Review and test BMW M3 Competition

We’ll tell you a little secret. Not everything on the internet is real. For every impromptu Insta beach photo, there’s a frustrated partner who spent an hour having to “go darn it for once” that hilarious quote from a toddler on Twitter was just invented by his own blog mom, and the quinoa salad was made with essential dexterous lactic acids. merely an appetizer for a Double Obesity Burger. You wouldn’t be the first to expect a TopGeareditor takes every bend sideways, shrouded in a cloud of tire smoke—so have some deeply disappointed editorial interns in the past. With the exception of our colleague whose last name rhymes with Barris, we don’t come home every day with a smoke of Eau de Michelin.

The invitation to an event at Circuit Zandvoort for the BMW M3 Competition and M4 Competition simply counts as a Special Good Working Day for us. Keep in mind that it was on a Monday in corona time, and it is simply the Best Monday of the Year So far – other brands can safely see this as a challenge.

BMW treats us to two parts

On the menu: a few laps on the F1 circuit of Zandvoort and a game of confrontational self-reflection on a wet piece of asphalt. Or as they called it: drifting in the BMW M3 Competition. The truth is, it’s been a while since the last time we threw something of this caliber sideways. And that drifting is more like doing long divisions than cycling: after a little practice it works again, but it doesn’t happen by itself. Before these tough drift photos, enough swearing sounded. Well, it’s not that we’re a bunch of unqualified bums, really, but we admit we had a hard time.

This should be a breeze in the BMW M3 Competition

The setup of the course is simple: run-up, long bend to the right, immediately one to the left and then around a roundabout. We start from a standstill on asphalt. All systems are off, so with a cheerfully wagging rear end and spinning tires, the BMW M3 Competition shoots out of place. It really isn’t lacking in power; but then the first corner. We try it with a small Scandinavian flick; for the right bend first a small steering movement to the left to disturb the balance and then accelerate and send into the bend. The result: understeer. You wouldn’t expect it, but understeer is your worst enemy when trying to drift on a wet track. Especially with modern cars; they are often adjusted to it, which is simply a bit safer. The biggest culprits are actually the wide front tires in combination with the smooth track. The rubber at the front measures 275 millimeters in width and that does not help on wet asphalt.

Braking is fear

Under the Achterhoek motto ‘often you are too scared’ we make another attempt, but with more conviction. That ends backwards. Okay, so we need the average of those two attempts. After a little more practice it starts to look like something. The trick is not to let the car drift out of the drift and thus always keep a little throttle, because once out of the drift, the BMW M3 Competition will have a hard time getting sideways again. Once you speak its language, you can let the BMW M3 go sideways in a well-controlled manner. You feel what the car is doing and you can grab more drift angle than you might think. Later, by the way, we get the chance to drag the M3 sideways through a bend on a dry Zandvoort Circuit; there is no understeer.

We know we’re almost Insta-worthy thanks to the handy BMW M Drift Analyzer. And by handy we mean: totally unnecessary, but very nice. The application in the infotainment system does exactly what the name suggests. The car uses the sensors to measure how many meters you have drifted, what angle you achieved and how long the drift was. This will give you a score from zero to five stars. In the end, the BMW M3 Competition rewards us with 4.5 stars, the slime. By the way, the built-in game element can simply be switched on on public roads, so we expect some virals on YouTube and happy bodyshops. We drove with a rear-wheel drive, but this app can also be found in the new four-wheel drive version of the M3 and M4 – you can switch off the front-wheel drive.

Training wheels on the BMW M3 Competition

Incidentally, the sedan does offer training wheels for those who want to start drifting more carefully. The stability control has ten positions, with the least strict position allowing quite a bit of slip before it intervenes. You can see this as a drift aid. You can program your preferred riding modes to the M1 and M2 buttons on the steering wheel. This way you always have your two favorite settings at hand; you never know when you’ll come across a nice roundabout (on closed ground of course and with full permission from the landowner).

If you want to be a little more careful, there is also the ‘regular’ M3, without Competition. This produces 480 hp instead of 510 hp and is only available with a manual gearbox in the Netherlands. A station wagon arrives later. This gives BMW a very broad spectrum. You will no longer find manual cars in this segment: Audi and Mercedes gave up long ago and even the Giulia Quadrifoglio is only available with an automatic transmission. The four-wheel drive version of the M3 leaves Audi and AMG behind at the traffic light. The advantage that AMG still has is that they are the only ones to cram an eight-cylinder in their compact sedan. With the emphasis on ‘still’, because the next C 63 will have a four-cylinder.

The BMW M3 Competition, or another one?

The biggest disadvantage of this M3 is that you will have to make a choice between all versions. Porsche would be jealous of the offer. By the way, if you’re in doubt between the M3 and the M4, you should put the two side by side and look at it from behind. Because the BMW 4-series is already quite wide in itself, the M4 seems to be less wide; with the M3 it is exactly the other way around. Has its charm. What you have to be able to handle is the awkward way the rear door connects to the wider wheel arches. Or would you rather we hadn’t pointed that out to you?