Krohn Racing Post-Six Hours at the Glen Race Report
Krohn Racing Post-Six Hours at the Glen Race Report The Sahlen’s Six Hours at the Glen race at Watkins Glen International in Watkins Glen, New York produced the best finish of the season to date for Krohn Racing team owner/driver Tracy Krohn and teammate Nic Jönsson with their fifth-place finish in the No. 76 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley. Colin Braun and Max Papis took their No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley to a 12th-place finish in the six hour race. The polesitting No. 99 Gainsco Pontiac Riley of Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty were the first repeat winners of the 2007 Grand-Am Daytona Prototype races. Runner-up was the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Lexus Riley of points leader Scott Pruett and teammate Memo Rojas. Third place went to the No. 10 SunTrust Pontiac Riley of Wayne Taylor, Max Angelelli and Jonathan Cochet. Tracy W. Krohn, team owner/driver, No. 76 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley: “It was a good day. Nic did a great job. It was really fun. We had a problem with the clutch starting off. The clutch never functioned properly so we had a lot of problems getting in and out of the pits. Irrespective of that I was pleased. I didn’t spend very much time in the car today compared to Nic, but it was a good day. The car was pretty loose when I was running, but they made a change and Nic said it made a huge difference. The last part of race I think Nic was the quickest car out there. I thought overall it was a great effort. Colin had a little bad luck and had some contact there at the end of the race; otherwise I think we would have had two Top Five cars. The Gainsco car, the No. 99, was just clearly superior to everyone so it was fun to watch that as well. Nic did a spectacular job. He was awesome…just really, really good. He got out of the car saying he could run another couple of hours. He’s going to get a chance to do just that this coming week at Le Mans.�?? Nic Jönsson, driver, No. 76 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley: “We worked pretty hard to get a very good race car that we could also qualify. We qualified sixth and we were pleased with that because we didn’t do anything special for qualifying, just using the race car set-up. We knew we had a good race car. Then in the warm-up, something happened to the clutch. We didn’t have a clutch from the very beginning and that made it tough and very nervous, especially being able to get going from the grid. Every pit stop the guys had to push me and I had to rev it up and throw it into gear. Any gain we made, we lost because we had to get pushed out. That was kind of disappointing. We kept our heads cool and decided not to race anybody hard until after the final pit stop, which we did. We showed that we had a very good car and ended up fifth, which I was very pleased, especially with the circumstances. I think we had a car fast enough to be on the podium today if we had not had the clutch issue. But a fifth place finish is a good result for us. I’m very pleased and looking forward to Le Mans this weekend and going to Mid-Ohio in a couple of weeks. We know we will have a good car for Mid-Ohio too because we were testing there a couple of weeks ago. I’m very pleased with today. “ Max Papis, driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley: “I felt we did everything to put ourselves in place to the best we could. The guys did awesome pit stops all the time. We were able to climb up to third position. We knew it would have been very difficult to challenge against the No. 99 car and the No. 01 car on fuel and speed. We could have been right there with them in the long run. Unfortunately, it looks like things didn’t turn out exactly the way we wanted in the second part of the race. That’s racing. At the same time, it was a great team result because Nic and Tracy were able to finish in the Top Five, so it was a great satisfaction for them. In the one way I’m not so happy for our performance and the other I am happy for the team. We ran according to plan except the last couple of hours.�?? Colin Braun, driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley: “I think we had quite a good car at the very start. In my first stint I was patient. Then Max got in the car and stayed where we were. We waited for the cars to settle in and we were going to really start racing for it when it got to about an hour to go. It all went pretty good until I got up along a GT car and a DP car was on the outside. He came across my car and we both spun and it damaged the toe link on my car. That hurt the performance. Then we did our last pit stop and came out in 13th and just had to stay where we were because we knew we had a damaged car. Unfortunately, I made that mistake in trying to pass and then I had to kind of ride around from there. I didn’t want to make matters any worst than they were. I wanted to bring it home, so had to take the 12th place finish. Jeff Hazell, Krohn Racing Team Manager: “I think that the 76 car did exceptionally well. It played the game fantastically to be the lucky car where they award the first car that is a lap down to get the lap back. They played that extremely well. Nic drove very well, at the beginning of the race and at the end of the race. He did a great job. Tracy did some solid laps as well. We did have a problem with the clutch through the race that lost some time. But they got fifth out of it and they really could not have done any better. It was very well run by Jeff Braun, the car engineer. “On the 75 car, two things happened – near the end of the race, it got in an incident with another car which affected the front suspension quite badly. A couple of laps later we pitted for fuel and tires and made a mistake. We anticipated we’d need fuel but actually the yellow was so long we didn’t actually need that stop. We lost two places in that stop but more places to other cars that gambled and stayed out. Combined with the fact that the car was damaged, we really could not do much. In fact, we went to from 10th to 12th in the last section of the race. So we are a bit disappointed with that. We should have taken a gamble and didn’t. Perhaps a trip to Vegas would be educational.�?? The No. 75 Krohn Racing duo of Papis and Braun moved into fifth in the Daytona Prototype points championship after six of 14 races this season. Papis and Braun have two podium finishes, a second-place at both VIR and Mexico City, where Braun also captured the pole, and two Top Ten. Krohn and Jönsson have one Top Five and two Top 10 finishes so far this year. The Krohn Racing drivers head to Le Mans, France tonight to compete in the 75th annual running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 16-17. Krohn, Jönsson and Braun will drive the No. 99 Risi Competizione-Krohn Ferrari 430 GT in the LMGT2 class and Papis in the No. 65 Corvette C6-R in the LMGT1 class. Speed TV coverage of Le Mans begins on Saturday, June 16 at 8:30 a.m. ET. The next Grand-Am race, Round 7 of 14, will be the EMCO Gears Classic at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on June 21-24, 2007. The Prototype race will be televised taped delay on Sunday, June 24th at 8:00 p.m. ET on SPEED TV. For more information, please see www.grand-am.com and www.krohnracing.net. # # # 6.09.07 If you wish to be removed from the list, please reply to this release and type “REMOVE�?? in all caps in the subject heading. Thank you. + + + Barbara J. Burns for Krohn RacingBurns Group Unlimited 833 Piedmont Avenue Suite B Atlanta, GA 30308 Ph: 404.873.0772 Fax: 404.873.0661 Cell: 770.329.7134 burnsgroup@aol.com