7-4-2006 - This week in Ford racing

This Week In Ford Racing -- Colin Braun on winning in Grand Am Rolex DP Competition
Tuesday, 04 July 2006

With the help of a solid pit strategy, Krohn Racing’s Colin Braun became the youngest winner in Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series history by co-driving the No. 76 to Victory Lane under the lights at Daytona.  

WITH YOUR WIN THIS PAST WEEK AT DAYTONA, YOU BECAME THE YOUNGEST WIN IN SERIES HISTORY. “To be the youngest is something that is really neat. I don’t want to get too caught up in all that, whenever I go out to race I just want to go out there and win that race whether I’m 17, 15, 13, 30 or 40. I’m always wanting to win and I know that’s the attitude of both Krohn Racing and the Roush-Yates engine guys and luckily we were able to pull it off.”

YOU STARTED SECOND, BUT LOST A FEW SPOTS AT THE START, WHAT HAPPENED? “We started second and we basically had a big freight train of cars underneath me going into Turn 1 and I fell back to fifth or sixth and then we slowly made our way back up and brought the car up into the lead.” 

 YOU WERE ABLE TO SAVE SOME FUEL BEFORE HANDING OVER THE WHEEL TO JORG (BERGMEISTER), HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO DO THAT? “Obviously our Roush-Yates engine naturally gets great fuel mileage, and then you know it’s easy to save fuel just by lifting off the throttle early going into corners, that helps saves a lot of fuel. Doing what we call short shifting, which is where you normally shift right at the red line, we just move that down a couple hundred rpm and save as much fuel as we can. That really helps to save a lot of fuel.” 

THE WIN PUT YOU UP TO SIXTH IN THE DAYTONA PROTOTYPE CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS. “I had to miss two races so far this season, Homestead and Watkins Glen due to tobacco sponsorship reasons, so I wasn’t able to race in those races or get any points for those races. Normally, I would be tied for first place in the championship with Jorg. I’m going to also have to miss Sears Point because we race with the IRL again. Unfortunately, I’ll be way back in the standings, at no fault to my own, but just because of the rules.”  

YOU VISITED THE ROUSH-YATES ENGINE SHOP A FEW WEEKS AGO. WITH SEEING WHERE YOUR POWER COMES FROM, THEY HAD TO BE REALLY HAPPY FOR YOU PUTTING THE CAR INTO VICTORY LANE SO SOON AFTER YOUR VISIT. “Yeah, everyone who came, all of the track support guys were really happy. I’m sure the Monday morning meeting will be quite – will be really happy. They should feel like they had a huge influence in that race. If we would have had to make a splash and go pit stop like everyone else, we obviously wouldn’t have won that race. That’s a huge credit to the Roush-Yates guys.”

THE WAY YOUR PIT STRATEGY PLAYED OUT, WAS THAT THE PLAN THE ENTIRE TIME, TO ONLY MAKE ONE STOP, OR WAS THAT A DECISION YOU MADE AS THE RACE UNFOLDED? “Well my engineer, Steve Newey and I and Jorg talked about it before the race and we kind of knew we could probably do it on one stop if we both were able to save some fuel. We weren’t sure how many yellow flags we were going to get. As my stint went on, we only had one yellow and we figured there might not be many yellows and we should try and save as much as we can since that was our strong suit, to only make one stop. We only made one stop and halfway through the race when I got out, Jorg got in and then we felt we had enough fuel to go the distance and we had saved enough fuel which got us to the finish line and that’s all that matters.”

YOUR PIT STRATEGY WAS REALLY THE TURNING POINT OF THE RACE, BEING IN THIRD WHEN EVERYONE ELSE WENT TO THE PITS. YOU WERE PUTTING PRESSURE ON DIAZ THROUGHOUT THE RACE AND THEN ONCE THEY PIT AND JORG WAS UP IN FRONT, ALL HE REALLY HAD TO DO WAS HANG ON TO YOUR LEAD. “Exactly, we had, I think when they (the competition) came in and did their splash and go stops, I think we had an 18, 19 or 20 second lead on the rest of the field. We were going pretty slow on the last couple of laps saving as much fuel as we could because we had a pretty good lead built up.”

THIS WAS YOUR FIRST RACE AT DAYTONA UNDER 24-HOURS AND YOU WERE ABLE TO COME OUT ON TOP IN YOUR FIRST SPRINT RACE THERE. “It was definitely a lot of fun, I wish we could have done that in the 24-hour race earlier this year. It was good to do it in the sprint race and I think that now I’ve done the sprint race there, knowing how to go quick will also help in the next 24-hour race as well.”