Hi, Nic Jonsson here! I hope all of you have had a good week and enjoying nice weather. Here in Atlanta, we have had a beautiful summer weekend. There has not been any racing last week and that felt a little unusual. At Kinetic Motorsports, we have been getting geared up for the Watkins Glen, KONI Challenge race where we are running three -BMW E46's this weekend. We decided to get the E92 V8 BMW M3 sorted out before taking it to the Glen. It's always really hard when developing a new car during a race weekend and have very limited track time. It leaves you with no real time to adjust during the session. Since we have the E46's to run, we made the decision to focus on those cars for the next few events. In the meantime, we'll do testing away from a race weekend with the E92. The Kinetic team has been doing really well the last few race events and the entire team is excited about the Watkins Glen race.

I'm also traveling to the Glen with our Krohn Racing "GREEN" hat on where we are racing the 6 hour race in the Rolex series on Saturday afternoon. This event is always fun! Some teams decide to bring a 3rd driver in as a "relief" driver. We at Krohn have decided to stay with just Ricardo and I since 3 hours in the car is not too bad...unless of course it gets really hot. However, with all the nice devices we have these days such as cooling suits and helmet blowers; we will be fine even if the heat is a bit extreme. Another reason we decided to stay with just the two of us is the pit stops with the driver changes and having to make sure everyone fits properly in the car. We have been very fortunate in the past to always have a great 3rd driver for longer races such 24 hours of Daytona, etc., but for races less than 10-12 hours, for us it's just not worth doing.

After having had a very disappointing race at Laguna Seca, we have now recharged our batteries and are looking ahead to the Glen with great anticipation. The team has done a lot of work to get the most out of our Proto Auto Lola Ford powered car and we hope to prove that this weekend at one of the most exciting and driver friendly race tracks in the country.

The Glen has extensive heritage dating back 30 plus years with F1 competing there. The flow and all the challenges on this track make it fun to drive. It offers high speed, slow speed, sweeping and elevated corners throughout the circuit. There are several great passing zones under hard braking and high speed places. It's very important to find that balance between mechanical and aero dynamic grip here since aero grip under braking and cornering will hurt you going down the straight away. You really need to get enough aero on the car so you can sleep stream/ draft down the straight on the car in front and be able to take advantage of that in the next braking zone. As we all know, it's one thing to be able to put a fast lap in running on your own but a completely different scenario to run in traffic and take advantage of that. On your own, you can maintain the momentum much easier with no interruptions or visibility issues to hit your marks every corner. The aero will be much more predictable as well since you don't have any "dirty" air flow from the car in front. In this case, you will rely more on your mechanical grip which is the grip that the suspension will supply you with.

Well, I better get going, have packed my bags and plan on being on the road racing for the next three weeks. After the Glen, I head to Europe for the 24 Hours of Le Mans then back to the States for Mid-Ohio...I'll keep you posted! Please stay tuned for future weekly blogs.

Your friend, Nic