Over the past decade or so, the concept of the track pack has made extreme a little more mainstream. Sticky tires, real splitters and wings, automaker-sanctioned equipment for the hardcore adrenaline junkies among us. Chevrolet has the factory-fit ZTK package, Porsche has Manthey Racing’s kits, and now BMW has an M Performance Track Kit for the baby M2. Spoiler alert: It seems to work a treat.
At the front, the M Performance Track Kit comes with an adjustable carbon fiber splitter, diffusers for the wheel arches, and a sizeable pair of dive planes. Those dive planes aren’t road legal in all jurisdictions when installed, but BMW’s made them easy to remove. Out back, you’ll find a manually adjustable swan-neck rear wing that keeps the underside of the wing element clean for maximum efficiency. It all adds up to around 440 pounds of downforce at 124 MPH, which isn’t bad all things considered.
The other big party piece of the M Performance Track Kit is a rather sophisticated set of dampers. They feature a through-rod design, with a piston in the middle to create two chambers. Because the damper rod goes all the way through the shock body, it takes up the same volume on either side of the piston, effectively eliminating cavitation and keeping the damper itself in a happy state for longer than a traditional design.
At the same time, these dampers are four-way adjustable with separate high-speed and low-speed compression and rebound adjustment. Why would you want this? Well, take a track with aggressive curbs, for example. You might want to back off the high-speed damping for better stability over apex curbs while maintaining firm low-speed damping to keep brake dive and body roll in check. Up front, the damper top mounts feature camber adjustment, and threaded bodies all around allow for corner weighting. Granted, the manually adjustable dampers mean you won’t be keeping the M2’s standard adaptive dampers, but that’s probably not a huge concern for the intended customer of this kit. Get it set up, slap on your favorite set of trackday tires, and get ready to repaint the front bumper in marbles.
So, the M Performance Track Kit for the M2 looks the part, but how does it work? At this point, BMW’s only released lap times from every German automaker’s favorite proving ground: The Nürburgring Nordschleife. While conditions may vary, a standard M2 ran an official time of 7:38.706. That’s pretty quick, but the Track Kit-equipped car ran a 7:25.068, a difference of 13.63 seconds. That’s 3.692 seconds quicker than a limited-run M3 CS and half a second quicker than the more potent, limited-production M2 CS. Making this feat more impressive is how the Nordschleife is generally considered a power track. With plenty of long straights, there was ample opportunity for the extra drag created by the Track Kit’s aerodynamic package to slow it down, yet it seems to have really made up for things in the bends.
That all sounds promising, but what does this kit cost? While an American price hasn’t been released yet, it costs €23,500 in Germany plus installation. That’s about $26,884 at current conversion rates, which is a lot of money to put into a $70,000 car. However, a really good set of proper four-way adjustable aftermarket coilovers can cost five figures on their own, and not only is BMW’s kit road-legal in Europe, but you get to keep your full warranty.
Those two factors alone can tip the scale in favor of the M Performance Track Kit, and how cool is it that more automakers are offering proper parts-counter track packages for their road cars? With how high the limits of modern performance cars are, you simply can’t use them to their fullest on the public road. In a way, trackday bits support using fast cars responsibly, and that’s a win for everyone.
Top graphic image: BMW
This car is far too Nurburgring.