With the weather conditions changing and the track drying, Exim Bank Team China Porsche made the perfect move to slicks for the final qualifying session. Compared to Nagaro, Zolder has been good to the 911 GT3 R and suits its character white well. In Q1 the team was 5th, Q2 saw them 7th and the gamble paid off with a pole in Q3. Mike Parisy nailed some fast laps with a final 1:33.568 landing them on pole.

“The Porsche has been quite quick here, and the track suits us a little bit more than at the last circuit at Nogaro,” Halliday said. “Mike did a good job to get us through the early stages. The conditions made it pretty difficult to make the calls on tires, and we had to be on our toes. You don’t get a lot of time to make decisions but I think we made the right calls on the set-up and the tires and we just drove it like hell.”

“Everyone in the team helped make the decision, we all just decided at the last minute. It was a bit of a gamble. Sometimes you can take a gamble and it will go the wrong way but today it was definitely the right choice.”

Parisy said victory in this afternoon’s Qualifying Race was definitely on the cards. “Yes, we can be confident going into the race,” the Frenchman said. “A lot depends on the weather of course but we know the car is quick around this circuit and we are ready to win.”

The no8 Porsche 911 GT3 R sister car driven by Benjamin Lariche and Ren Wei was on the bubble in Q2 but ended up 14th in the end.

Youtube: Live streaming and our feature series GT1-LIFE will be available on the GT World Youtube channel. http://www.youtube.com/gt1world Live .timing is also available right here on GT1World.com.

The Qualifying Race is LIVE at 13:45 local (GMT +2) today.

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Despite opening the weekend with a brand new car and a nearly empty notebook, Rum Bum Racing still returned to its winning ways at Barber Motorsports Park in Round 2 of the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge championship.

Drivers Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi combined to run strongly from start to finish and bring the team to victory lane in its Porsche debut.

Longhi opened the event from the fifth position and that strong starting position played a significant role in avoiding the attrition as the 80-car combined class grid staged several multi-car incidents behind the No. 13 Rum Bum Racing Porsche 911. Longhi had a great start to the 2.5-hour race moving into third on the first lap.

“I actually had a pretty good time because I went from fifth to fourth in Turn 1 then from fourth to third in Turn 5 and then it went yellow!” said Longhi of the opening lap. “So I drove around in third place and then on the second restart I was actually pretty proud of myself because I got a good restart but then it went yellow again so I wasn’t able to move up more.”

While circling under caution, Longhi pitted and handed the controls over to Plumb to run to the finish.

As various fuel strategies played out, one thing stayed constant as Plumb ran at the front of the field, leading 39 laps en route to the win. With the unknowns of fuel consumption with the new car already making for some hard-working calculators on the Rum Bum pit box, the race was thrown into further uncertainty as a yellow flag flew with just minutes to go, erasing the gap to the field and setting the stage for a final shoot out. Adding to the drama were the dark ominous clouds as rain started to settle into the area as the field went back to green.

As he’s done so many times before, Plumb kept his cool despite not knowing what the grip level was at each successive corner, with a series of competitors looking to take advantage and snag the top spot. But Plumb held strong, holding off the field to take the seventh win for Rum Bum Racing.

“This is better than our first victory in BMW,” said Plumb of the Barber victory. “The guys worked so hard in such a short amount of time to give me that race car. What a crazy race, right from the beginning. It was stay out of trouble but go as fast as you can. We got a good gap based on our pit strategy and we had to conserve a ton of fuel there at the end. It was getting slippery there at the end but the rear engine Porsche loves greasy conditions and I was able to hold them off.”

“We’re really happy with it, it was a good effort. It’s fantastic,” echoed Longhi. “I want to thank the team for the effort that goes into moving to a completely new car like we did this weekend. The AST shocks were outstanding. This track is very tight, a beautiful place, great fans, we love coming here. We were just trying to conserve the car and keep it in one piece. I could sense right away that we had a really good car. What was happening behind us was mind blowing! On the one hand you feel bad when you see all the wrecks happening and I have to be honest – some of our main competition was wiped out in all those wrecks–but normally in a race like this there will be 10 cars nose to tail, so we had a little bit of breathing room.”

Rum Bum Racing next heads to its home-track of Homestead-Miami Speedway for Round 3 of the championship April 27-28.

SPEED will televise the Barber 200 on April 8 at 12:00 PM (ET).

- Rum Bum Racing

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In the CTSCC qualifying session, Nate Norenberg led the way for the team’s contingent of five ST-class Volkswagens, putting the no. 161 APR VW GTI that he shares with Josh Hurley into sixth on grid.

“It’s great to get such a strong starting position here at Barber,” said Norenberg. “We we started the weekend with the car in pretty good shape, and Josh (Hurley) got the car where it needed to be. It has a happy tail, and I can wag it just enough. With all the traffic, I knew I had to get a quick lap early. It is nice to be up front where we can hopefully stay away from all of the carnage and get a good result for all of our friends and guests that are here supporting APR.”

In the no. 171 APR VW GTI, David Cheng will start the CTSCC race in 26th position, with Hector Guerrero (no. 181 APR VW Jetta GLI), Daniel LaRiva (no. 191 APR VW Jetta GLI) and Juan Alvarez (no. 131 APR Jetta GLI) close behind. Scheduled to co-drive with Alvarez is Alex Popow, who ordinarily competes in the Rolex Sports Car Series’ Daytona Prototype class and is fresh off a class win at the ALMS’ Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring.

Nelson Canache, driving the no. 41 APR Audi S4 that he shares with Ian Baas, qualified 18th in the GS class for tomorrow’s CTSCC race.

Photo: © 2012 Corey Beaman

- APR Motorsport

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The 2012 Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge season started with a bang at Daytona International Speedway on Friday as a three-lap sprint to the finish made for a thrilling finish. In the end Billy Johnson and co-driver Jack Roush Jr. were able to hold off a trio of Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3s to score Roush Performance’s first career win at the 3.56-mile speedway.

Defending ST champion Kinetic Motorsports and drivers Andy Lally and Nic Jonsson maintained the lead with three laps remaining in ST, but i-Moto driver Pierre Kleinubing was able to get by the No. 10 Kia and hold off a last lap charge from Jonsson to give i-Moto its second consecutive class victory by a margin of only 0.021 seconds. Co-driver Jayson Clunie moved the No. 31 Mazda Speed 3 through the field from the 38th starting position in the opening stint.

Charles Putman and Charles Espenlaub finished second in GS in the No. 48 Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3, followed by teammates Bryan Sellers and Mark Boden in the No. 46 Fall-Line M3.

Gregory Liefooghe and David Levine finished third in ST for BimmerWorld Racing.

- Grand-Am | Photos: © 2012 Corey Beaman

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Here’s our fist set of shots from the 50th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona. It has been a great time and after 6+ hours of racing Porsche leads the GT class. Leads swapping, Ferrari’s taking each other out and the Audi R8 GRAND-AMs are getting broken in, literally. However that is not unexpected it is a wonderful site to finally see the Audi R8 in race form here in the U.S.

Head on over and check out the gallery from earlier today. Time to go shoot in the dark!

Photos: © 2012 Corey Beaman

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