Saturday, 28 January 2012 11:02

2012 ROLEX 24 at Daytona 6 Hour Race Report

2012 ROLEX 24 at Daytona 6 Hour Race Report The No. 76 Krohn Racing Proto-Auto Lola Ford started from the 12th position on the grid for the 50th annual Rolex 24 at Daytona. Qualifying driver Tracy W. Krohn was the first Krohn driver at the wheel for the 3:30 p.m. ET race start. He drove a clean single stint and turned over the car to Nic Jönsson at the first scheduled pit stop, 43 minutes into the 24-hour race.

Due to numerous cautions, Jönsson drove for two hours and 30 minutes, until 6:45 p.m. He brought the car as high as third position before turning the reigns over to Ricardo Zonta at 6:45 p.m. Zonta had another relatively uneventful stint, other than a caution for a GT car off in the "bus stop".

Zonta pitted at 8:36 p.m. to give the car to Colin Braun. Ten laps into the stint, the Krohn Proto-Auto Lola Ford and the No. 45 Porsche GT3 Cup car came together and caused a right rear tire puncture just before the 9:00 p.m. mark.

Nic Jönsson, driver of the No. 76 Krohn Racing Proto-Auto Lola Ford:
"The Krohn guys did a great job preparing the Proto-Auto Lola. We are a little bit down on the straight-line speed. Our car has more drag on this track than most of the other cars. The new Gen 3 (Generation 3) cars seem to be the fastest on straight-line speed. That's a little bit of a struggle but otherwise the car handles very well and brakes very well. We seem to be able to drive with the Top 5-6-7 cars. It seems like the tires are hanging in there. We just have to keep cruising through the night and see how many are there when the sun comes up tomorrow. Hopefully we can compete with these guys when they have a few hours to go. So far the car runs nice...no issues...flawless. We just have to keep going. At this point the goal is to stay out of trouble and not make mistakes."

"There are too many people out there that shouldn't really be out there in some of the cars. I think they are overwhelmed. It's not that they should not come here but they probably need more experience before they get out there with some of these more experienced guys who are hunting for the victory. But otherwise all the DPs are doing a good job and not doing anything crazy. Everybody is racing fairly and wheel-to-wheel so it's a lot of fun out there. We're having a good run so far."

Ricardo Zonta, driver of the No. 76 Krohn Racing Proto-Auto Lola Ford:
"I started the stint with very old tires because we didn't change the tires when we changed from Nic's stint to mine. With full tanks (of gas) the car was really difficult to drive at the beginning. There was a lot of low grip, from the rears especially. I assume when the fuel load went lower the car improved a little bit on balance. We put new tires after the pit stop and the car was quite okay to keep up with the leaders. It was the same pace as the leaders. The stint was fine. I didn't have any problems. I didn't hit anyone. The laps were clean and very nice. There was a yellow where a GT went off and brought some grass or gravel to the track but apart from that everything was fine."

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