Atlanta, Ga. (19 April 2013) – The No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche will start from the pole in Saturday’s PWC 250 At Road Atlanta for round four of the 2013 GRAND-AM Championship.

The grid was set by point order when qualifying was cancelled due to heavy rains in the Atlanta area. Nick Longhi will open the two hour, thirty-minute race before handing the Porsche over to co-driver Matt Plumb to take to the finish.

Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing, who has finished in the top-five in each of the three opening rounds of GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge competition this year – including a victory in the previous round at Barber Motorsports Park, currently leads the Grand Sport championship.

“It would have been nice to show what we could do in qualifying but at the same time it’s really great to be starting up front at Road Atlanta,” said Plumb. “With this being a challenging track as well as a new track for GRAND-AM, I think we could see some attrition tomorrow so it’s all the more important to be starting at the front. The team has just been fantastic so far this season and has put us at the top of the championship so a big thanks to the Rum Bum guys. We’ve had good pace so far this weekend so hopefully we can stay out of trouble and convert our pace into another strong finish.”

The event marks the fifth time Rum Bum Racing has started on the pole. The team has scored 12 wins and 18 podiums since its debut in 2010.

The 2.5-hour PWC 250 at Road Atlanta race is set to begin Saturday at 11:30 AM (ET). Live timing and scoring can be followed at www.grand-am.com.

SPEED will televise the event Saturday, April 27 at 2:00 PM (ET).

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Atlanta, Ga. (19 April 2013) – The No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche will start from the pole in Saturday’s PWC 250 At Road Atlanta for round four of the 2013 GRAND-AM Championship.

The grid was set by point order when qualifying was cancelled due to heavy rains in the Atlanta area. Nick Longhi will open the two hour, thirty-minute race before handing the Porsche over to co-driver Matt Plumb to take to the finish.

Orlando, Fla. (17 April 2013) – When Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing team arrives at Road Atlanta, the driving duo of Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi will be targeting the team’s 13^th victory in just three years of racing as the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge makes its debut at the historic 2.54-mile world-class circuit.

Fresh off a dramatic victory in the previous round of Barber Motorsports Park, where the team rallied back from a lap down to take the win in the No. 13 Porsche, Rum Bum Racing leads the GRAND-AM championship heading into Round 4.

“It truly was one of our greatest wins just because we had to come back from such unfortunate circumstances,” said Plumb of the Barber event. “We had a rough pit stop and went a lap down. We got our lap back with the wave around, but you have to keep digging the whole time. We thought we were down but this team never, never gives up. (Team owner) Luis Bacardi put together this team and all the pieces of the team just work together.”

Though the Road Atlanta facility is a new venue to many of the drivers competing in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series, both Plumb and Longhi already have years of experience at the circuit – with Plumb having raced at the track in the open wheel ranks as well as in World Challenge competition and with Longhi having competed in ALMS GT competition.

“I drove at Road Atlanta quite a bit in both two liter formula cars and Barber Dodge and then World Challenge,” offered Plumb. “And now I do a lot of iRacing which is amazing how similar it is to actually racing at the track. I think it’s really great that GRAND-AM is going back to Road Atlanta. It’s one of the cooler tracks that we have in North America so the fact that we’ve been missing it, is a bit of a bummer. Now that we’re there again it just adds to the excitement of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge racing!”

“Road Atlanta is a track that I like a lot – it’s one of my favorite ones in North America,” echoed Longhi. “It’s a real race course. It’s fast and up and down hill and it’s a lot of fun to drive. I like it personally, a lot. It has a great history. It’s really fun to drive. It’s a really great atmosphere in terms of the fans – they appreciate what they’re watching. I’m very, very excited to go there. I’ve raced there before in ALMS in various cars years ago. But obviously in GRAND-AM we haven’t been there in a few years so I’ve missed it a lot. It’s great to be able to race there again. It’s one of the greatest race tracks in North America for sure.”

Rum Bum Racing Crew Chief Joe Varde, who calls the strategy for Rum Bum Racing and played a major role in securing the team’s championship title last year, also has a vast amount of experience at the track. Varde is one of the most successful championship-winning road racers of the last 25 years and has plenty of knowledge of the Road Atlanta road course having driven in ALMS, Cayman Interseries and IMSA Firehawk competition – among others.

