Millville: Matt Plumb qualifying report

Plumb On The Pace in New Jersey Qualifying

(Millville, NJ) 30 August 2008-- Rumbumracing.com switched up the team qualifying strategy on Saturday at New Jersey Motorsports Park's Thunderbolt Raceway as Matt Plumb was tagged for qualifying duty in the No. 7 Rumbum.com BMW-powered Riley machine as the Rolex Sports Car Series set the stage for Sunday's Supercar Life 250 race with a 15-minute qualifying session.

Plumb, who shares the No. 7 machine with co-driver Gene Sigal, used his previous track knowledge at the brand-new facility in Millville New Jersey to post a 1:12.529-second lap on the 2.25-mile natural terrain road course to score a spot on the third row as he took sixth on the grid.

"Considering that the promoter test day was cancelled on Thursday and that we had some motor problems that kept us from really getting a read on the track and working on our set-up, this is a pretty good start for us," said Plumb, who ran at the track previously in his role as a lead pro for Supercar Life. "I've got some laps under my belt here at this track, but this was the first time I'd seen these corners at full speed."

The 15-minute qualifying session marked the debut for Rolex Series qualifying being carried live on Speedtv.com, and Plumb gave the cameras something compelling to follow as he emerged from a full 360 degree spin with the Riley pointed forward in the later sections of the track.

"I just got a little wide, and then just got into a tank slapper there and it came around on me, but I was fully committed and went hard to throttle and managed to come out of the spin perfectly facing forward and then just went back in to gear and kept going. I'm happy that it ended up like that, but it ended up killing my tires so I wasn't able to post any faster laps later in the session unfortunately."

The qualifying appearance has Plumb focused on his race start, as the New Jersey track has only one racing lane, and the traffic is sure to be an issue. Plumb has led the previous (Daytona and Watkins Glen) races that he has qualified for.

"The team is working on our strategy so hopefully we can get a good start in the race and move up quickly," said Plumb, who will also race in the KONI Challenge event on Sunday morning. "We've had several little problems in the last few races, so we just want to get a full race distance without any issues to bring home a good result with this rumbumnracing.com Riley. We've shown we have the speed over one lap, but we just need to have some luck over the full race distance."

-credit: plumbracing.com