“our new power plant for the 09’ season”

Hi Nic here again! Well we at Krohn Racing just kicked of the 09’ season this past week. I traveled to Daytona for a 3 day test last Monday through Wednesday. We had a successful test with a lot of valuable data collected in order to get ready for the first race of the season, the Rolex 24 hour race. We managed to log over 1,700 miles in 3 days as our main focus was to add miles on the car since we had not raced our Proto Auto Lola in a 24 hour race before. We know the car has been reliable in the sprint races but we had no idea for endurance distances. We were able to get some really good data for the really important things in a 24 hour race such as brake wear, cooling for engine gear box, etc. We also had the opportunity to run our new power plant for the 09’ season…we are switching to Ford engines. Our primary reason is that Pontiac announced they will not be having any track support for the 09’ season. Since we have our new chassis, we need the hands on track support needed to develop these cars. As you all know, there are several different engine options we could have gone with but since we raced with Ford engines two years ago we already had a relationship with John Maddox and the Roush Yates engines. For us, it really made most sense to move forward with Ford.

I believe this coming season in the Rolex series is going to be the most competitive yet. With new top teams coming into the series like Penske Racing and Forsythe, our goal is to prepare as best as possible to compete at the top from the start of the season and hopefully give everyone a run for their money and the Championship.

After the Rolex test came to an end this past week, I stayed for a couple of days to work with my Kinetic Motorsports team who had several clients racing in the PBOC event at Daytona. Also, my Kinetic partner, Russell and client, Lee Davis ran a 2 hour race on Friday and two- 30 minute sprint races on Saturday in the Kinetic BMW M3 GS car to prepare and gain seat time for the upcoming 09’ season. The two of them will be moving up from the ST class to the bigger and faster GS class in the KONI Challenge.

I left Friday early afternoon to get home and celebrate Halloween with my family. I went trick or treating with Max (my 15 month old son) who was dressed as Mickey Mouse and was very cute. Even though he’s too young to eat candy, I thought he needed the experience and it was a lot of fun. I probably had as much fun as he did…when I grow up in Sweden we did not have Halloween so I never had the opportunity to experience this tradition. I can just imagine how exciting it must be as a kid to be able to run around and get free candy all night…wow life is good! I also have a dog (Hugo) who is not very excited about Halloween at all. Hugo would go totally crazy for some costumes and scare the crap out of some kids…we had a great time!

The progress of our new BMW V8 M3 here at Kinetic has come a long way. It’s actually starting to look like a race car now and I can’t wait to shake it down in another few weeks. It’s always fun to build new cars, but since this is on a new model and a new generation that no one has ever raced or built before, makes it even more exciting because you get to do everything from scratch. Of course that is good and bad since you are the first one to find out about the weak links as well as the real strength’s of the car. But that’s all part of this industry and I think that’s what makes it so interesting and exciting. Every day is different and you can never predict what’s behind the next corner.
Well it’s time for me to run, until next week, take care.

Your friend, Nic