“I think it’s great,” said Varde of the Road Atlanta addition to the GRAND-AM schedule. “We grow up road racing and we go to all of these tracks and then when the big separation came we didn’t go to Road Atlanta anymore and we missed that a lot. And now that (the two series) are back together we’re going to be racing those tracks and I think it’s going to be good for everybody. I’ve got a lot of great Road Atlanta memories. In 1983 I won the (IMSA Firehawk) race there and I had my son there on the podium – he was very young at the time and I had a picture with him on the podium and I thought that was very cool.”

The weekend kicks off with a promoter test day on Thursday, April 18. Official practice and qualifying takes place on Saturday with the race set to go green on Saturday, April 20 at 11:30 AM (ET).

Live timing and scoring is available throughout the weekend at www.grand-am.com. SPEED will televise the event April 27 at 2:00 PM (ET).

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Orlando, Fla. (17 April 2013) - When Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing team arrives at Road Atlanta, the driving duo of Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi will be targeting the team’s 13th victory in just three years of racing as the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge makes its debut at the historic 2.54-mile world-class circuit.

Fresh off a dramatic victory in the previous round of Barber Motorsports Park, where the team rallied back from a lap down to take the win in the No. 13 Porsche, Rum Bum Racing leads the GRAND-AM championship heading into Round 4.

The post Edwards Bobbles, Rum Bum’s Plumb Wins At Barber appeared first on Rum Bum Racing.

Grows Championship lead with strong run to victory

Birmingham, Ala. (6 April 2013) – Last year, Rum Bum Racing flipped the script. This year, it was a re-run.

Rum Bum Racing returned to victory lane at Barber Motorsports Park on Saturday to score a repeat win at the Alabama road course. Drivers Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb fought back from a lap down to score Rum Bum Racing’s 12th GRAND-AM victory.

Longhi opened the race from the fourth row after having qualified the No. 13 Porsche eighth on the grid. He ran a strong opening stint among the top-six throughout the first 20 laps before the team called him to pit lane just past the 30 minute mark for a routine pit stop and driver change.

A traditional quick Rum Bum pit stop was thwarted when a problem with the refueling system saw the stop take much longer than it should have and the No. 13 fell a lap down. Fortunately, a yellow flag was displayed soon after the pit stop which saw Plumb pick up the pace car ahead of the race leader and earn the ‘wave around’ to return to the lead lap.

Plumb restarted from the 20^th position but wasted no time in moving forward as he made a charge through the field to run fourth with just under an hour remaining in the race.

A caution late in the race saw Plumb circulating with a clear shot for a podium finish. When asked by the Speed pit reporter if he was thinking about a win or the championship, crew chief Joe Varde didn’t hesitate as Luis Bacardi looked on.

“I am thinking ‘championship,’ but the boss likes to win so we are going to go for it!”

Indeed, Plumb was on the same page as he out-dueled the leader to score the point before one final full course caution. Plumb led the field to the green and never looking back, scoring Rum Bum Racing’s first victory of the season.

“I never thought I’d love Alabama so much!” exclaimed Plumb. “It was awesome. It truly was one of our greatest wins just because we had to come back from such unfortunate circumstances. We had a rough pit stop where we had a problem with the fuel system and went a lap down. We got our lap back with the wave around, but you have to keep digging the whole time. When the boss is in town, you got to make sure you win!”

“This team is just unbelievable and Matt is an amazing driver,” said Longhi. “The combination of this whole team working together is incredible. We were a lap down and the strategy early on was just to be careful. Try to keep the car in one piece and keep the tires underneath you and it was a bit hectic. We were doing okay. The yellows were timed the wrong way and we thought we were down but this team never, never gives up and Luis Bacardi put together this team and I just can’t get over how strong it is all the time. All the pieces of the team just work together. I’m really so happy to be a small part of this amazing operation.”

The victory extends Rum Bum Racing’s championship lead with a 17-point advantage. The team will return to race action at Road Atlanta in two weeks, April 18-20.

SPEED will televise the Barber Motorsports Park event Saturday, April 13 at 2:00 PM (ET).

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Grows Championship lead with strong run to victory

Birmingham, Ala. (6 April 2013) – Last year, Rum Bum Racing flipped the script. This year, it was a re-run.

Rum Bum Racing returned to victory lane at Barber Motorsports Park on Saturday to score a repeat win at the Alabama road course. Drivers Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb fought back from a lap down to score Rum Bum Racing’s 12th GRAND-AM victory.

