In the FIA World Endurance Championship endurance events, the emphasis is on teamwork and that extends to qualifying as well as in practice and the race. The format used is that each team must nominate two drivers from each car who must set at least two timed laps during qualifying. The average of the four best lap times (the best two of each driver) will serve as the reference time for establishing the grid.
Nic Jonsson and Maurizio Mediani were tasked with qualifying the Krohn Racing entry, and their best average time was 1:41.625. Only 1.03 seconds separated the entire class!
NIC JONSSON, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari F458 GTE-Am:
"The LMGTE Am class is becoming more and more competitive with a lot of good cars and drivers. We have definitely improved our car throughout the weekend, especially after our last race in Austin where we were far off the pace. The guys have worked really hard to get it better for us but we still have a little bit to go. We're doing some tweaks tonight to see if we can improve it further for the race and we believe we'll be competitive and in the hunt for a podium."
MAURIZIO MEDIANI, No. 57 Krohn Racing Ferrari F458 GTE-Am:
"We wanted to save our tires for the start of the race, as we have to start on the same tires that we qualify on. I don't know if this will be a good idea as the other Ferraris did more laps than us and improved by a few tenths of a second. If it's raining tomorrow they will be correct but if it's fine weather we will be lucky because we saved the tires."
MARK SCHOMANN, Engineer for No.57 Krohn Racing Ferrari 458 Italia GTE-Am:
"Qualifying went better than it looked in fact. Our tires seemed to take a while to come in so we decided to minimize the number of laps on these tires and save them for the race tomorrow."
Krohn Racing Hosts Japanese School Children
Two groups of children visited the Krohn Racing garage Saturday afternoon at Fuji International Speedway. The first group of 30 children came in with Japanese WEC driver Keiko Ihara, about 12 children between ages of 11 and 18 and their parents. They were from the Keiko Ihara Diversity Program and came from several schools from Tokyo and Nagoya.
Team owner/driver Tracy W. Krohn spoke to them about how to succeed in business and drew comparisons between business and racing, including the elements of risk involved in both. They were the top level high school students and had lots of questions for both Tracy and co-driver Nic Jonsson.
A second group of young schoolchildren arrived shortly after the first to the Krohn garage and had their photo taken with the drivers and ask a couple of questions, which they had practiced in English for an hour!
The FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of Fuji race will feature live timing and scoring at live.fiawec.com or catch it on RadioLeMans.com.
The 6 Hours of Fuji race will be broadcast live around the world via live streaming on the FIA World Endurance Championship website, www.fiawec.com and on the ACO website, www.lemans-tv.com. Radio coverage is available on www.radiolemans.com. Worldwide coverage varies. Check your local listing.
