Starting from 9th, Rum Bum Looks To Be 1st At the End

© Wes Duenkel

The No. 13 Rum Bum Racing BMW M3 piloted by Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb will start from the ninth position on the grid for the Continental Tire Sports Car Festival Powered by Mazda at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. While the blue and yellow Rum Bum machine has been accustomed to starting closer toward the front of the field this year, the spot on the inside of the fifth row didn’t concern the squad much.

Throughout the practice sessions run so far, Rum Bum Racing has focused on setting up the car to run fast at the end of the race, rather than searching for all-out, one lap speed. Having optimized the BMW package to the fullest extent allowed within the current GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge GS Class rules, Rum Bum Racing knows it will have a difficult time competing with the higher horsepower, higher torque producing Camaros and Mustangs. Their advantage lays in the BMW’s superior braking, tire management and cornering speed. So while the Camaros and Mustangs wear down their tires and brakes, the No. 13 will look to come on strong at the end.

“One thing we know is that the No. 13 is consistently fast, even if not over a single lap," said Plumb. "That’s what we set the car up for is to run fast over a whole race distance. It’s going to be good over the long run. Nick (Longhi) had a little bit of understeer for qualifying that hurt his ability to go faster in qualifying. We will make some changes to the set-up tonight to dial it in for the race, so we’re going to be fine. We’ll just have to be patient and let the other cars wear themselves out. That was the plan at Road America and it was working until that late race yellow put an end to it for us. Hopefully, this weekend the yellows, of which I think there will be several, will fall in our favor.”

Longhi qualified the No.13 machine with a time of 1:36.756 seconds over the 2.238 miles of Laguna Seca that includes the famous “Corkscrew” corner, on his third lap of five attempted during the 15-minute session. His time was seven-tenths of a second off the pole-winning time.

The Continental Tire Sports Car Festival Powered by Mazda goes green at 10:45 AM PDT, Saturday July 9, for two and a half hours of hard-fought, action-packed racing. Follow live timing and scoring on grand-am.com.