Birmingham, Ala. (5 April 2013) – After starting the 2012 race at Barber Motorsports Park from fifth, Rum Bum Racing took a dramatic victory in the team’s first-ever outing with a Porsche 911 on the way to scoring the 2012 GRAND-AM Championship. Drivers Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb will look to defend last year’s victory with another strong outing as the duo enter the race weekend leading both the driver and team championship standings ahead of the third Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge round.

The picturesque track has not featured post card weather to go with the high quality of facilities, with cold temperatures and variable precipitation keeping the drivers busy on the 2.3-mile circuit during the opening two days of testing.

The weather started to turn for the better on Friday as the field was ready to set the grid in a 15-minute qualifying session on Friday morning.

The session proved to be a stop and start affair, as an early yellow flag saw Longhi forced to cool his heels in pit lane before the track went green again with just over four minutes to go. Unfortunately, Longhi, along with several other competitors, was judged to have been a little too eager to get out of pit lane.

A quick roll back through the pit lane to serve a pit speeding penalty meant that he had only one more flying lap to set a time, and he made the most of it with a fast lap time of 1:35.699-seconds to score eighth on the grid.
“On my first lap, the tires were just too cold because it had been raining,” said Longhi. “I really thought there’d be more grip. And so I went through the last corner with a lot of understeer, and I should have known it was going to take a couple of laps to warm up, but I didn’t want to take “no” for an answer. So I was sideways and sliding around too much, figuring that the next lap it would settle in.”

The weather has kept the drivers and engineers on their toes, but with a more consistent and hospitable forecast for race day, the team is optimistic for a strong result.

“I felt like if I could have done one or two more laps before the black flag, we would have been faster, but I don’t know if we had the pole,” said Longhi. “But this is what happens in this series. There’s a lot of black flags, especially at a track like this where there’s going to be a lot of cars off track and a lot of contact. But it is what it is, we are where we are, we have a great team, and we’ll win anyway.”

The 2.5-hour Barber race will go green on Saturday at 4:00 PM local time. Live timing and scoring is available at www.grand-am.com.

Saturday’s race will be broadcast on SPEED, April 13 2:00 PM ET.

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Birmingham, Ala. (5 April 2013) – After starting the 2012 race at Barber Motorsports Park from fifth, Rum Bum Racing took a dramatic victory in the team’s first-ever outing with a Porsche 911 on the way to scoring the 2012 GRAND-AM Championship. Drivers Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb will look to defend last year’s victory with another strong outing as the duo enter the race weekend leading both the driver and team championship standings ahead of the third Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge round.

Looking to Defend Last Year’s Race Win

A look back at Rum Bum Racing’s Rolex 24 Effort

Notes:
*Rum Bum Racing will be guests of the Birmingham area Porsche Club of America during the event, with drivers Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi featured guests for a race-day Q&A and tech talk

Orlando, Fla. (1 April 2013) – With just over a month between Rounds 2 and 3 of the 2013 GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge championship, Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing is ready to go at Barber Motorsports Park this weekend as the team is set to defend its 2012 victory at the track.

Looking to mount a vigorous defense of its 2012 GRAND-AM team title, Rum Bum Racing currently sits atop the championship standings heading into Round 3 after strong performances in the first two rounds.

The 2.3-mile, 17-turn scenic road course located in Birmingham, Alabama is one of the most technical tracks on the 2013 calendar, and drivers Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi are eager to return to race action.

Last year’s Barber victory came in the team’s first Porsche start after making the transition from BMW. Despite driving a brand new car with a nearly empty notebook, Plumb and Longhi showed that Rum Bum Racing preparation and team execution are second to none, no matter what the equipment is. The victory kicked off a string of wins for Rum Bum Racing as the team went on to claim five victories in 10 races on the way to securing the 2012 team championship title after taking a dramatic victory in the season-finale race at Lime Rock Park.

The team has delivered two strong performances in the first two rounds – scoring a second place result at Daytona International Speedway and a fourth place finish at Circuit of the Americas in GRAND-AM’s Texas debut. As the Rum Bum squad returns to Barber Motorsports Park, the team would like nothing more than to take a repeat win in Saturday’s 2.5-hour event.

