Continential Tire Series - Kinetic BMW Has Rebuilt Car And Learning Curve At Laguna Seca

BUFORD, July 6, 2011: Kinetic Motorsports BMW M3 E92 drivers Jade Buford and Ben Clucas are looking forward to competing on the famous Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca circuit in California, where neither driver has ever raced. They will be racing in the competitive Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series on July 8-9 in the GS class.

After an incident involving multiple cars took out the #33 BMW at the last race at Road America, the Kinetic crew worked diligently to fix the damage to the car and have it ready to go racing this weekend. Clucas, who had a brilliant debut with the team at Road America qualifying third, will again join Buford in the cockpit.

“Laguna is a great track and both drivers should have fun there,” said Russell Smith, owner of Kinetic Motorsports. “We have completely rebuilt the car since its dramatic incident at Road America and we will likely spend the first couple of sessions making sure that the car is functioning correctly. Ben seemed to get up to speed quickly at Road America, a track he had only seen on YouTube before he came out to race it. Yet he qualified the car well and executed a perfect first stint to hand the car over to Jade in fourth spot. If he can repeat that again, we will be pleased. He is a driver of high skill level and plenty of experience. Learning a track for him won’t take long. Jade will be given another good opportunity to showcase his developing talent and Kinetic’s role is to help him achieve his driving goals. The traditionally low grip surface at Laguna Seca that is usually covered in sand will be another experience for Jade to manage. He is fast and consistent and he has the same opportunity to perform well as he has had all this year. I am confident both Ben and Jade will do well at Laguna.”

“I think I will come up to speed pretty quickly at Laguna,” said Jade Buford of Brentwood, Tenn. “I believe I know the areas that I will need to work on because I’ve gotten pretty familiar with it from playing it on iRacing and I know where to expect to have a little trouble. I feel confident that the crew was able to get the car fixed and put us back where we were, so it should be a good race. It will be a good learning experience for all of us and I’m going to work hard to get the most out of the car.”

“I’ve never raced at Laguna, but I’m really looking forward to it,” said Ben Clucas, from Frimley, United Kingdom and joining the team for his second race. “It’s obviously a world famous track and everyone has heard of the corkscrew, so I can’t wait. I just want to try and learn the circuit. Once that’s done, hopefully, I can build on the experience I gained at Road America and see if we can get further up the front. In terms of the BMW, I don’t really have enough experience with the car yet to fully understand what is a good or bad track for the car, but I think we should concentrate on getting better traction in the car on old tires. That’s where I felt we lacked a bit in the race at Road America and potentially something we should look at a bit more for Laguna.”