Plumb and Longhi will be in a Carrera at Barber Motorsports Park
The Rum Bum team, winner of six Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge races in 2010 and 2011, is switching horses. Beginning at the Barber Motorsports Park this weekend, Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi will move from their familiar E92 M3 to a Porsche Carrera.
Both cars will be at Barber; the M3 will be run in practice, but the team’s intention is to run the Porsche in the race unless something unforeseen happens.
Plumb said “We’ve had a great relationship with everyone at BMW and the M3 is a very capable machine--we know they will be hard to beat. But this is an exciting move for the team, and we are very optimistic about the potential that we see with this new Porsche.”
The Porsche is allowed to run at 2900 pounds, while the weight of both the M3 and the Boss Mustang has just been increased from 3300 to 3335 pounds. Will Turner says that the small addition should not have a substantial impact on performance.
Other regulations for the cars vary; on paper, the Porsche appears to have an edge. Lap times and race performance at Barber should reveal a great deal.
Two other teams are adding non-BMW products to their stables; Automatic Racing will race an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 at Barber along with an M3, and RSR will race a Honda Civic Si along with its three Street Tuner class Minis. RSR ran the Civic at Daytona, and has been doing development work on it since then. The team also plans to add a fourth Mini at the Homestead race in April.—Brian S. Morgan, motorsports editor, bmwcca.org
