Krohn Racing 6 Hour Report

Sebring, March 19, 2011: Krohn Racing team owner/driver Tracy W. Krohn started the 59th Annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida race in the No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari 430 GT. Co-driver Nic Jönsson qualified the car second in class (GTE-Am) and 36th overall.

It has been a relatively uneventful drive through the first half of the once-around-the-clock classic Sebring race for the Krohn crew. Tracy Krohn drove until the second caution period, approximately one hour and 45 minutes into the race, where he handed the Prancing Horse over to Italian Michele Rugolo. The 29-year-old Italian drove for approximately one hour and twenty minutes, until past 1:30 p.m. Nic Jönsson took the wheel for nearly two hours before Krohn was strapped back in the cockpit. The Krohn Racing team has been diligently making quick and efficient pit stops and being mindful of the combined ILMC/ALMS rules to prevent penalty calls for pit stop infractions, which are catching many teams out in today’s race.

QUOTES: TRACY W. KROHN, Krohn Racing Team Owner/Driver, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari 430 GTE Am: “My stint was actually pretty uneventful. I had assumed it would be a lot more bottleneck traffic but it was pretty uneventful. After a few laps there was some debris on the track, which unfortunately I picked up on the bottom of the car and it ended up in one of the wheel wells. That made it more difficult to stop. Every time I hit the brakes hard, I’d get a lot of tire chatter so the car never did feel right on the tires I had and probably a lot of that was because of the debris we picked up which upset the airflow across the bottom of the car. Other than that, the car was pretty good. Once we changed tires it got better. I was very conservative in my second stint, after the pit stop and it was much more eventful with traffic, pieces of car coming off and things like that. Although I got a little bit conservative we came through and changed drivers to Michele. He did a great job.”

NIC JONSSON, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari 430 GTE Am: “I had a pretty good, uneventful stint and just tried to stay out of trouble. I didn’t really get into any battles with any of the GT cars. The first part of the stint was really good and opened up a big gap on the second place car in class. I was about to lap them and put them a lap down when the caution came out so we are still on the same lap. We got a huge push in the car so we decided to stay on the same tire and double stint them. After the restart we picked up a little pick-up (of track rubber) and it took us three or four laps to get rid of that. The car came back and ran pretty consistently. So far it’s going good for the #57 Krohn Racing NXG Ferrari. Hopefully we’ll carry on that way.”

MICHELE RUGOLO, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari 430 GTE Am: “I got in the car after about one hour and 30 minutes into the race under a safety car situation. After one lap on the restart, there was a huge crash in the last corner. So immediately again the safety car came out. After that restart, I started pushing and have a good feeling with the car and my times are getting better. I did a lap time of 205.2, I think. Basically, I’m pretty happy because I’m pretty consistent. I could repeat my lap times many times. I could do better but every lap I have traffic, you need to overtake another car or another car is overtaking you. I had some troubles during the first laps with GTC cars because they are slow in the corner and very fast on the straight, so it’s pretty difficult to overtake them. After my stint we are leading and Nic is doing a good job. I hope Nic can put one lap between us and the others. We will just do lap by lap because this is a very long race so you have to think about the final result but you need to absolutely be focused on the next lap”