90% of this board is a bunch of fucking assholes. All BMW owners are not assholes. Just the ones with some type of mental complex that reside on this board. For your questions, I tend to upshift around ~3k rpm (this all depends on your driving style) And most of the time I take off in 2nd gear, I mainly use 1st when retards in the right turn only lane try to get in front of me, because they cant read the sign. I always use steptronic mode, Its become a habit and I never drive with it in D or S. As for downshifting, the engine protects itself by not allowing downshifts when the speed/revs are too high. I hope this helps, keep in mind im not some bimmer god like most of these people, this is just my personal experience.