M3 CSL
I realised I had 3 untouched CSLs sitting in my garage and wanted to tinker with one. So being a buffoon at actually figuring out a setup for myself I looked to the all-knowing power of the internet, and found the puppy linked above as tuned by those mad scientists at RKM.
First impressions
Wow. It goes. It really goes. And then it goes some more. But I guess that's not really surprising as it's not exactly a slow puppy to start with. I ran this puppy with a fresh oil change, engine overhaul and restored the chassis rigidity so that my 29,000km bimmer would be like new.
It is a nice car to drive, and handles superbly at low speed. However, the thing is a pig when it comes to high speed corners when fitted with tuner-recommended Racing Soft tyres. You can feel the back holding steady while the front just wallows and eventually runs you wide - not like you can just throw in a bootful of power to counteract it, because you're already at full throttle.
The gearing is decent. Nice acceleration, yet still capable of over 300km/h - which, is pretty impressive when you think of the drag efficiencies (or lack thereof) once you are up there at those speeds.
I have only driven the CSL on Sports Mediums and Racing Soft. If I'm perfectly honest, I preferred the car's handling on the sports mediums. Yes there was still some of that understeer but, less sticky tyres mean it's less of problem.
I can think of only one thing that I would change - dial out the understeer and replace it with a slightly tail-happy setting. Of course this is a personal opinion.
However, for the complete novice and intermediate driver I would rate this as an incredibly good starting point for a ~560 PP car. Oodles of power, combined with predictable handling make it almost forgiving. Unless you get it into a tank slapper on the racing softs, then you can try until you're blue in the face, you won't catch it again after the first few wobbles (at least around la Sarthe).
I feel perhaps, it's a little too low in terms of ride height, catch a curb at a funny angle and rather than just start to slip you get very sideways - again this could just be my inexperience on the racing softs, and it may be more tyre than car.
Mine's a matte orange monster and I ****ing love it.
Time to get a tinkerin' to bring back the oversteer.
👍
easily under 1:47 on Cape Ring 500PP @ 483PP