“It is always great to come back to a track where you won the last year,” said Plumb. “Winning on debut with the Porsche was to me a great display of what this Rum Bum team is capable of. So far this year, we haven’t won a race, which is always the ambition, but with two races under our belts, we’re happy with where we are in the points. Every weekend, we know that we have to pull out as many points as possible and stay out of trouble. We saw that in Texas–some very strong championship contenders had issues. We just have to focus on our game plan and hope to have a little racing luck in there as well!”

Barber Motorsports Park tends to flatter the high horsepower V8s with its low speed corners and high-speed straights and due to the track’s technical layout, it’s all the more important for Longhi to qualify the Porsche machine toward the front of the nearly 60-car combined class grid.

“We’ve found that this car has a good race pace, but on a track like Barber you need a lot of grunt to pull out of the slower corners,” said Longhi. “So with our Porsche, the more track position we can earn in qualifying, the better we’ll be in the race as this car runs well out front. The big thing is keeping the nose clean and turning the car over ready to go in the final laps of the race. Barber can be a messy track for contact, so hopefully we can just stay out of trouble and be at the front when it counts.”

The weekend kicks off with a promoter test day on Wednesday with official practice on Thursday. Qualifying will take place on Friday at 11:15 AM (ET). The green flag is set to wave on the 2.5-hour race at 5:00 PM (ET) on Saturday.

Live timing and scoring can be followed at www.grand-am.com throughout the weekend. SPEED will televise the event Saturday, April 13 at 2:00 PM (ET).

The post Rum Bum Racing Brings Championship Points Lead to Barber Motorsports Park appeared first on Rum Bum Racing.

Looking to Defend Last Year’s Race Win

A look back at Rum Bum Racing’s Rolex 24 Effort

Notes: *Rum Bum Racing will be guests of the Birmingham area Porsche Club of America during the event, with drivers Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi featured guests for a race-day Q&A and tech talk

Orlando, Fla. (1 April 2013) – With just over a month between Rounds 2 and 3 of the 2013 GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge championship, Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing is ready to go at Barber Motorsports Park this weekend as the team is set to defend its 2012 victory at the track.

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Austin, Texas (2 March 2013) – After winning the 2012 GRAND-AM Championship, Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing is once again back on top as the team scored a fourth place finish at the Circuit of the Americas to move to the top of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Championship. Both Rum Bum Racing drivers Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb led during the race as the duo once again made the most of the preparation from the Joe Varde-led crew.

The race (which will air on SPEED, March 9 4:00 PM ET) saw Longhi start from third in the order and run in the top four during his opening stint. The world-class facility set the stage for an exciting battle, with Longhi in the thick of the fight. But the New York-based racer has seen the ebbs and flows of championship campaigns, and knew that it was key to keep the nose clean and the big picture in mind.

“You always prefer to win, but you have to be smart,” said Longhi. “There were a couple of guys ahead of us who weren’t important as far as points. They were willing to take chances and wreck their cars just to get one spot on the track, whereas that is just not a good gamble for us. The team was flawless as usual, and the car was great. Onward and upward.”

After moving to the lead of the race, Longhi turned the car over to Plumb with the car in podium position – Plumb returning to the fray in fifth. A big battle for the podium ensued, with some close racing also leading to some hard and mis-judged contact from some familiar sources. But Plumb avoided any issues to be ready to fight at the finish. A final pit stop that featured a two-tire change didn’t harvest the seeds of the strategy call following an extended yellow period, but the the No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche was able to still fight to the finish and score fourth, locking in 60 points to move to the top of the charts with two rounds of racing in the books.

“It was a good points race, and it’s great to get to the lead in the championship,” said Plumb. “Our pit stop strategy was great–had it not gone yellow everyone would have had to come in for fuel. You have to make the most of what the opportunity is, and we did that this weekend. The team did another great job, and we will just keep building on this. We are already looking forward to getting to Barber!”

SPEED will broadcast the event Saturday, March 9 at 4:00 PM (ET).

Rum Bum Racing will be back in action again April 6th at Barber Motorsports Park. The team debuted with the Porsche at the track in 2012, scoring a dramatic breakthrough victory and will target a similar outcome.

The post Rum Bum Racing Leads GRAND-AM Championship after COTA appeared first on Rum Bum Racing.

Austin, Texas (2 March 2013) – After winning the 2012 GRAND-AM Championship, Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing is once again back on top as the team scored a fourth place finish at the Circuit of the Americas to move to the top of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Championship. Both Rum Bum Racing drivers Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb led during the race as the duo once again made the most of the preparation from the Joe Varde-led crew.

