In the first five hours of the historic once-around-the-clock race, the Krohn Racing Ferrari kept a steady pace with Jönsson in the cockpit for over two hours and through the first caution period. He brought the popular green-and-blue liveried Prancing Horse into the first position in class and was able to turn it over to team owner/driver Tracy W. Krohn as class leader. Krohn continued with a firm pace and had a relatively uneventful stint, other than three caution periods and a brief spin when the car ahead of him made contact with another car. Krohn orchestrated an impressive maneuver to avoid contact and continued on.
Tracy handled over the Ferrari to Michele Rugolo on Lap 110, just before 3:00 p.m. ET, second in class. The young Italian had only been driving for just 30 minutes when he radioed the team to report a problem shifting. He immediately came into the pits where the knowledgeable Krohn crew discovered the paddle shift system had failed and made a lengthy component change. Unfortunately the 25-minute pit stop cost them 12 laps. After completion, Rugolo continued driving.
TRACY W. KROHN, Krohn Racing Team Owner/Driver, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari F458 GTE-Am:
"My stint was quite good. I really felt like I could put it (the car) nearly anywhere. I was just kind of cruising really. I was not pushing hard, not slacking off. I was just cruising and staying in control. The 88 car went by me and I knew he was a lap down but I stayed with him a long time. Then I finally caught him in traffic and then he touched one of the GT cars. I just did everything I could to not hit him. I went off track and it took a few seconds to get the car restarted. After that I got all the pick-up off the tires and the car was right back where it was. I was pretty impressed with the car overall. I think we've got a really good race car."
NIC JONSSON, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari F458 GTE-Am:
"The start was quite wild actually. People were looking like they were running a one-lap race or something in the beginning. I was just hanging back and trying to see how everything was going to sort out in front of me. We got into a rhythm and started to plug away. We were running second for the better part of the first stint and then towards the end the Porsche ran the tires off it and we could pretty easily get by him and pull away. We were able to maintain and pull away a little bit in the second stint. The car is running good. We're trying to be in cruise control now, not trying to do anything crazy and just stay out of trouble. The prototypes are quite aggressive out there, so you need to keep your eye in yours mirrors the whole time. Sometimes you just go three or four seconds slower than you actually can because it's not worth it at this time of the race. Hopefully we can just keep rolling along here now and try to drive a good, clean race. We'll go racing when they're a couple of hours left to go and hopefully we'll have the pace to go up against and challenge
