Team TGM Takes The Plunge Into GS Competition

Subtitle:Giovanis, Murry Debut New Porsche At Sebring

For the past 10 seasons, Team TGM has been competing in the Street Tuner (ST) class of the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, battling in door-to-door traffic while keeping an eye out for the faster Grand Sport (GS) cars.

This year, the roles will reverse. Team TGM purchased a pair of new Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsports, enabling drivers Ted Giovanis and David Murry to step up to the elite GS category.

“It is a big step moving up a class, because the cars are faster,” said Giovanis, who finished a career-best second in ST at Sebring last year. “It’s going to be different when you go out there on the track with slower cars. It will certainly be a challenge going through traffic with the speed differential.”

Giovanis is not worried about stepping into a faster car.

“For me, it’s not a super-duper step, because we have a Porsche Cup car that I drive, which is faster than these cars and have more downforce,” Giovanis added. “For me personally, I’ve had a progression of driving different types of cars. This car is different; the brakes are better, and you go faster than the cars I’ve raced in ST.”

The Maryland driver explained that while racing in ST, it’s important to pay attention to who was coming up from behind, checking to see if faster GS traffic was approaching. Now, he will be the one working his way through the slower cars.

“All of the GS drivers have to rely on the ST drivers that they’re coming up on, knowing that they are there, or having their crews tell them when faster cars are approaching,” Giovanis said. “It will be interesting learning racing the traffic in that respect.”

Giovanis opened 2015 with a career-best third at Daytona and did even better at Sebring in a BMW 328i. From that point, though, bad luck hit the team, dropping Giovanis and Murry from title contention.

He’s looking that a return to Sebring will get the team back to the podium.

“I had never been to Sebring prior to 2013,” Giovanis said. “It’s a nice track. A little bumpy, and the corners are very complex with the changes to the tarmac with the different surfaces. It was built on an airport, and in some corners – like Turn 13 – where you get grip in the middle part of the corner where there’s a change from the runway to a taxiway. You gain grip and then lose it in some of the turns. It’s a challenge in that respect. There are good passing areas. It’s a cool track, and I liked it the first time I went there.”

In fact, Sebring was the first place that the Braselton, Georgia-based team took its new Clubsports.

“We tested the new Clubsport at both Sebring and Road Atlanta, and once you make some adjustments to it, it will be a decent-running car,” Giovanis said. “We won’t know until we get more hours on the track whether it will be on the top step of the podium, but it’s in the right direction. We finished second there last year, and we’d be thrilled if we could replicate that finish this weekend.”

Murry has also enjoyed success at Sebring. He had a five-race winning streak in the fastest class of IMSA Firestone Firehawk Endurance Championship at the circuit in the mid-1990s, including winning races of six and 12 hours when the series raced there twice annually.