[a_radu]

While doing the yearly maintenance on the car I can believe I didn't notice this. On my 16 228i m sport pack the brake ducting in the front fender liners were blocked off?? Both sides. Its as simple as removing the block off plates on the fender liner.....but this just surprises me that BMW would do this. I wanted to post for information as I haven't seen this discussed here. If you track or autox I suggest removing these.

[mdputnam]

Yes, it has been discussed quite a bit here. Bottom line (with some exceptions) if your car has functional side air curtain ducts the brake duct was blocked off to stop it from interfering with the air curtain:
.
If you want the brake cooling and don't care about messing with the air curtain there is no harm in removing the brake duct blocking panel.

[a_radu]

Thank you for the link. I tried to search but did not come up with this thread.