6-9-2007 - Colin struggles with damaged car at Watkins Glen

Colin Braun and Max Papis took their No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley to a 12th-place finish in the six hour race.

The polesitting No. 99 Gainsco Pontiac Riley of Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty were the first repeat winners of the 2007 Grand-Am Daytona Prototype races. Runner-up was the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Lexus Riley of points leader Scott Pruett and teammate Memo Rojas. Third place went to the No. 10 SunTrust Pontiac Riley of Wayne Taylor, Max Angelelli and Jonathan Cochet.

Tracy W. Krohn, team owner/driver, No. 76 Krohn Racing

Colin had a little bad luck and had some contact there at the end of the race; otherwise I think we would have had two Top Five cars. The Gainsco car, the No. 99, was just clearly superior to everyone so it was fun to watch that as well.

Max Papis, driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley:

"I felt we did everything to put ourselves in place to the best we could. The guys did awesome pit stops all the time. We were able to climb up to third position. We knew it would have been very difficult to challenge against the No. 99 car and the No. 01 car on fuel and speed. We could have been right there with them in the long run. Unfortunately, it looks like things didn't turn out exactly the way we wanted in the second part of the race. That's racing. At the same time, it was a great team result because Nic and Tracy were able to finish in the Top Five, so it was a great satisfaction for them. In the one way I'm not so happy for our performance and the other I am happy for the team. We ran according to plan except the last couple of hours."

Colin Braun, driver, No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac Riley:

"I think we had quite a good car at the very start. In my first stint I was patient. Then Max got in the car and stayed where we were. We waited for the cars to settle in and we were going to really start racing for it when it got to about an hour to go. It all went pretty good until I got up along a GT car and a DP car was on the outside. He came across my car and we both spun and it damaged the toe link on my car. That hurt the performance. Then we did our last pit stop and came out in 13th and just had to stay where we were because we knew we had a damaged car. Unfortunately, I made that mistake in trying to pass and then I had to kind of ride around from there. I didn't want to make matters any worst than they were. I wanted to bring it home, so had to take the 12th place finish.

Jeff Hazell, Krohn Racing Team Manager:

"On the 75 car, two things happened -- near the end of the race, it got in an incident with another car which affected the front suspension quite badly. A couple of laps later we pitted for fuel and tires and made a mistake. We anticipated we'd need fuel but actually the yellow was so long we didn't actually need that stop. We lost two places in that stop but more places to other cars that gambled and stayed out. Combined with the fact that the car was damaged, we really could not do much. In fact, we went to from 10th to 12th in the last section of the race. So we are a bit disappointed with that. We should have taken a gamble and didn't. Perhaps a trip to Vegas would be educational."

The No. 75 Krohn Racing duo of Papis and Braun moved into fifth in the Daytona Prototype points championship after six of 14 races this season. Papis and Braun have two podium finishes, a second-place at both VIR and Mexico City, where Braun also captured the pole, and two Top Ten. Krohn and Jonsson have one Top Five and two Top 10 finishes so far this year.

Video of Calvin Fish talking about driving styles between Colin and Max Papis with interviews of each.

57 seconds - 6mb - Click picture to view video