Krohn Racing Post-Race Report from Daytona Grand-Am
Krohn Racing Post-Race Report from Brumos Porsche 250 Grand-Am at Daytona Krohn Racing team owner/driver Tracy W. Krohn and teammate Eric van de Poele captured a Top 10 finish in their return to the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series on July 4th at Daytona International Speedway. Krohn started from the 15th position on the grid and got as high as seventh place before turning the car over to his Belgian teammate, van de Poele, who brought home the No. 75 Krohn Racing Ford Lola in the ninth position for the Brumos Porsche 250, a 70-lap, two hour and twenty minute race. The No. 76 Krohn Racing Ford Lola of Nic Jönsson and substitute driver Darren Turner, who filled in for Ricardo Zonta, finished 16th in class, 30th overall. Zonta was competing this weekend in the Nextel Stock Car Championship series in his home country, Brazil. Turner qualified the car and started from the third row, in the sixth position. A footing error on Lap 6 sent Turner on an off-road excursion and caused damage to the Proto-Auto Lola, including replacement of the rear wing. After a lengthy pit stop for the No. 76 Krohn entry, Turner returned to the track five laps down. Jönsson got in on Lap 30 and drove until the last 10 minutes of the race. A heavy vibration caused the team to park the car just five laps from the checkered flag. Tracy W. Krohn, Team Owner/Driver of the No. 75 Krohn Racing Ford Lola: “It was really a pretty good race. I had a little bit of an incident early in the race at Turn 1. I don’t’ know who it was but they nearly knocked me into the tire barrier going into Turn 2. I managed to get the car straight again and kept my eyes forward and just kept running. Going into Turn 1 after the first yellow, I had a little kickback on the brakes and flat spotted a tire, inside left. It vibrated like hell for 20 laps. It was unbelievable! The car was pretty solid. It came off the corners pretty good and held together well. The guys did a good job on the one yellow flag pit stop and we picked up a position there. Basically the car was solid all day. Eric did a really good job keeping the car up on the lead lap and running with some of the top guys. Overall it was a pretty good day and it was nice to get back in the car again.�?? Eric van de Poele, Driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Ford Lola: “I think we had very good strategy. Tracy drove really, really well. He was only one and a half or two seconds off the pace. Really fantastic! When I jumped in the car it was very good. I went to pass the No. 6 car, I think, and after that there was a red Porsche who closed the door in the last moment and hit me on the front right. After that incident my car was a little bit off on the geometry on the front so I had to fight for the entire race to try to keep the pace and to keep my position. I ended up losing two positions at the end when I went from 7th to 9th. But it was a good fight. The car was very reliable, very well prepared and the crew was good together, especially for not all having worked together before. It was a good race.�?? Nic Jönsson, Driver, No. 76 Krohn Racing Ford Lola: “It was a very frustrating day for the No. 76 Krohn Proto-Auto Lola race car. We struggled a little bit off the truck this morning and then we got better for qualifying. We qualified seventh and less than a tenth (of a second) to be third. I think we had a pretty good performance in the car. Again, for some reason in the race, we didn’t have the pace in the first stint. Darren had an unfortunate mishap and broke the rear wing and dropped five laps back. After that we kind of went out. We put a new set of Pirelli tires on and I couldn’t get the car to turn. I ran 49’s (1:49 second laps), five second off the pace. I came in and we put an old set of tires on and we went right on pace. We are very confused. I have no idea what is going on. Then we picked up a huge vibration in the car. It was so bad we got a kick back on the brakes on the front straightaway so we decided to come in and park it because it feel like the engine or gear box was about to come apart.�?? Darren Turner, Driver, No. 76 Krohn Racing Ford Lola: “I didn’t have the best stint in the world. The first couple of laps we just didn’t get the tires up to temperature. I think I dropped a place on the start and then got out-dragged and lost a second spot on the first lap. I thought I would be patient and let the tires come in. On lap 3 everything seemed to be hooked up, I was happy and starting to make some progress on closing in. Then I went to make a move to pass a car in Turn 1 and get a rhythm going. Unfortunately coming in to Turn 5, as I can across to hit the brake, I caught the throttle as well so the car didn’t slow down. It was completely my fault and driver error. I’m very sorry to the team because obviously we lost a chance to have a good result. But I think the car had a good pace and it certainly felt better than it did in January. There have been some big improvements in the car.�?? David Brown, Team Manager/Engineer, Krohn Racing: “We qualified and did quite a lot of changes to the car. We have very low down force here to be competitive on the straights. The car in qualifying was only a couple of tenths off of third place, although we actually qualified 7th. We thought it wasn’t so bad. In the race Darren made a mistake going into Turn 5 and there was quite a bit of damage as a result and we lost five laps repairing it. We decided to continue. We put a fresh set of tires on Nic later in the race and lost about four seconds of lap time for reasons we don’t entirely understand. We pitted just for the tires even though our strategy didn’t require it and went back onto the pace again. That confused us a bit. We did pick up a vibration, which was worsening, so we changed the set of tires again. We put the old set of tires back on to see if that was the cause and it wasn’t. So it looks like we have some sort of chassis related vibration. We parked the car because the vibration was getting so severe we didn’t feel that for 29th position, which was where we were, there wasn’t any point in taking the risk for something going wrong. We look forward to Barber Motorsports Park.�?? Max Angelelli and Brian Frisselle claimed their first victory of the season in the No. 10 SunTrust Ford Dallara. The next Grand-Am race will be the Porsche 250 race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL on July 17-19. For more information, please see www.grand-am.com and www.krohnracing.net. # # # 07.04.2009 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 Racing Burns 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