Nic Jönsson here again! After having been away in Europe for the past week on racing duties and competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where we finished 3rd in the GT2 class, I'm very happy that my dad came to the race and hung out with me for the week. Unfortunately, he does not get to go to a lot of races every year since he and my mom still live in Sweden and work full time. In the past, when I was still racing in Europe, he never missed one of my races so it was great to have him around at Le Mans...especially with Father's Day coming up this weekend. Being a Father myself now, as much as I love my job and feel very fortunate to drive race cars for a living, I am very happy to be home with my family again, even if it's just for 32 hours. I am now off to the race in Mid-Ohio to race the Krohn Proto-Auto Lola and the Kinetic BMW GS cars again.
Mid-Ohio is one of the oldest sports car tracks in the country and always offers great, hard wheel-to-wheel racing. This track has a lot of elevation changes with long straights into hard braking zones with good opportunities to pass. The track also offers high to medium speed corners with a few hairpins and off-camber corners. The challenge here is to find a good aero balance where you have enough downforce for the fast- to medium-speed corners without giving up too much straight-line speed. The mechanical grip here is very important since you need to keep the wheels planted on the surface coming over all the hills. The average speed is not very high but it's extremely important to get off the corners well.
This track has a lot more grip now than it used to. The track was repaved 2 years ago and that made it completely different from a grip level standpoint along with tire wear. This confused us a little last year when it came to tire wear. We ran over 100 laps on one set of tires in testing before we put new tires on and this just gave us a few tenths of a second in lap time. If you were to do the same thing at a place like Watkins Glen, for example, you would see at least 1 ½ improvement in lap time after you put that many laps on a set of tires. So I'm very curious to see if another year on the pavement is going to change the wear on the tires. Another factor to keep in mind regarding tires is that we have a new tire for this year. Pirelli claims it's the same tire and that the only difference is that they have gone from a man-made tire to an automated process in the production of the tire...but we know for sure it's a harder compound along with a different size. We also suspect a different construction but have no real proof or confirmation on that. Now, you may think what's the big deal with a different tire? Well, the tire changes the entire handling of the car. If you have a tire that is harder, larger and also of different construction, this means you're changing the dynamics of the car. As you may know, the tire has a spring rate in it. Depending on how stiff the tire wall is (the construction) you have to compensate with springs, anti-roll bars, shock settings, toe, camber, etc. and this could take a long time to figure out.
One of the challenges we at Krohn Racing face is that we are racing a chassis, the Proto-Auto Lola, that no other team is currently running. Since there is a very limited testing allowed in Grand-Am, it takes much longer for us to collect the data needed to find that ultimate set-up for our car at the different tracks we race on. On the flip side, we are very fortunate to have a very knowledgeable and experienced engineering staff that has done a fantastic job getting the car to where it is today. With hard work and determination, we're improving with every race. Well, I'll let you go and enjoy the race this weekend.
To all the Fathers out there, have a great Father's Day weekend!
Your friend, Nic
