Winter Testing Successfully Completed - Team Moves On To Round 1
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY, FL - January 22, 2009 - Turner Motorsport began the 2009 racing season with winter testing and shakedown of the teams three BMW racing cars. The test was a critical trial run ahead of the official Koni Sports Car Challenge season-opener at Daytona Raceway this Friday and the on-track debut of the new E90-chassis 328i that the team built over the winter break.
TMS Racing Director Shawn Passen thought the E90s first laps went well: This was the second E90 car that we built and it went better than we were expecting. Our crew did a very good job in prepping the car so we had very few of the teething problems that new cars invariably have. We also rebuilt our two E46 M3s from the ground-up and those have been running well.
Turner Motorsport president, team owner, and driver Will Turner: We put all of our drivers into the E90 for some laps and they all commented on how similar the chassis feel was to the E46 racecars. The new car has good brakes, neutral handling, and provides excellent driver feedback - all similar to the old car. Its a new car though so theres some work to be done to bring it up to our usual standards.
All of the cars are built and prepped at Turner Motorsports tuning shops in Massachusetts. All three cars are running the series-mandated Koni 2800-series adjustable shocks. Turner Motorsport components can be found throughout each car along with H&R Springs and StopTech Brakes. Turner Motorsport develops and sells each of their racing components to other racing teams and individual racers.
Will Turner: We put a lot of time into these cars in the off-season. Our on-track test days combined with several days spent on a shaker rig have given us a lot of data. Were ready to take on Daytona a track that usually favors the high horsepower cars but were ready to get the season underway and compete for another Championship.