[gwhiz]

Ok, I have 2 favorite race situations in this car so far. Both took place after I had the PPK installed and both happened with my gf as my passenger (she always eggs me on to race, true story).

Most recently we were on our way to a friend's birthday party. He and I used to race in the NASA Honda Challenge together. As we're driving over there, I hear an extremely mean sounding V8 coming from behind me. It's a Jeep SRT-8. Normally I wouldn't even bother but it was so loud I was thinking that it could be modified. We end up lined up next to each other at a red light and the gf says: "don't you dare let him pull ahead of you."

How could I let her down?

When the light turned green, I didn't launch for fear of being too obnoxious but wanted to see if he went for it. Of course he did, what was I thinking. Honestly, it was much faster than I thought it would be. We were very even through my first 2 gears but shortly into 3rd gear I pulled away by about 3/4 of a car and shut it down shortly after I started pulling - once dominance is established, I rarely go much past that.

He pulls in behind me as I'm making a right turn and follows me around the corner. I'm just going normally now but hear that musical V8 start to scream again as he makes the turn. I let him catch up to me and gun it with the same result as the first time - close at first and then I pull away a bit. At the next intersection he goes straight and I turn left, I try to throw him a peace sign but he doesn't even look over. As we are now slowly getting to my friend's house and making our way through the maze of side streets, I can hear a familiar sound... I pull up to the house and right on my tail is my buddy in the Jeep! We were on our way to the same freaking house. I should have known that going to a racing buddy's party would also mean that other car guys would show lol. As we get out to head into the party, I say "well that was a fun drive over here, thanks for the runs." I get nothing in response... he ignores me and goes into the party. I follow and just enjoy my night, never speaking a word to this guy who is apparently butt hurt that his mighty SRT-8 got beat by a little BMW. Whatever, it was fun.

The other one was against an SLK-350 and was really even funnier because the guy couldn't drive. Same deal with this one where the gf "forces" me to run him. We're in a 2 lane left hand turn lane, he's on the inside. When the light turns green, we both take off relatively fast but bonehead starts to get sideways halfway through the turn and I legitimately feel like he's going to drift right into the side of my car. As he catches it he backs way off and I just go, at this point to just get away from this maniac. Again, I didn't feel the need to go crazy because technically I may not have had the opportunity to "beat" him but I certainly made him feel like a douche, which is just as good in my book, so I let him do the 'ol ricer flyby.

One mile down the road, he gets into the right turn lane to make his way onto a 3 lane road that I, too, need to turn on to. He turns aggressively, I follow aggressively, 3/4 of the way through this guy again almost loses control! It was less than the first time but still... and this time he would have ended up in oncoming traffic, not the side of my car. He "caught it" with a car length lead since he was ahead of me. Seriously, within 2 seconds I was a car or 2 ahead of him. Not sure if it was a case of a really bad driver or if that car is just not very impressive but either way, 135i ftw.

Cliffs for the sake of the topic: add the Jeep SRT-8 and SLK-350 as cars that we're faster than. Drive safe!