Quote:
Originally Posted by Erebus
If you wanted a fully stripped out car that was aching for the track, you'd've got a Miata or an Ariel Atom. Its nice to have a trackable car, but its also nice to have some basic conveniences.
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Weight is a massive differentiator in track performance, but I doubt that there is anything that can be done to a 2-series that will allow a weight that changes the characteristics significantly while still allowing it to be tolerable as a daily driver.
Our Caterham R400 drives as differently on the track compared with the M240i as the M240i does to a pickup. It also makes you 10 times more tired after driving it, requires hearing protection and tries to kill you on a frequent basis. It is very light though, here are the corner weights for it with 80kg of driver, a full tank of fuel and 25kg of ballast (needed to be above minimum weight for the class to meet autoslalom championship rules, after fuel burn and a lighter driver swap). Basically a 1200 pound car with a full tank of fuel, 1431 pounds in class weight with driver and ballast.
From the perspective of going to a lightweight car that is still road legal, in the case of the Caterham vs the M240i with decent track prep it is worth about 10 seconds a lap on tight road courses if slicks are used, 5 seconds in a one minute auto-slalom course. I don’t think an M240i would shave more than a second off lap times if removing enough weight while still making it civilized on the road.