Fantastic day and evening at my second home!! ❤️

A lot has changed with the M4 since I was last there:

Bilstein B16 coilovers
New EBC RPX pads. The last few sets of pads have been DS1.11 and DSUNO. The RPX are so much better, hopefully there won't be any more problems with supply
Yokohama AD09 tyres in 275/30/19 front + 295/30/19 rear on stock wheels with 12mm spacers. Fit is absolutely perfect, no rubbing whatsoever 👌

Firstly, is the car any quicker with the suspension? I can only compare to the M Perfromance HAS kit and contrary to popular internet opinion it's not really any quicker. I was at Bedford a few weeks ago running the same brakes and tyres as a previous visit just 3 weeks before in identical conditions, the difference was 0.2 seconds quicker on a 2.40 track.

At Brands, it's not a fair test as I'm running different tyres, but on 245+265 cup2 tyres the car did 52.7 a couple of months ago. Yesterday, it did 52.9 on the much bigger AD09. I think the time would've been quicker on a cooler day. I might put the cup 2 back on and test again in a couple of weeks, will update if so.

It may not be any quicker but the car feels brilliant. The stock ARB's work well on the M4 and previously my only real complaint was diving and squatting, the B16's have done a great job at fixing this. It also has far less roll through the corner. The car feels much lighter, it's more like my old Skyline.

The brakes were simply amazing. Having had to use DS1.11 and DSUNO recently it really made me appreciate getting back to EBC RPX pads. They're so powerful and consistent you never feel you're going to run out of brakes and this makes the car so consistent.

Yokohama AD09 seem like a brilliant tyre. This video shows the first session and first lap after setting pressures. It was a hot day and tyre temp was up to nearly 100c by the end. As with most tyres the first lap was the best with a 52.9, then 53.1 then they were consistent at around 53.4 +/- 0.02 seconds over a 20 min session. It didn't feel like they generate as much G as more focused track tyres but they can be bought at half the cost and are very nearly as fast. I suspect they'll last many times longer too. The car also feels great on them; breakaway is slow and predictable, braking is a really strong point and they give lots of audible noise when at the limit which is helpful to some. 

Yesterday was probably the most fun I've had with the M4 in 6 years!