was two hours and I was in the commercial for a total of less than two seconds but I’m not complaining. This is the commercial that aired on Monday night football:

Needless to say I was pretty stoked when this came out. I was certain it’s only a matter of time before big brands come knocking and want to pay big bucks for my driving skills. They haven’t yet, but any day now…..

Here’s more footage from the shoot. Hard to be satisfied with .75 seconds of drift footage when you spent two hours thrashing your car around.

Track Day: Utah Motorsport Campus West with 2018 BMW M3 Manual

In 2006 Utah was given one of the greatest gifts a state can get: an international-quality racetrack. Back then it was called Miller Motorsports Park and it was sponsored by the legendary Larry H. Miller of car dealership and NBA Jazz owner fame.

The track recently changed ownership and is now called Utah Motorsports Campus. They hold races like Moto America, Super Moto, Pirelli World Challenge, and many more. In addition to big racing series they also have open track days for which I am incredibly grateful.

This track is unique in that it can be broken up into 3 different configurations: East, West, and Outer. East and West are both 2.2 miles and Outer is 3.06 which makes it one of the longer tracks in the USA. One neat feature about UMC is that it’s one of the safer racetracks out there. Many of the turns have a very large dirt area to slide off into instead of greeting a concrete wall. Les Tracks:

East is really fun because it still has the “attitudes” which is basically a 3-part chicane and is super fun.

EastTrack

I’ve only done West once, and it’s very different from East as you’ll find out in the video.

WestTrack

Outer is the best because it has all the best turns of the track and a freaking HUGE 1/2 mile straight. Some bikes can get up to 200mph on this part. My record thus far is in my Dinan Stage 1 340i @ 143mph but I haven’t had a chance to take the M3 on it just yet.

OuterTrack

And this is what the track looks like all together:

Screen Shot 2018-07-15 at 1.25.31 PM

And now for the good stuff: watching me make a fool out of myself trying to chase down a $100k+ non street-legal lotus driven by a former champion motorcycle racer. It was still a ton of fun and I benefitted directly from UMC’s nice dirt slide off areas.

I did have some good laps, though, and my best of the day was a 1:57.06, which is about on par with some of the amateur racing clubs out there with fully prepped Miatas or Porsche 944s. Anyone who has done track days knows that keeping up with any class of racing while in a full interior daily driver is not too shabby.