Marshy
10-31-2004, 05:22 PM
About four times a year here in the UK we have an event called VMax, organised by some of the folk at pistonheads.com. Essentially, it's an excuse for a bunch of people will fairly silly cars to get together at an old airfield, set up timing gear at the end of about a mile of runway, and fling cars along said runway to see where they top out.
Today was another one of these events and after having spectated a year ago, I was finally in a position to take the 540i along and drive it "properly".
I had an *execllent* day, despite being the slowest car in attendance. The car performed flawlessly, despite its 140,000 miles, and was a blast to cane through the bends that return you from the end of the runway to the marshalling area.
Like I say, the timing beams were about a mile, perhaps a little less, from the end of the runway, and I saw 142mph from a rolling start. To get any more I would have needed extra road, as I was still accelerating through the trap.
At the end of the day, I'm knackered, my tyres are looking a bit shabby on the left of the car and my brakes may need replacement sooner than before. That said, the brakes were superbly effective from big speeds - a lot better than I had feared.
I will post a link to the statistics page that shows the vital figures for the cars that attended, all 2.6 million UK pounds' worth, followed by a link to the top speeds attained and hopefully some video footage taken from a bullet camera attached to my 540i.
Can you feel the grin from there? Top fun!
Today was another one of these events and after having spectated a year ago, I was finally in a position to take the 540i along and drive it "properly".
I had an *execllent* day, despite being the slowest car in attendance. The car performed flawlessly, despite its 140,000 miles, and was a blast to cane through the bends that return you from the end of the runway to the marshalling area.
Like I say, the timing beams were about a mile, perhaps a little less, from the end of the runway, and I saw 142mph from a rolling start. To get any more I would have needed extra road, as I was still accelerating through the trap.
At the end of the day, I'm knackered, my tyres are looking a bit shabby on the left of the car and my brakes may need replacement sooner than before. That said, the brakes were superbly effective from big speeds - a lot better than I had feared.
I will post a link to the statistics page that shows the vital figures for the cars that attended, all 2.6 million UK pounds' worth, followed by a link to the top speeds attained and hopefully some video footage taken from a bullet camera attached to my 540i.
Can you feel the grin from there? Top fun!