BMW Performance 200 Kicks Off Racing Season

The 2013 GRAND-AM season gets underway with Friday’s running of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge BMW Performance 200. The race begins at 1:45 p.m. ET and SPEED will broadcast it at 4 p.m. ET Saturday, Feb. 2. The BMW Performance 200 will be a 2-1/2 hour battle over Daytona’s 3.56-mile, 12-turn speedway road course featuring a field of nearly 70 entries.

In the GS class, Billy Johnson and Jack Roush Jr. return to defend last year’s victory in No. 61 Roush Performance Mustang Boss 302R.

Fall-Line Motorsports is a likely candidate to chase the GS victory having finished second through fourth in last year’s BMW 200. The team’s No. 46 BMW M3, co-driven by Bryan Sellers and Mark Boden led the recent Roar Before the Daytona 24 test.

“We will be campaigning three BMW M3s in an effort to win another CTSCC GS championship,” said Boden. Fall-Line won the title in 2010 but slipped to five-six-seven in last year’s standings. “We are very excited to introduce our new partner Trim-Tex Drywall products and Eagle Technologies at Daytona and we hope to represent them on the podium.”

The team also will compete in its first Rolex 24.

Rum Bum Racing finished fifth a year ago. Its No. 13 Porsche Carrera won the 2012 GS championship and returns to Daytona with drivers Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi.

“Daytona is a special place for Rum Bum Racing as it was the site of our first race as a team and site of our first win all at once,” said Plumb. “Mr. (Luis) Bacardi and the rest of the team as always are focused on being on top but that’s easier said than done considering the level of competition in the series.”

Aston Martin flew under the radar in 2012 but that doesn’t appear to be the case this year as its Vantage – prepared and maintained by factory mechanics at Multimatic Motorsports of Canada – dominated Roar Before the 24 testing.

Multimatic’s Larry Holt, vice president of engineering, expressed optimism entering race week. “We ran near the top of the time sheets every session although it is a well-known practice to ‘sandbag’ during this test and we expect a lot of the other guys to go faster,” he said.

TRG-AMR will debut its No. 7 Aston Martin GT4 effort with factory drivers Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke.

In the ST class, Pierre Kleinubing and Jayson Clunie will defend their win in the No. 31 i-Moto MAZDASPEED3. Kleinubing and i-Moto also won the 2012 CTSCC ST championship. A repeat of last year’s ST performance would give i-Moto its third BMW Performance 200 victory.

“We have very high expectations with a strong driver line-up. All our cars and drivers will be contending for the championship,” said i-Moto’s team principal Glenn Bocchino. He’ll team with Taylor Hacquard, a Canadian open wheel standout in the team’s No. 32 car. Kleinubing and Clunie will drive the No. 31 while Mat Pombo, formerly with KIA, will team with Ryan Ellis in the No. 30.

Compass360 Racing, which logged the second and sixth fastest laps during January’s testing, hope to rebound from finishes of 12th through 14th and 17th a year ago. The Canadian team will field five cars this year.

“Logistically it’s quite complex but our crew has really risen to the challenge and we’re keen to get the event underway,” said Compass360’s Karl Thomson. “We were really pleased with the pace of all of our cars at the Roar weekend. Each of them was close to or at the top of the time charts and it was great to see Andrew Jordan set (second) fastest ST time of the weekend in his first outing with our team.

“We worked with Honda throughout 2012 to develop the new Civic Si’s and I really feel like the platform is going to be strong this year.”