The big U-turn in the middle of the course was pretty high lateral G. If you slowed down a little and didn’t overdrive it, you may have managed to pull a higher g-force around that turn. This could have pushed your oil to the left side of the sump and possibly starved the pickup for a second.
I was dual-driving with Paul (which he hadn’t planned for), and we ended up getting fuel starvation after the U-turn on our last couple runs because the fuel level was < 1/4 tank at that point. The fuel was getting pushed to the left side of the tank (and the fuel pickup on E36's is on the right side).
Overfilling the oil by 1/2 quart is definitely the way to go with E36's.