The event was held at the famous Paul Ricard Circuit in the Provence region of France. After a promising improvement in performance in Saturday’s Qualifying session the team approached the race in a quietly confident frame of mind. This mood was reflected in the steady progress up the leader-board by Nic Jönsson in his opening stints of the race in the team’s Nissan-powered Ligier JS P2 prototype. Showing truly competitive pace he handed over driving duties to the Team Owner, Tracy W. Krohn, who maintained the good work of his long-time Swedish driving partner. Tracy managed this despite some issues at his first pit stop that interrupted the good progress of the car but he drove around these problems to hand over the Ligier to the third driver, Olivier Pla. The Frenchman gave his usual sparkling performance behind the wheel, running with the leading pack without a problem, though the time lost early on could not be fully made up.
Tracy W. Krohn, Krohn Racing Team Owner/Driver: “Actually I think we had as good a car as we could, given the limitations we had with the heat today. Unfortunately, when I got in the car, we had a problem with the shoulder belt going over the HANS Device and as I came out of the pits I had a very difficult time getting the car to disengage the Pit Lane Speed Limiter. We think it is because both the Pit Lane Speed Limiter and Full Course Yellow buttons had been pressed and it took a while to get those synced out. It cost us at least half a minute to get that resolved. Once it was fixed the car performed very well and I was pleased with the set up that we had.”
Nic Jönsson, Driver Krohn Racing: “It was a very difficult weekend for us, first off we didn’t test on Wednesday and perhaps with hindsight we should have done. The team did a phenomenal job as always, the Krohn Racing/Greaves Motorsport crew worked wonders. The heat meant we weren’t able to follow the strategy that we wanted to get the most out of the car. This race and in these conditions we just couldn’t do that and we really lost a lot of time. So we had to try and make it home and score some more points for the championship and we managed that. We will go on to Spa next month and we are all really looking forward to that.”
Olivier Pla, Driver Krohn Racing: “Right from the beginning of the weekend we were struggling with handling issues caused by the high temperatures. In the race we had a few problems, some electronic things in the car that cost us a lot of time, nearly two laps, so without these we would have been P4 or P5, which was what we expected, so I am a little disappointed.”
Jeff Glover, Team Manager Krohn Racing: “Well this was not exactly the result that we were expecting and looking for. The car suffered some on track damage which affected the speed and the high ambient temperatures made it difficult to achieve the optimal balance. All in all the drivers and crew and our tire partners, Michelin, did an excellent job and we look forward to regrouping for the next race at Spa next month.”
Lee Penn, Race Engineer Krohn Racing: “Our race today was not as we intended, we have struggled all weekend with the high ambient temperatures that affected our set up. We managed to improve this a lot for the race but it’s still not perfect. Then there were a few mishaps in the first pit stop that cost us some time and also a drive through penalty, all in all it was pretty disappointing. However, the overall pace was OK, good enough for a top five finish, we have learnt a lot and will carry it forward to the next race.”
