Rocco Marciello - RMP Competizione

Rossa Veloce - RMP Competizione

I first met Rocco Marciello and Mike Delle Donne back in 2010 when they were running a pair of BMW 330i cars in the Canadian Touring Car Championship. It was odd for two proud racers of Italian extraction to be fans of BMWs but they are. Mind you Rocco’s car of choice for Ontario regional events is a Triumph TR8 that he has used to good effect and won the 2012-13 and 2015 GT1 CASC GT Sprints Championship. The duo had some issues with reliability that made them withdraw from the series after a few years but they took the off time to sort them out and in 2016 they came back with a vengeance. With new engines, suspensions, modifications and tuning under the belt, the pair of 2006 BMW 325i’s equipped with BMW’s N52 motors showed they were ready for the new season after a hugely successful test at Shannonvile on the Fabi circuit. The CTCC opener at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (Mosport) vindicated at the hard work that was put in with the cars running well and being reliable all weekend, the weekend turned out to be a great success with Michael DelleDonne finishing on the podium taking a stellar third place out of an impressive thirty cars that raced over the weekend. A week later and it was off to Calabogie and the second round of the CTCC. as well as being a double header with the GT Sprints series. Confident in the BMWs new found reliability Marciello and DelleDonne decided to run the cars in both series. Lap times dropped and both cars showed they were capable of running at the front of the field. The cars again proved to be reliable and with over four hours of racing Marciello finished the weekend with three podium finishes. By then the North American market and racing scene had started to talk about BMW’s one make championship for the M235iR that had been pressed into service by Classic Motorsports and was the car to beat in the Pirelli World Challenge’s TC class. When talking about the M235iR with Marciello you can see he is excited about racing the car in 2017. I got to climb all over the car and check out some of the super trick things that BMW built into the car that makes it so

Above: Notice the second brake reservoir adding to the brake fluid capacity when running endurance races

Below: Low maintenance powerplant for affordable racing

Below: All standard M235iR except for the Motec dash

suitable for a multitude of races. Being originally created for an endurance racer BMW Motorsport put a lot of thought into what was really required to make the car super competitive and low maintenance. The PFC brake calipers have HUGE pads in them to ensure long intervals between changes. When the pads wear down during a race the second brake reservoir makes sure there will be no shortage of brake fluid with the need to position the pads closer to the brake rotor. An inbuilt jack system is mounted to the chassis to help reduce tire change times. They really have thought of it all!