Yep, still rocking the 'Ring. Some say I don't spend enough time on other tracks, and that I should buy a holiday home here.
The first one, I'll admit to. I
do spend inordinate amounts of time up here. But buy a holiday home? ...actually, after driving this car, I think I'll be inclined to settle down and start a family here.
Not satisfied with one fruit-loop of a saloon, I opted to test drive an M5. Except this, as it turned out, wasn't a normal M5. No, AMMT have somehow fit the M5 body shell onto a Eurofighter Typhoon.
Hence, the name. And boy, does it go like one!
After a pleasant if yet at times harrowing experience in the FPV, I was pretty sure that short of hiring an F1 car (I wish), I wasn't going to find a faster way around the ring. So when the M5 popped along promising a laptime of 6'05, I jumped at the chance.
So, strapped myself in, and pulled onto the track. First impressions? Huh, goes over 9000 RPM now? Nice engine response, car feels very grounded, quite neutral handling.
I continue this vein until I approach the Galgenkopf corner, and then decide to begin the run up to my hotlap by opening the throttle down the straight. Then, without warning, the universe quite simply exploded. And then came back again. Okay, that's a
bit of exaggeration, but make no mistake. The sheer power avaliable is truly staggering. It took next to no time at all to get Tiergarten. Better yet, it was at over 200MPH that I realised how stable this car was at high speeds. There wasn't any of the omnious shaking usually associated with spinning and crashing into tree at a billion miles an hour that you usually get with a car so light and powerful.
The brakes performed really well too, slowing me down quicker than I expected them to. So long as you do not try turning the wheel, however, or you WILL spin and crash into a tree at a billion miles an hour.
So, I begin my hot lap at full pelt. Even though this car has had a weight reduction, it is still fairly heavy at just under 1 and a half tones, yet it hardly feels its weight. At times it drives as though it's on rails, and at speeds like this (FAST), it's truly remarkable.
The level of grip on offer is also very good. Short of trying to chuck it around a corner full throttle at 150mph, there aren't going to be many excursions to the Armco barriers in your 'Ring journey.
However, it isn't without faults. While my earlier review of the FPV glossed over a few faults, it wasn't because I'm a fanboy for big and brutal and anything with my name over it, but it just feels like the FPV and the M5 compete in two different classes. The FPV? That'll get the heart going and the blood pumping. The M5? It's a pure racing machine. There are thrills to be had, but with the FPV, you'll be happy slidding through corners at speed while in the M5, you'll be more interested in smashing track records and hunting the opposistion down.
As such, the faults are harder to ignore. At low speeds, for instance, when the downforce is practically non-existent, you'll experience understeer around corners, forcing you to run wider than you'd expect. Wheelspin is a problem at low gearing, and when coming out of a corner, very careful throttle modulation is required, lest you want to revisit a billion miles and a tree.
But that's besides the point. They're problems that exist in all cars. It'd be quite petty to mark the car down on these faults. This car is a technical achievement in itself. The name "Hurricane" is well deserved. I wouldn't be surprised, for instance, to learn that in my test drive I in fact managed to tear the trees from the ground as I sped past them, the car slicing through the wind.
If you've got an M5 handy, and feel like seeing what The Green Hell looks like all blurry, you've got yourself a car!
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Okay, I'm a bit late on posting this, but I've been a bit busy with college applications, future planning and Silent Hill 2
.
I'll try and get the 323F on the track tonight, if I have enough time on my hands. 👍