The right man (and car) for the job

Race ace Mike Eady. Photo / Steven McNicholl

If you have to be on opposite lock all the way through Turn 9 at the Hampton Downs circuit, rain plummeting down so hard you can hardly see what's out the side windows, Mike Eady is the man to be driving.

After all, this guy wrote the book on New Zealand motor racing circuits. Quite literally: he's the author of The Tracktime New Zealand Racetrack Manual', which shows the best lines around every circuit in the country.

Aside from being a published expert and totally sweet on the best way to drift through that long, long right-hander that leads up the hill towards the start-finish straight at Hampton Downs, Eady is a successful racing driver and one of only 10 accredited senior BMW driving instructors in the world.

So he's got the skills and he's also used to assuming the PR role of gentleman racer for meet-the-people events like this.

We've come out at the invitation of BMW New Zealand to drive some M-cars, meet Eady and enjoy a few laps in his M3 race car. He won the North Island Endurance Series in it last year and has returned this year.

Impressive, although the thing that really grabs my attention as time goes into slow-motion through Turn 9 is the familiar BMW iDrive display screen in the centre console, which is warning us that the parking distance radar is not operational.

No kidding. But that highlights the interesting thing about this M3 for us motor racing novices: the car may be racing in an open class, but it's also close to a standard showroom model, with the warrant of fitness to prove it.

Power from the 4-litre V8 is up by only 19kW to 328kW and the racer rides 20mm lower than the street model. It's fitted with racing brake pads and modified brake lines, competition fuel tank and the essentials like roll cage, Racetec seats and lightweight 18-inch wheels.

It has a motorsport differential and retains anti-lock braking - a big advantage in the wet, even for a racing driver says Eady - although the software is calibrated for racing rather than road use.

Last year was the first time this generation of M3 had been raced in New Zealand. Between seasons the car shed 150kg through fitment of BMW Motorsport lightweight parts, including doors and the bootlid.

"We're racing in the open class so we can do what we want," says Eady. "If we increased power another 50bhp [37kW], took another 100kg out of the car and played around with the suspension a bit more, we'd gain two seconds per lap, just like that.

"But long-distance racing is about reliability. We'll be a couple of seconds a lap slower than the top cars, but we'll pick up time on stops and we have an advantage in the wet with the anti-lock braking."

I ask Eady to stand between the M3 road car in which we drove to Hampton Downs and his racing car. A true professional: cap on, assumes the pose, race-face.

I point to the two cars. So I could easily turn that blue one [the road M3] into that white one [the racing car]? "You could put my seat and a roll cage in the road car, go out and do bloody well," says Eady.

I assume he means himself, rather than me. But point taken.

As it turned out, Eady might well have done better in the blue car on May 14. He and co-driver John McIntyre started well in the Pukekohe round of the North Island Endurance Series, but had to drop out when a rear shock absorber failed.

Eady is out again this weekend on the next round of the championship at Taupo. He won't have driven there from Auckland in the M3, but it's cool to know that he could.