The team had a race strategy of getting Team Owner and Driver, Tracy W. Krohn, into the car as soon as the first Full Course Yellow or Safety Car intervention occurred. This happened on the first lap but before the strategy could pay dividends, and five laps into his stint, Tracy was knocked off into a gravel trap by another competitor who received a penalty. The time lost in recovering the car and the repairs required dropped the team’s Nissan-powered Ligier JS P2, running on Michelin tires, out of contention. Despite the best efforts of Tracy and his co-drivers, Nic Jönsson and Olivier Pla, it was too high a mountain to climb in such a competitive field, so it was a matter of getting the car to the Checkered Flag to record a finish, that goal was achieved.
Tracy W. Krohn, Krohn Racing Team Owner: “A tough day for Krohn Racing. We had a couple of unfortunate incidents at the start of the race. We got the car back on track, we were never really able to focus on catching up. We got close on tires at the end which left Oli in a bit of a bind but he drove through the problem. We finished in a credible place at the end. So we’ll come back and get ready for Estoril, fortunately we will have a test day, so we’ll get the tires right and the set up right, and come back and win it.”
Nic Jönsson, Driver Krohn Racing: “We had a pretty good strategy to try and get Tracy in the car as soon as possible if a Full Course Yellow came out. Well it came out on the first lap so it was early enough but unfortunately they went back Green again just as we pitted. So we’re half a lap behind right away and then Tracy got hit by one of the GT cars five laps into his stint. We had to get the car pulled out of the gravel trap and from there on it was just downhill all day. So it was a bad day but we will be back stronger in Estoril in a few weeks.”
Olivier Pla, Driver Krohn Racing: “Overall it was a very bad weekend for us, the pace wasn’t there and we were struggling over the stints for grip. We had some incidents at the beginning of the race which meant we were not in the position that we wanted to be at the end, to get a good result. It’s a big shame but it’s motor sport.”
Jeff Glover, Team Manager Krohn Racing: “This was not really a good day for us or the result we came here for. Our troubles started early when Tracy was knocked off the course by another car but we finished the race. The car and drivers are all in one piece, we’ll regroup and look forward to Estoril.”
Lee Penn, Race Engineer Krohn Racing: “The race was really tough. We made an early call to box Tracy under the Safety Car intervention which would’ve opened us up for what I believe to be a really good race strategy and a good race. Unfortunately we had contact from another car, that was penalized for it, we got the car sorted out and continued . Then there was contact with another car at Les Combes, the fastest part of the track and we struggled from there on in.”
