The Nurburgring testing season is in full swing and, even though April had some bad weather in the small town of Nurburg, that didn’t stop German engineers from testing their cars. The BMW F90 M5 was no exception as we can see from the video posted below, putting its brand new all-wheel drive system to the test.

By now it’s all but official that the new M5 will come with a system sending power to all four corners of the car. The questions that remain unanswered revolve around the rest of the technicalities. What will the all-wheel drive system be like? What gearbox will be used and how much power will the engine make?

First of all, the all-wheel drive system was specifically developed for this car. Early reports claimed that it will be heavily RWD-biased and that there’s a possibility that it will only send some 20 percent of the power to the front wheels solely when launching from a standstill. That said, the character of the car in corners should be just as good as we’d expect a RWD model to be.

Then there’s the question of the gearbox. Since power needs to be sent to all four corners of the car, the traditional DCT unit BMW used on its M models in recent years is a no go. AWD systems with dual-clutch transmissions aren’t anything new but in order for the new M5 to have such a setup, a whole new gearbox would have to be have been developed and that’s not likely to have happened.

BMWBLOG can now confirm that the F90 M5 will use an 8-speed torque converter automatic gearbox sourced from ZF, similar to the one found on the X5 and X6 M models. If the video posted below is anything to go by, it will be blazing fast and probably more comfortable to use around town so there should be no worries for those looking for the ultimate performance benchmark.

Last but not least the engine will bear the S63B44T4 internal codename. That means it will skip a title update as the current unit used on the X5 and X6 M versions goes by S63B44T2, suggesting a drastic improvement over the 575 HP of the uber-SUVs. 600 HP is definitely an easy target to hit but more recent reports claim the figure could be closer to 610 HP with torque closer to 800 Nm (590 lb-ft). Chip in the all-wheel drive and we should see the M5 reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in about 3.5 seconds. Let’s hope that will come true once the high-performance sedan is finally unveiled towards the end of this year.