Grand-Am

SCC: Laguna Seca: Matt Bell preview

Boris to Team with Bell for Turner Motorsport Bell's looking forward to home town track debut with new co-driver Amesbury, MA (8 May 2009) - Matt Bell shot out of a cannon to start the 2009 Grand-Am KONI Sports Car Challenge season, taking a ...

Edited: Dec 21, 2009, 5:24 AM

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Boris to Team with Bell for Turner Motorsport
Bell's looking forward to home town track debut with new co-driver

Amesbury, MA (8 May 2009) - Matt Bell shot out of a cannon to start the 2009 Grand-Am KONI Sports Car Challenge season, taking a dramatic race victory at Daytona International Speedway in his debut GS Class appearance, sharing the victory with co-driver Bill Auberlen in a BMW M3 in their first start together.

He's kept his foot in it ever since, backing up his strong qualifying at Daytona with a pole position at Homestead and then again with another pole in challenging wet conditions at New Jersey Motorsports Park last weekend.

Looking ahead to next weekend's Verizon Festival of Speed for round 4 of the 2009 KONI Challenge championship, the young Los Altos resident is focused on taking yet another trophy at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca as the hometown racer teams with another road racing superstar for Turner Motorsport.

While co-driver Auberlen will be away, piloting the factory BMW in ALMS competition next weekend, Turner Motorsport has tapped into another strong co-driver for Bell as none other than Boris Said has signed on to join Bell for the Laguna weekend. Said has a long and impressive career racing with Turner, having been in Turner Motorsport machinery on the way to scores of victories, podiums, and championship-winning efforts through the years to help the team grow the trophy collection, which will be the goal again on the Monterey peninsula.

Even though the Verizon Festival of Speed is the first Grand-Am KONI Sports Car Challenge race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for Bell, it's far from his first time racing at his home track. In fact, Laguna is the place where everything got started for Bell back in 2002 when he participated in a Skip Barber Racing School before driving in and coaching countless HPDE events.

Bell's BMW passion saw him make his very first BMW Club race start at Laguna Seca, where he scored an impressive 2nd place finish driving Auberlen's retired World Challenge racer in 2007.

With all his experience on the track and the strong momentum heading into the weekend, it's not just the chance to race with Said on his home track that Bell is looking forward to. The Verizon weekend will see him also enjoying a weekend full of friends and family, not to mention visiting many fellow BMW Club members as he looks to power the Turner Motorsport machine back into victory lane.

"I just could never have expected that I'd be getting to drive with Boris here at Laguna Seca, and I cannot wait to get into the Turner car again and see what we can do next weekend!" said Bell. "We know that Turner Motorsport will put a great package together for the M3 here at Laguna. This weekend has been on my calendar for a very long time, and I'm optimistic we can have another strong run. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, but I'm also looking forward to enjoying the weekend as much as I can as well. There are going to be several fellow BMW Club members and friends here not to mention my entire family, so I just want to give everyone something to celebrate!"

"Matt has been doing a great job this year -- he gets the job done, that's for sure," said team owner Will Turner. "I expect big things for this kid. The combo of Boris and Matt at Laguna is one of the strongest in the paddock, and I am expecting good things next weekend."

-credit: sgm

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