Daytona Debut

Hi, Nic Jonsson here again! First of all, I have to apologize for not writing my blogs for a while. Some people are probably happy about that but here we go again!!

The 2010 season is under way with the Rolex 24 hours of Daytona two weeks ago. Congrats to Auto Express Racing!! I raced in both the Continental Tire Series and the Rolex 24.

For the Continental Tire race, my Kinetic Motorsports team had our official debut of the KIA Forte Koup cars in the ST class. We did not have any big hopes since the cars were finished the same day we left for the race. We finished in mid pack with one of the cars and had a small electrical issue with the second car. Both KIA Motors and Kinetic’s were very happy with having one car with no issues. We see this as a long term project and we’re looking forward to the next test and race. The Kinetic crew has done an outstanding job building those KIA Forte cars both from an aesthetic point of view and from a mechanical stand point.

I also had my first race of the year in the KROHN Proto Auto Lola DP’s. We really have been working on reliability to make sure we did not have any extra stops beyond the scheduled stops for tires, fuel and brakes at some point. We never really got the car where we wanted it in practice and that showed in qualifying 9th! This was a little bit of a disappointment but we made a few changes and were pretty confident going into the race. We felt we would be competitive with the great KROHN crew we have along with the experience behind the wheel.

The race started in the most difficult conditions…the skies opened up and we had a huge down pour. It was so bad we actually started under yellow flag conditions for the first 4-6 laps so everyone could get a chance to find their way around. When we got started, the car was performing well. Even though we stayed in 7th place we still felt good and decided to stay put to see how things would pan out. We were the first car to go to slicks, this was a little bit of a dangerous move but the right one for sure. We soon moved up to the front once we got going. Ricardo got out and I got in for the first time. I took it easy and got myself into a rhythm and stayed in the top 4 for my first 2 hours. The second time I got in the car, we were running in 3rd place and I was just in cruising mode. Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, we got hit in turn 5 by a car that was 20 or so laps down already. There are too many drivers that do not pay attention when they are in a pack. This took us out of the race for about 13 laps so we could change the right front suspension. Back on track we found ourselves in 9th place. From there we started to work our way up and ended up with a 4th place finish. We are happy with that considering the incident. Looking forward, we are excited about the next race in Homestead and are hoping for better luck there.

On a personal note, my son Max is growing like a weed. We now have wrestling matches every night that he wins all the time…go figure! We also play “who can get Mommy most upset”…guess who usually wins that one? :)

Have a good one!

Your friend, Nic

Dated 2/4/2010