Krohn Racing - Rolex 24 At Daytona - Sunday Final Race Report

Daytona January 25, 2009: Bad news befell the Krohn Racing team for the second time during the 2009 running of the Rolex 24 At Daytona race when the No. 75 Krohn Racing Ford Lola retired just after the 13-hour mark from the twice-around-the-clock enduro. Failure of an engine component was identified as the issue as Roush-Yates Engines personnel continue to do additional research to prevent future problems.

DAVID BROWN, Team Manager, Krohn Racing:

“The information that we have received from our engine tuner is that we suffered the same failure in the No. 75 car as we suffered earlier in the No. 76 car, as well as, we believe now, the 60, 6 and 51 cars, which is a failure of an engine component. It requires the removal of the engine, stripping of the front of the engine, stripping the front of the spare engine, taking the old part out of that and put that in the engine of the car. By the time we’ve done that, we will be in exactly the same position that we are now if we don’t run again. Therefore, there is no point in running. Very, very disappointing though it is, this is the end of our 24 Hours of Daytona.”

JOHN MADDOX, Manager CAMMER Engine Program, Roush-Yates Engines:

“Evidently we’ve got a bad batch of manufactured parts and showed poorly on the race track. There is a part that we purchased that was manufactured from another supplier that has let us down. We will be checking into it and resolving the issue.”

JEFF HAZELL, CEO Proto-Auto Lola:

“Everyone on the team is very disappointed. Every person on this program has put in tremendous amount of work focusing on this race for many months. The cars are fast and reliable. The drivers were performing to the plan, but this is motorsport and it is pure engineering at the sharp end. The engine and the car have literally thousands of components and, in this case, one small component has failed and it is in a location in the engine that cannot be rectified. So we have to take the pain of this and work through it and come back and win some races.

Until the engines failed, the cars had run faultlessly. They had required nothing other than tires and brake pads and fuel, and that was it. They ran faultlessly. Tracy’s car ran 12 to 13 hours, something like that. The other car ran over six hours. That’s what we expected from all the testing. It’s disappointing actually.”

ERIC VAN DE POELE, Driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Ford Lola:

"The car was perfect when I restarted for my stint. We changed the aero a little bit for the car. I was right behind the Ganassi car and I was going to pass it on the straight. It would have been the first time in two years. It would have been perfect. When I moved away to make the pass, the engine just shut off. I had just enough time to dive into the pits and to coast to the garage. That’s it. It is very disappointing.”

(Quote after 11-hour mark driver change….) OLIVER GAVIN, Driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Ford Lola:

“The race has been very eventful I would say for all of us here on the Krohn team. I mean, it is by no means ideal. Coming into this race I think everybody thought we had everything as prepared as possible…and we did. That’s one of the characteristics of this race, you can never predict what is going to happen. A little bit of contact here and there with our car and a couple of off-courses and all of a sudden we are 6 or 8 laps back. The car doesn’t seem as consistent as it did in the practice and qualifying, but that often happens here. I’m really sorry about the 76 car because that was running quite well and I feel very sorry for those guys after they prepared the car so well.

I had a good last stint in the car. I got over the carbon monoxide issues I had on my first stint. I felt pretty comfortable in the car. We’ve still got a few issues. We’re still not fast on the straights but I think we can get some of that back. We’ve just got to keep going and stay out of trouble and do nothing crazy. I think we are still seven laps back from the lead car. There is still a long, long way to go.”