German magazine Sport Auto delivers their track report of the new BMW 1M. Along with the test drive review, the respectable magazine gives us the first Nurburgring time: 8:15 minutes, a tad slower than the 8:12 minutes time reported back in December.
Horst von Saurma pushed the 1M to its limit and came out only 10 seconds slower than the M3 Coupe, but 7 seconds faster than the E46 M3. In comparison, Audi TT RS reported a Nurburgring time of 8:09 minutes, while the RS3 Sportback clocked in at 8:20 minutes.
At Hockenheim race track, Sport Auto clocked the 1M at 1:14.1 minutes, faster than the M3 Coupe with DCT gearbox, 1:14.2 minutes. The 340 horsepower “baby-M” was also nearly a second faster than the Audi TT RS (1:15) and the RS5 Coupe (1:15.3). The Porsche Cayman S with manual transmission fell a bit short as well 1:14.3, but the PDK driven Cayman S lapped below the 1 Series M Coupe 1:13.9. As an interesting tidbit, the 1M was only 0,6 seconds slower than M3 E46 CSL.
As expected, the 40% more expensive Cayman R with PDK transmission remains the fastest with 1:12.4 around Hockenheim.
In the next weeks, we expect to see more lap times from Nurburgring.
However, the 1M receives some criticism from the German magazine. The undercarriage setup was said to be to “hard” for Nurburgring Nordschleife and day-to-day driving, yet perfect for the asphalt at Hockenheim. Overall, the magazine classifies the new 1M as an iconic BMW which builds atop of the M core values.
