I’ve discovered a fault in the design of the M340i. It’s serious. If it’s the middle of the night, you’re between stints at Le Mans and you’re so desperate for even a couple of hours’ sleep you walk for half an hour to where you parked and try to nod off in the passenger seat, you’ll find the infotainment display won’t turn off. Terrible, huh?
I make this sound more intrepid than it was. I was at Le Mans, and competing too, but in an old Bentley in the Le Mans Classic as Ti regulars may be aware. But I was still bloody tired. I’d come off the track at around 2.15am, and by the time I’d got the Bentley back, gone to the debriefing and toddled off to the BMW, still in my race suit because I calculated I’d lose more time than I gained in quality sleep changing into civvies and back, it was around 3.30am. I was due to report back to the pits at 6.00am, so, allowing time to walk, that meant two hours horizontal (more like diagonal in reality) at most. And the wretched screen would not turn off.
Had she been there, my wife would have told me to stop making a fuss and just go to sleep, easily said for someone who could snooze through a small thermo-nuclear device going off in the garden without the smallest disturbance to her circadian rhythms; less easily done by someone who spends every first night in a hotel hanging coats on televisions, unplugging bedside clocks and rolling up towels to put under the door so as to blot out every conceivable light source. Only when I can see nothing more with my eyes open than closed am I truly ready for bed.
