Thursday, August 1, 2013

A Look Back At The 2003 Knoxville Nationals

As we get set to head up to Knoxville tonight for the opener of the 2013 Arnold Motor Supply 360 Nationals I thought it might be fun to pull up my story from ten years ago and the 2003 version of the Knoxville Nationals....

The 43rd Annual Ford Dealers of Iowa Knoxville Nationals is complete with Danny Lasoski staking claim to his third Nationals title. The racing was, as usual, fantastic and there was a very interesting side story with the announcement of the sale of the World of Outlaws.
 
Following are random thoughts and notes from this year’s greatest show on dirt. Donny Schatz continued his recent string of strong qualifying nights when he held off Danny Lasoski by a couple of car-lengths for the Wednesday night feature win. Along with the third quick time and a second-pace finish in his heat race, Schatz collected one more point than Lasoski. Young Erin Crocker thrilled the crowd by qualifying fifth quick and then drove a steady race to move from ninth to third in her heat race. Crocker faded to a fifteenth place finish in the feature, but her point total was good enough to make her the first-ever female to qualify for the Saturday night A-Main at the Knoxville Nationals. The first lap of the first heat race saw both Johnny Herrera, in the Guy Forbrook #5, and Jeff Johnson get upside down in turn one adding to an already miserable season for Forbrook. Only forty-nine cars made the call for Wednesday’s qualifying while there were sixty-four on hand for Thursday.

While many thought that Wednesday’s field was stacked with heavy hitters, it became obvious that the Thursday field was strong from top to bottom making it much tougher for drivers to accumulate those valuable points to lock themselves in to Saturday’s A-Main. In fact, Kenny Jacobs, the top point man from Thursday’s field with 481 markers, only ranked sixth after the first two nights of qualifying. Jacobs was the fourth fastest qualifier, ran second to Clint Garner in the fourth heat and then finished sixth in the A-Main. It was an impressive night for a fan-favorite that has had little or no success here the past five years, however the 481 points may just be the “lowest” high-point total for a night since this method of qualifying was enacted. While Herrera was the hard-luck story of night one, it had to be Tyler Walker on Thursday night. Third quick in qualifying, Walker was coming through the field quickly in his heat race before his right rear tire began to go down. Walker fought the car through one and two and then sped down the backstretch before stuffing it in the wall in turn three. The resulting damage did not allow for just a tire change and a return to action, and by finishing tenth in the heat Walker was now mired in the evening’s C-Main. He won that easily, but could only move from twenty-first to eleventh in the twelve-lap B-Main to end his night. His qualifying point total was only good enough to slate him for the twentieth spot in Saturday’s B-Main. Fast qualifier Kerry Madsen could not advance from his heat and started twenty-first after winning the B. He made an impressive run up to seventh, but it went largely unnoticed due to the action at the front of the field. Wayne Johnson in the Beaver Tool & Drill #12x was on the point and appeared to have the field covered, but yellow after yellow kept slowing the pace. With three laps to go Johnson had Steve Kinser on his push bar with Tim Shaffer in third on a restart and the young Oklahoman hit it just right and pulled away from the “King” for an apparent win. But Josh Higday coasted to a stop in turn four one lap later to bring out one last caution and, on this restart Kinser timed it perfectly and had a run on the leader. Kinser slid up in front of the leader in turn two and pulled away for the victory while Shaffer also slipped by for third. A chorus of boos greeted Kinser when he pulled into victory lane as the crowd seemed frustrated with the circumstances that had just played out. Steve was very gracious in his victory lane interview stating that Johnson was the faster car during the green-flag segments, but that he was just given too many chances with all of the cautions. Despite the heartbreaking ending, Johnson’s excitement showed in the pressroom as it was obvious that he was very proud to be sitting at the front table with Mr. Kinser and Mr. Shaffer. I definitely became a Wayne Johnson fan on Thursday night!

Friday night’s action got off to a scary start in heat race number three. Announcer Justin Zoch had just done a fine job detailing how this year’s Nationals queen was the daughter of driver Kim Mock when, at the drop of the green, Mock climbed the frontstretch guardrail and took a very nasty ride all the way to the entrance of turn one. After some very tense moments it was announced that Mock was talking with the safety crew as they prepared him for transport to the hospital. The extent of the injuries to the current IRA point leader were not known at the time of this writing. The A-Main saw Johnny Herrera come from row eight to take the win while Kelly Kinser raced his way from the tenth row up to fourth. Mid-race leader Roger Crockett of Eugene, Oregon, finished the race in the third spot but was disqualified when he came up too light at the scales. Crockett did not return for Saturday night’s action. Tim Kaeding came from row three to win the “C” Scramble while Lance DeWease and Shane Stewart won the “B” and the “A” Scrambles respectively from front row starting spots. After trading a couple of slidejobs Steve Kinser and Kerry Madsen made contact that tore the left front wheel off of the Quaker State #11. Travis Rilat outran Ricky Logan for a $10,000 win of the Kele World Challenge with Kurt Winker making an impressive run for third.

