Your car must not have been running right that day

Those are seriously underpowered... I think they are around 245 horsepower. The 2001+ started getting 333 horsepower I believe.

No the 1996 m3 was the first year with 3.2L, 321 HP engine.

Yes, BMW M class always produces more than 100hp per Liter, with exceptions of 90's 3.0 L having 280 something HP , and M5 with 5.0 L having somewhat around 400 HP . Thought because of that those engines are basically maxed out, and any further investment into that engine won't get you much further.

Bzzzt, wrong, the E36 M3 (the North American version, anyway) made only 240hp. Unless your friend did an engine swap, you should have beaten him by quite a bit.

edit: Oh snap, I just read that you live in Sweden. In that case, yes that should have been a good race.

Wow I had no Idea the North American version had less HP
Anyway that thing moves pretty good at 8500 rpms, almost feels like a turbo car to drive

I only had one experience with an M3 and it was the E36 coupe. It was against my '99SS 6M and we went off a 40ish roll. I was surprised at how well he hung in there to 80 or so. I had maybe 2-3 cars on him then and put a few more on after before I backed off. My SS was lightly modded and ran low 13's at 110. I remember his car being louder than what I would think a stock M3 should be but beyond that I couldn't tell if anything else was changed on his car.

I would think a race with a 333hp E46 M3 would be quite different. IMO the LS1 F-body should pull a bit off the start and the M3 would make a upper end charge at the top of each gear. I would suspect the LS1 would hold it off for a full 1/4 mile. Those cars are made for the Autobahn and loke to go fast and with the power they have and the gearing I wouldn't roll race one over 75.

In the first month I had my car, I encountered an E46 M3 that wanted to race. We were on the highway, so it was a roll race starting around 75mph. I walked away from him easily.

I searched around and looked for stock z28 and M3 videos of drag racing, on places like youtube and so. I found that Ls1 runs around 13.5 or maybe a little lover vs M3 running around 13.2 - 13.5 . So basically its very tight race in 1/4 mile.