Austin, Texas (1 March 2013) – A new year, a new track, and a new state, but a familiar result as Nick Longhi wheeled the No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche to third on the GRAND-AM of the Americas grid on Friday at the Circuit of the Americas.

The event weekend marks the debut for the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series at the track for Round 2 of the 2013 championship season. Longhi will open the 2.5-hour race (SPEED, March 9 4:00 PM ET) from behind the wheel before turning the car over to co-driver Matt Plumb to take to the finish as the duo chase a 12th win for Rum Bum Racing.

Longhi’s fast lap time of 2:32.097-seconds around the 3.4-mile, Formula-1 grade circuit marks the second consecutive top-five start for Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing so far in the 2013 GRAND-AM season as the team looks to defend its maiden GRAND-AM Team Championship from 2012.

“I caught traffic on what I thought was going to be my fast lap,” said Longhi. “The team sent me out at exactly the right time for my second flying lap. But on my third lap, I caught two guys who were  stragglers. I  backed up to try to get another fast lap in, but just ran out of time for the session. With this team, you always expect to be strong. We were hoping for the pole, but all in all, this is a very good race car and we should be strong tomorrow.”

Live timing and scoring can be followed at www.grand-am.com. SPEED will broadcast the event Saturday, March 9 at 4:00 PM (ET).

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Austin, Texas (1 March 2013) – A new year, a new track, and a new state, but a familiar result as Nick Longhi wheeled the No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche to third on the GRAND-AM of the Americas grid on Friday at the Circuit of the Americas.

The event weekend marks the debut for the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series at the track for Round 2 of the 2013 championship season. Longhi will open the 2.5-hour race (SPEED, March 9 4:00 PM ET) from behind the wheel before turning the car over to co-driver Matt Plumb to take to the finish as the duo chase a 12th win for Rum Bum Racing.

Orlando, Fla. (27 February 2013) – The GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series (CTSCC) has traveled to many diverse tracks around the country and this weekend will make its debut at the new state-of-the-art Circuit of the Americas. Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing is eager to return to race action for the highly anticipated Round 2 of the 2013 championship held at the 3.4-mile road course located just outside of Austin, Texas as the team looks to generate maximum points toward its GRAND-AM Championship defense.

The venue, which was purpose-built for the high horsepower Formula 1 machines, marks a new track and a new challenge for all of the GRAND-AM teams as each arrives with an empty notebook allowing for a fairly equal playing field heading into the race.

But with a track record that has seen the Rum Bum Racing team seamlessly rise to these types of challenges, the group is hoping to once again show strength on this new circuit.

In Rum Bum Racing’s 2010 debut season in which virtually all of the race events were held at tracks new to the rookie team, the group claimed three wins and five podiums that year. The 2011 season saw the CTSCC visit two new tracks – Road America and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca – and in typical Rum Bum fashion, the team wasted no time in getting up to speed. Rum Bum Racing not only claimed the pole at Road America but also went on to stand on the podium in third. The team scored another podium with a third place result in its first-ever visit to Laguna Seca.

And as Rum Bum Racing travels to Texas, the defending champions are ready to carry the positive podium momentum from Daytona into this weekend’s race. After starting fifth in the season-opening event, a series of setbacks saw the No. 13 Porsche fall all the way to 34th position only to battle back to finish second through the combined efforts of crew chief Joe Varde’s shrewd strategy, quick pit work from the Rum Bum crew, and the superb driving talents of Longhi and Plumb.

“For us, as a team we just don’t get down,” said Longhi, who found himself spun from leading the race in Daytona. “Things happen – we got knocked back to last place and came back twice essentially. We never give up and keep coming back. For this weekend, it’s exciting for us to be going to a new circuit, especially one that is as remarkable as this. We had a very productive test there that hopefully will translate into another good weekend for the team.”

Rum Bum Racing tested the No. 13 Porsche machine at the 20-turn Texas track in December with both Longhi and Plumb giving the first-time facility rave reviews.

“Circuit of the Americas is a spectacular facility – it is really like no other place I’ve seen,” said Plumb. “The Formula 1 race here had some of the best racing I’ve ever seen. The track is configured so it has many passing zones and plenty of room so it should be another typical exciting Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race. We got the season off on the right foot at Daytona, and our main focus is to just keep that momentum going as the season picks up.”