On Saturday night one of the announcers made the comment that they couldn’t remember the last time that there were so many incidents on the final night of the Nationals. Seems to me that it was the first year that TNN showed the Nationals live on television. The Speed Channel cameras were rolling live and captured plenty of wild sprint car action Saturday night including flips by Mark Toews, Ty Bartz, Mike Moore, Jeff Johnson, Mike Kertscher, Josh Higday, Skip Jackson, Eric Vanderploeg and Lynton Jeffrey. Toews got the ball rolling in grand fashion flipping out of the ballpark in turn three during the E-Main. It was the second year in a row for Bartz to tumble on Saturday night while it was the second end-over for Johnson on the week. Kertscher’s tumble topped off a crummy Nationals for the Osborn team as his teammate Kim Mock reportedly watched from a hospital bed. Higday may have set a new height record in his front straightaway vault and Jeffrey was a victim of Travis Cram’s left hand turn into the pits before the coast was clear. That final red flag in the B-Main involving Cram and Jeffrey sure ruined Jeremy Campbell’s week. The young Michigan driver had just made a solid pass of Jeff Shepard for the fourth and final transfer to the national championship feature, but the red flag erased the effort and he came up just short in the final two laps after the restart.

Pole-sitter Donny Schatz jumped to the early lead in the finale only to have Danny Lasoski track him down on lap seven. With Lasoski pulling away Schatz was trying every groove available on the half-mile trying to keep pace with the leader. Meanwhile the race to watch was the multi-car battle for third through eighth featuring Greg Hodnett, Paul McMahan, Sammy Swindell, Steve Kinser and more. But it was Kenny Jacobs who emerged from that pack to take over third with about ten laps remaining. Lasoski looked like he had it wrapped up until the caution flag flew for a stalled Daryn Pittman with just two laps remaining. During the caution period it became evident that Lasoski was having a problem as his left rear wheel was bouncing considerably as he circled the track. It turned out to be a broken shock absorber, but the veteran driver nailed the restart and was able to muscle the car through the final two laps to hold off Schatz by about six car-lengths for the $125,000 top prize. Jacobs was a crowd-pleaser in third followed by Swindell, Hodnett and Kinser. Jason Meyers, in Craig Dollansky’s #7, was the hard-charger coming from seventeenth to finish ninth while Erin Crocker’s twenty-first place run was more than enough to garner the Rookie-of-the-Nationals title for the young lady. As predicted here last week by both Kyle and Morgan, it was Danny Lasoski in victory lane continuing a run where it has been either a Kinser or the Dude every year except once since 1991. That was in 1997 when Dave Blaney won it on a sun-baked Sunday afternoon.

Friday’s press luncheon drew the largest throng of media-folk that I have ever seen and it wasn’t just for the “free lunch” as we all anticipated the announcement of the sale of the World of Outlaws. For such a major event in the world of motorsports it was almost surreal how brief and vague the press conference portion of the luncheon was. It took me longer to eat my salad than it did for Ted Johnson to announce that the Outlaws had been sold and for the spokesman of the new ownership group (I didn’t catch his name) to make a brief statement, introduce five major players in the corporation and to answer a few questions. The new owner is called Boundless Motor Sports Racing Inc. and is based in Richardson, Texas. They have also acquired DIRT from Glenn Donnelly and appear poised to do some additional shopping as well. During the statement the spokesman for Boundless said that they plan to take the Outlaws to the infamous “next level” and in response to one of the questions it was stated that Boundless would be responsible for the Outlaws from this point forward, including the 2003 point fund. The third of four questions asked revealed that Ted Johnson would remain in an advisory role so that he, the spokesman, could learn everything there was to know about the day-today operations as it had been several years since he had been involved in racing. What??? Before any of us could ask questions such as “what do you consider to be the next level for the World of Outlaws” or “what are your backgrounds in motorsports” the press conference was brought to an abrupt end leaving most of us to wonder what the heck had just happened. A couple of other scribes later told us that they were able to detain the spokesman long enough to ask the “experience” question and the response was that he drove a Hobby Stock several years ago. They could have just been pulling my leg, but hey, it’s the only information that was offered! I guess we’ll have to see how this one plays out.

We would like to thank Barry, Stephanie and Aidan Johnson for opening their home to us again this year, as well as “Brother” Bill Vantiger for the use of his camper as a gathering spot. A special thanks to Melvin and Marcella and their entire family for including all of us in their celebration of Marcella’s birthday on Saturday. The food was fantastic and they have been added to the characters from Section “I” as friends that we will look forward to spending the week with once again when Knoxville plays host to the 44th Annual National Sprint Car Championships in August of 2004.

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