Schatz wins Fog Shortened Race

I’ve seen it all now. What a crazy and wacky night of events with Mother Nature throwing more wrenches at us than AJ Foyt climbing out of his car in a rage at Indy. Morning showers, overcast all day, water seeping up from sheepsfoot holes delaying hot laps, the sun pops out during hot laps and time trials and dries out the track quickly, then we have nice wide racing surface after the heats, only to have a pesky shower pop up out of nowhere on the radar and cause a rain delay. The shower popped up about 15 miles southwest of the track, turned west, then back east.  When the rain cleared out a thick attack of moths encountered the raceway. Then we get back to racing after 1:00am and just as the 410 feature pushes off a thick fog rolls in and stops a race just past halfway. In a matter of ten minutes the visibility went from perfect to 1/8 of a mile.   

Donny Schatz won, not surprising. I give credit to our announcers Johnny Gibson and Tony Bokhoven for calling that race, their eyes were better than mine. The track prep crew and push truck drivers put in a long day. We have so many great people at Knoxville, but these people are the best in the business.

The World of Outlaws has installed a new qualifying system for fields of 32 cars or more. The field is split into two groups, groups A and B. So with the two groups of 21 group A is lined up in heats one and two, group B is in heats three and four. This is supposed to keep the field more balanced and fair, but on this night it didn’t matter much when you sorted the times together honestly.

Lost in all this was Ryan Giles winning his first 360 feature in only his fifth night in a sprint car. That is impressive. Giles is on the David Hesmer fast track learning curve there. Hesmer won on his first night in a sprint car at Knoxville from eleventh back in 1988.

410 Report
42 cars signed in. Time Trials Group A: Kerry Madsen was quickest 15.388, followed by Henderson, Lasoski, Schuchart, and Schatz. Group B quick time was Joey Saldana 15.591, Pittman, Jeffrey, Swindell, and Sweet.  

Each heat race was won from the front row with the Outlaws format of inverting four. Heat winners were Donny Schatz, Brian Brown, Ian Madsen and Terry McCarl. Saldana, Pittman, Stewart, Schuchart, and Tim Kaeding all had to run the B main after not finishing in the top five of their heat race. The Dash invert draw was six, which put Schatz on the front row and he would win the dash to earn the pole of the A main.

The rain fell at 9:18pm and lasted almost an hour. After the rains stopped it was a little over two hours to rework the track and infield the B Main’s and A were run, only the A was shortened due to fog. On lap 15 Bronson Maeschen slowed to a stop and the call was made to end the race.

The A-Main was all Donny Schatz. He never pulled away from runner up Henderson with the with the field racing on a very fast one lane track. The Knoxville Regulars didn’t get the win, but they had three finish in the top five.

410 A Main Finish (started): 1. Donny Schatz (1); 2. Justin Henderson (2); 3. Kerry Madsen (4); 4. Brian Brown (5); 5. Ian Madsen (3); 6. Joey Saldana (10); 7. Sammy Swindell (7); 8. Lynton Jeffrey (6); 9. Daryn Pittman (12); 10. Brad Sweet (14); 11. Terry McCarl (8); 12. Paul McMahan (16); 13. Danny Lasoski (9); 14. Brent Marks (13); 15. Jamie Veal (17); 16. Dusty Zomer (18); 17. Tim Kaeding (26, prov.); 18. Logan Schuchart (11); 19. Jason Sides (22); 20. Shane Stewart (25, prov.); 21. David Gravel (21); 22. Steve Kinser (19); 23. Bronson Maeschen (20); 24. Davey Heskin (24); 25. Brooke Tatnell (15); 26. Josh Schneiderman (23). Lap Leader: Schatz 1-15. Hard-charger: Kaeding.

360 Report
22 cars.  Tony Shilling set quick time at 15.977. Justin Henderson was second followed by Ryan Giles, Nate Van Haaften, and Clint Garner. Heat winners were Jamie Ball (first row), Sawyer Phillips (first row), and Russ Hall (second row).   

Nate Van Haaften took the lead from his outside row one starting position and had a nice size lead until he caught the tail end of the field and Shilling was able to close in when they got close to traffic. With the track fast and narrow it was tough to race. On lap 11 Van Haaften got above the cushion in turn four and Shilling tried to capitalize, but Shilling and Van Haaften made contact and both drivers crashed hard in a scary incident where both drivers walked away. Ryan Giles inherited the lead and on the restart pulled away to win easily for his first career win in just his fifth night racing a sprint car.   

360 A Main Finish (started): 1. Ryan Giles (1); 2. Dustin Clark (3); 3. Matt Moro (5); 4. Joe Beaver (6); 5. Justin Henderson (7); 6. Clint Garner (8); 7. Jon Agan (9); 8. Russ Hall (11); 9. Randy Martin (14); 10. Calvin Landis (10); 11. Austin Alumbaugh (19); 12. Jamie Ball (15); 13. Devin Kline (18); 14. Tom Lenz (12); 15. Keoni Texeira (20); 16. Alan Zoutte (16); 17. Sawyer Phillips (13); 18. Nate Van Haaften (2); 19. Tony Shilling (4); 20. Ricky Montgomery (17); 21. John Anderson (21) DNS – Corey Nelson. Lap Leaders: Van Haaften 1-10, Giles 11-18. Hard-charger: Alumbaugh

History and Notes
Logan Schuchart crushed the 12 lap track record at 2:58.6, and then Joey Saldana broke it a few minutes later in the second B main with a 2:56.9. The old record had stood since 2008 by Tim Shaffer in a time of 3:09.2.

The last time fog stopped us from racing was the 1980 Knoxville Nationals which forced the championship A main to be held on Sunday afternoon.         

Points
410: Lasoski leads the 410 points over Henderson by 98 points, it was a 203 point lead last week.
360: Garner extended his point lead from 33 last week to 111 over Van Haaften this week.
305: Stacey Alexander leads McKenna Haase by 73 points.

Food Report
Had the cheeseburger this week, with a side of chicken bites. Cheeseburger was good. Also a bag of homemade chips from Mo’s Grub was circulating the press box. I sampled a few. Very tasty.