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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Jeff Krosnoff, Stay Hungry Pt. 4
After years of dogged persistence, Jeff Krosnoff had finally broken through to the big leagues in CART, but at Toronto, his dreams--and life--would come to an end.
Jeff Krosnoff lost his life while delivering the kind of performance that marked him as a future star of the CART series. (Photo: Krosnoff Family)
READ: Jeff Krosnoff, Stay Hungry PT 1, Stay Hungry PT 2, and Stay Hungry PT 3 about the talented Californian Indy car driver who lost his life racing at Toronto on July 14th, 1996.
“Jeff’s been in a wreck. Bob Sprow was on his radio for that, he spools up the radio and we get nothing back."
~Cal Wells, Jeff Krosnoff’s CART team owner.
In Part 3 of Jeff Krosnoff, Stay Hungry, we left off after Jeff had completed Round 10 of the 1996 PPG Indy Car World Series at Cleveland and headed to the streets of Toronto:
Progress within the Arciero-Wells team had been gradual throughout its sophomore season in the CART series. After running the wealthy but under-talented Hiro Matsushita in 1995, the team, like its engine partner, was essentially starting from scratch in 1996. It now had a star in the making behind the steering wheel, a talented engineering staff, proper management and a strong pit crew…all it needed was a powerplant that could show its overall potential.
Toyota’s first season of CART competition hadn’t gone well; from a lack of power to poor reliability, the gap to established manufacturers like Ford/Cosworth, Honda and Mercedes-Benz was significant, but the men at Toyota Racing Development (TRD) had come up with a few new tricks for its Toronto engines.
The 2.65-liter turbocharged Toyota RV8A V8 was beginning to offer the first glimpse of hope after Krosnoff finished three of the four races prior to Toronto, and with TRD starting to get a handle on durability, the Torrance, California-based firm pushed the boundaries even more for the upcoming race in downtown Toronto.
Krosnoff’s Reynard-Toyota, like the two Toyota-powered entries from All American Racers, would have a higher rev limit to use at Toronto, but it was a change to the engine mapping that would make the biggest difference.
With Toronto’s numerous slow corners, TRD concentrated heavily on giving the RV8A better low-end torque and throttle response to help launch its cars between turns, and in particular, out of Turn 1 onto the long Lake Shore Blvd straight.
The lack of top-end speed was still present, though, which made keeping touch with the rest of the field a challenge once the Toyotas reached the mid-point of Lake Shore.
For Krosnoff, the revised powerplant helped to secure his best qualifying performance of the year. It was still well off of Andre Ribeiro’s pole time of 58.060 set in the Tasman Motorsports Lola-Honda, but Krosnoff’s lap of 59.779 led the Toyota contingent and placed him 20th on the 26-car grid.
Even with his strong qualifying performance, the Toronto race was about to follow a similar theme for the 31-year-old rookie.
Starting towards the back of the field meant Krosnoff received very little airtime during his first 10 CART races, but for those who saw him race in-person, or for those who raced alongside him, a few traits stood out.
He was smart—obsessively so—and brought every ounce of his intelligence to perfecting the cars he drove and his performances inside them. Krosnoff’s smarts stood out in everything he did, but the other side, one that the viewing audience rarely got to see, is what endeared him to so many.
Attacking—whether it was for a spot on the podium or for last place—was Krosnoff’s style, but it wasn’t achieved through reckless measures. With just one race-ending crash through the first 10 events, Krosnoff distinguished himself as someone who was fast and made very few mistakes.
He’d been saddled with uncompetitive F3000 cars many times while in Japan, but Krosnoff never relented and never dialed his efforts back to match the car’s capabilities.
It wasn’t “all or nothing” with Krosnoff, just lots of “all.”
For 1996, the continent and the name of the racing series might have changed, but the challenge facing Krosnoff in CART was the same.
True, the odds were slightly improved with the latest-spec RV8A at Toronto, but through practice and qualifying, nothing had significantly changed. Another attacking performance would be required.
Krosnoff’s Reynard 96i, wearing the distinctive blue MCI livery once again, squirmed and fought to break loose as he kept the car dancing on the edge of adhesion in the corners, and with 95 laps around the 1.75-mile, 11-turn circuit on tap for the race, he was primed for another virtuoso drive that wasn’t going to make the headlines.