The event kicks off with a promoter test day on Thursday, February 28. Official practice and qualifying will take place on Friday ahead of the 2.5-hour race on Saturday which is set to begin at 11:00 AM (ET).

Live timing and scoring can be followed at www.grand-am.com. SPEED will broadcast the event Saturday, March 9 at 4:00 PM (ET).

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Orlando, Fla. (27 February 2013) – The GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series (CTSCC) has traveled to many diverse tracks around the country and this weekend will make its debut at the new state-of-the-art Circuit of the Americas. Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing is eager to return to race action for the highly anticipated Round 2 of the 2013 championship held at the 3.4-mile road course located just outside of Austin, Texas as the team looks to generate maximum points toward its GRAND-AM Championship defense.

The post Rum Bum Racing Shines in Rolex 24 Debut appeared first on Rum Bum Racing.

Daytona Beach, Fla. (27 January 2013) In its relatively short history, Rum Bum Racing has shown that when it decides to do something, it usually happens.

So for Rum Bum Racing’s many fans and those who follow the sport, it was hardly any surprise that in the team’s first-ever entry into the brutal Rolex 24 At Daytona, the No. 13 Rum Bum Racing with Audi Sport customer racing Audi R8 GRAND AM was doing battle for the top step on the podium in the closing moments of the race.

Daytona Beach, Fla. (25 January 2013) – When 2012 GRAND-AM Champions Rum Bum Racing first debuted in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge in 2010, the team’s main goal was to win. And it took but one race for them to meet that goal as the team raced to victory in their debut at Daytona International Speedway with drivers Gian Bacardi and Matt Plumb.

Rum Bum Racing backed their strength on the Daytona banking up once again in 2011 when Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi combined to score back-to-back wins at the “World Center of Racing” for Luis Bacardi’s team.

Daytona Beach, Fla. (24 January 2013) – The No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche piloted by Nick Longhi and Matt Plumb will start from the sixth position in tomorrow’s GRAND-AM 200 event at Daytona International Speedway as the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series kicks off its 2013 season. And while fans of the championship-winning Rum Bum team might be more accustomed to seeing the No. 13 even closer to the front, the third row starting position doesn’t discourage the team from anticipating a strong run on Friday after the qualifying session was cut drastically short.

[caption id="attachment_1059" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Rum Bum Racing Set For Championship Defense and Rolex Debut[/caption]

Orlando, Fla. (21 January) – Luis Bacardi’s Rum Bum Racing will kick off the 2013 race season at Daytona International Speedway this weekend as the defending GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Team Champions, with Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi once again set to join forces in the No. 13 Porsche.

The team, which closed out the 2012 season at Lime Rock Park with its fifth race win of the year, will also be embarking on a new opportunity by making their first Rolex Series start as Rum Bum Racing teams with Audi Sport customer racing in the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Plumb will drive alongside Audi Sport drivers Frank Biela, Christopher Haase and GT1 World Champion Markus Winkelhock in the No. 13 Audi R8 GRAND-AM.

Daytona Beach, Fla. (17 January 2013) –Rum Bum Racing is taking on a brand new challenge, but the GRAND-AM Champions already seem to have the early lead as the team has released stunning images of the No. 13 Rum Bum Bum Racing Audi R8 GRAND-AM ahead of the team’s official debut next week with Audi Sport customer racing.

Rum Bum Racing, which won its first-ever GRAND-AM race at Daytona International Speedway in 2010 with drivers Gian Bacardi and Matt Plumb, will eagerly seek the next trophy from the “World Center of Racing” when Matt Plumb is joined by Audi Sport drivers Frank Biela, Christopher Haase and Markus Winkelhock for the twice around the clock classic next weekend (LIVE, SPEED starting 3:00 PM ET Saturday).

Daytona Beach, Fla. (6 January 2013) – Looking to build on the team’s 2012 Championship-winning effort with a strong start to 2013, Rum Bum Racing with Audi Sport customer racing made its GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series debut with the No. 13 Audi R8 GRAND-AM at the Roar Before the 24 test days at Daytona International Speedway over the weekend.

After some tireless effort from the Joe Varde-led Rum Bum Racing crew through the holiday season, the team impressed in the organization’s first official laps on the 3.56-mile speedway road course as Rolex Series competitors.  Team Manager Matt Plumb was joined by Audi Sport drivers Frank Biela, Christopher Haase and GT1 World Champion Markus Winkelhock for the three-day test.