Samantha Tan and her Canadian-based team, ST Racing, invited Sportscar365 to Virginia International Raceway to test her BMW M4 GT4. Tan, a 21-year old college student, raced in 2017 in the Pirelli World Challenge Touring Class in a BMW M235iR and more recently in the Pirelli World Challenge GTS SprintX season, finishing on the podium with co-driver Nick Wittmer at Circuit of The Americas.
The idea behind this little project was to see how the road-car BMW M4 compares to the M4 GT4, a race car which is built upon the production series M4, along with some tech imported from the M4 GTS and M6 GT3. The carbon bonnet comes from the BMW M4 GTS and in addition, the BMW M4 GT4 has carbon-fiber doors, motorsport-specific front splitters and rear wings, and a racing exhaust system. The seat, brakes and pedal box make use of solutions that are also included in the top model in customer racing, the BMW M6 GT3. Those brakes comprise of chunky 15.4-inch front and 14-inch rear rotors, with calipers using six pistons in front and four piston at the rear.
Other racing upgrades include a built-in air jack, adjustable anti-roll bars, a set of Öhlins shocks, and an adjustable spring at each corner.
At the same time, the engine and transmission, including control electronics, were all inherited from the BMW M4 Coupe. The beating heart of the car is still the S55 engine with an undisclosed horsepower figure which is supposed to be “more than” 431 HP.
All of that power is sent rearward via a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that’s been programmed for racing. Meanwhile, a massive 33-gallon fuel tank stretches the distance between pit stops.
To find out more about this comparison, see the video below.