By the end of the day, Krosnoff’s relentless approach to his craft would make the international new, but sadly, it was for all the wrong reasons.
Starting on the 10th row, the No. 25 Arciero-Wells car began moving forward steadily, climbing up the running order as he picked off the backmarkers. Working his way through the field, Krosnoff found himself dicing for 15th place in the latter stages of the race. When Michael Andretti’s engine stalled on Lap 84 and brought out a yellow, Krosnoff was sitting in 16th and had designs on using the restart to his advantage.
With Emerson Fittipaldi directly ahead, and Stefan Johansson directly behind him, Krosnoff was surrounded by drivers with the stronger Ilmor-built Mercedes-Benz engines, and facing engine deficiencies in every area, holding the 15th-place position he inherited when Andretti fell down the running order would be a major challenge on the long run down to Turn 3.
The green flag flew with six laps left to go, and Krosnoff held 15th until Johansson motored past to take the position. On Lap 91, Krosnoff was determined to get the position back and rocketed off of Turn 2 to try and get a run on Johansson.
Jeff, his fellow drivers and the CART community couldn’t have known it at the time, but he and corner marshal Gary Avrin were about to leave this world behind.
Reaching speeds in the 175 mph range as they shot down Lake Shore Boulevard, Fittipaldi led Johansson and Krosnoff as they approached the second crossover bridge prior to the braking zone for Turn 3.
Just as Krosnoff was setting up Johansson for an inside pass, the Swede attempted the same inside maneuver on Fittipaldi. The result of two cars going for the same piece of tarmac had a violent and disastrous outcome as Krosnoff turned right to duck out from Johansson’s slipstream, only to find Johansson’s car moving directly into his path a split-second later.
“It just presented itself then,” Johansson recalled of the chance to pass Fittipaldi. “I mean, obviously, you see the opportunity and you go for it. So, it’s just one of those situations. It’s not… to be honest, I don't even recall the laps before, exactly what happened and how it happened, but, I mean, when you see there's an opportunity you go for the gap, and that's exactly what I did. I had, obviously, no idea that Jeff was coming hammers and tongs on the inside.”
PHOTOS: Click Here or on the image below to view INDYCAR: Jeff Krosnoff Retrospective.
“Jeff’s been in a wreck. Bob Sprow was on his radio for that, he spools up the radio and we get nothing back."
~Cal Wells, Jeff Krosnoff’s CART team owner.
In Part 3 of Jeff Krosnoff, Stay Hungry, we left off after Jeff had completed Round 10 of the 1996 PPG Indy Car World Series at Cleveland and headed to the streets of Toronto:
Progress within the Arciero-Wells team had been gradual throughout its sophomore season in the CART series. After running the wealthy but under-talented Hiro Matsushita in 1995, the team, like its engine partner, was essentially starting from scratch in 1996. It now had a star in the making behind the steering wheel, a talented engineering staff, proper management and a strong pit crew…all it needed was a powerplant that could show its overall potential.
Toyota’s first season of CART competition hadn’t gone well; from a lack of power to poor reliability, the gap to established manufacturers like Ford/Cosworth, Honda and Mercedes-Benz was significant, but the men at Toyota Racing Development (TRD) had come up with a few new tricks for its Toronto engines.
The 2.65-liter turbocharged Toyota RV8A V8 was beginning to offer the first glimpse of hope after Krosnoff finished three of the four races prior to Toronto, and with TRD starting to get a handle on durability, the Torrance, California-based firm pushed the boundaries even more for the upcoming race in downtown Toronto.
Krosnoff’s Reynard-Toyota, like the two Toyota-powered entries from All American Racers, would have a higher rev limit to use at Toronto, but it was a change to the engine mapping that would make the biggest difference.
With Toronto’s numerous slow corners, TRD concentrated heavily on giving the RV8A better low-end torque and throttle response to help launch its cars between turns, and in particular, out of Turn 1 onto the long Lake Shore Blvd straight.
The lack of top-end speed was still present, though, which made keeping touch with the rest of the field a challenge once the Toyotas reached the mid-point of Lake Shore.
For Krosnoff, the revised powerplant helped to secure his best qualifying performance of the year. It was still well off of Andre Ribeiro’s pole time of 58.060 set in the Tasman Motorsports Lola-Honda, but Krosnoff’s lap of 59.779 led the Toyota contingent and placed him 20th on the 26-car grid.
Even with his strong qualifying performance, the Toronto race was about to follow a similar theme for the 31-year-old rookie.
Starting towards the back of the field meant Krosnoff received very little airtime during his first 10 CART races, but for those who saw him race in-person, or for those who raced alongside him, a few traits stood out.
He was smart—obsessively so—and brought every ounce of his intelligence to perfecting the cars he drove and his performances inside them. Krosnoff’s smarts stood out in everything he did, but the other side, one that the viewing audience rarely got to see, is what endeared him to so many.
Attacking—whether it was for a spot on the podium or for last place—was Krosnoff’s style, but it wasn’t achieved through reckless measures. With just one race-ending crash through the first 10 events, Krosnoff distinguished himself as someone who was fast and made very few mistakes.
He’d been saddled with uncompetitive F3000 cars many times while in Japan, but Krosnoff never relented and never dialed his efforts back to match the car’s capabilities.
It wasn’t “all or nothing” with Krosnoff, just lots of “all.”
For 1996, the continent and the name of the racing series might have changed, but the challenge facing Krosnoff in CART was the same.
True, the odds were slightly improved with the latest-spec RV8A at Toronto, but through practice and qualifying, nothing had significantly changed. Another attacking performance would be required.
Krosnoff’s Reynard 96i, wearing the distinctive blue MCI livery once again, squirmed and fought to break loose as he kept the car dancing on the edge of adhesion in the corners, and with 95 laps around the 1.75-mile, 11-turn circuit on tap for the race, he was primed for another virtuoso drive that wasn’t going to make the headlines.
By the end of the day, Krosnoff’s relentless approach to his craft would make the international new, but sadly, it was for all the wrong reasons.
Starting on the 10th row, the No. 25 Arciero-Wells car began moving forward steadily, climbing up the running order as he picked off the backmarkers. Working his way through the field, Krosnoff found himself dicing for 15th place in the latter stages of the race. When Michael Andretti’s engine stalled on Lap 84 and brought out a yellow, Krosnoff was sitting in 16th and had designs on using the restart to his advantage.
With Emerson Fittipaldi directly ahead, and Stefan Johansson directly behind him, Krosnoff was surrounded by drivers with the stronger Ilmor-built Mercedes-Benz engines, and facing engine deficiencies in every area, holding the 15th-place position he inherited when Andretti fell down the running order would be a major challenge on the long run down to Turn 3.
The green flag flew with six laps left to go, and Krosnoff held 15th until Johansson motored past to take the position. On Lap 91, Krosnoff was determined to get the position back and rocketed off of Turn 2 to try and get a run on Johansson.
Jeff, his fellow drivers and the CART community couldn’t have known it at the time, but he and corner marshal Gary Avrin were about to leave this world behind.
Reaching speeds in the 175 mph range as they shot down Lake Shore Boulevard, Fittipaldi led Johansson and Krosnoff as they approached the second crossover bridge prior to the braking zone for Turn 3.
Just as Krosnoff was setting up Johansson for an inside pass, the Swede attempted the same inside maneuver on Fittipaldi. The result of two cars going for the same piece of tarmac had a violent and disastrous outcome as Krosnoff turned right to duck out from Johansson’s slipstream, only to find Johansson’s car moving directly into his path a split-second later.
“It just presented itself then,” Johansson recalled of the chance to pass Fittipaldi. “I mean, obviously, you see the opportunity and you go for it. So, it’s just one of those situations. It’s not… to be honest, I don't even recall the laps before, exactly what happened and how it happened, but, I mean, when you see there's an opportunity you go for the gap, and that's exactly what I did. I had, obviously, no idea that Jeff was coming hammers and tongs on the inside.”
PHOTOS: Click Here or on the image below to view INDYCAR: Jeff Krosnoff Retrospective.
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