Kudos to Jason Reed, John McCoy, the entire Knoxville Raceway crew and yes, the drivers and pit crews as well as Friday night's edition of the 360 Knoxville Nationals beat the rain, barely, and gave the race fans an entertaining feature race as well. With threatening skies and a "future radar" that showed impending doom, track officials made the call mid-afternoon to move the start time of the second qualifying night ahead by one hour and they then hustled through the program to get a final checkered flag around 9:15 p.m. just before the rain picked up the pace and canceled the feature race for the Pro Sprint Series.
With a racing surface as wide as you will ever see it here at the Sprint Car Capital of the World, the twenty lap headliner for the 360's lined up with Zeb Wise and Parker Price-Miller starting from the front row. PPM, or "The Law Firm" would snare the early lead as fourth starting Terry McCarl and fifth starting Brian Brown picked up the chase. Brown would squeeze between McCarl and the turn four guardrail to move to second on lap two before the caution waved for Alex VanderVoort who had spun in turn two.
Once back to green only three more laps would be scored before young Cam Martin hopped the thin cushion in turns three and four and went for a ride. A couple of sprinkles would be felt during this red flag and as the field tried to restart the car of Justin Sanders stumbled and stacked up the back of the pack causing front wing damage for Harli White. It was a tough break for Sanders who had set quick time earlier in the night in the Macri Motorsports #39, but had to get a win in the B-Main to make the feature.
The race would go red once again when the top five car of Clint Garner went for a wild ride after the nine-time track champion also hopped the cushion in turn four. Kerry Madsen was also involved with Garner and behind those two Shane Golobic got upside down as well and collected Lynton Jeffrey. Thankfully Clint crawled from his mangled car uninjured and during the cleanup process some light rain started to fall.
Drivers were asked to give a thumbs up or thumbs down prior to going back to green and with the track still raceable we were back underway with Price-Miller doing everything that he could to hold off Brown. As the rain picked up a bit in intensity the drivers had to guess where they could still get full traction and even the leader changed lines nearly every lap. This would keep Brown guessing and twice he would throw a slide job at the leader in turns one and two shortly after the restart only to have Price-Miller drive back to the front down the back stretch.
When lap number ten went in the books we knew that we would have an official finish as the rain started to fall even harder and PPM would start to stretch it out a bit on Brown while still searching for the most traction on a track that had to be getting slick in some spots. With four laps remaining the leader come off of the bottom from turn one and then appeared to slip in the middle line of turn two and Brown quickly closed the gap as he drove off the cushion. With a big run on the leader as lap sixteen was scored Brown threw a short slider entering turn one, but PPM was ready for it and kicked nicely off the cushion and found a good bite this time exiting turn two from the middle line to maintain the advantage.
Knowing that his chances were running out Brown tried to come off the very bottom of turn four only to get loose and nearly go off the track on the inside of the front stretch and that was all that Parker Price-Miller would need to pull away and close out one on the most entertaining flag-to-flag victories that you will ever see. Brown would settle for second as Wise battled back to third, McCarl finished fourth and Garret Williamson filled out the top five. Davey Heskin climbed from fourteenth to finish sixth ahead of Ryan Giles, Anthony Macri was eighth, Daryn Pittman finished ninth and Kasey Kahne gained seven positions to take tenth.
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| Parker Price-Miller - Barry Johnson photo |
The Rest of the Story.......With cloudy and humid conditions the track held its speed a bit longer for qualifying as the top three Justin Sanders, Kerry Madsen and Lynton Jeffrey came out eighth, twelfth and sixth respectively. However Madsen was the only one of those three to come from the sixth starting spot and crack the top four in their respective heat races to advance to the feature......Jeffrey may have had a chance to transfer, but he was squeezed up to the fence by Anthony Macri in turn four on lap two for the fifth spot just before the caution waved for an Alex Hill spin. Jeffrey made his feelings known to Macri during the caution and once back to green Macri would get by Ian Madsen with three laps remaining to take the fourth and final transfer position.....The fifth heat finished in thrilling fashion as Shane Golobic threw a successful slider at Alex VanderVoort in turn four coming to the checkers......Tyler Blank would do a once over exiting turn four at the start of the B-Main and when the green flag returned it was an entertaining race for the final transfer spot as Cam Martin and Ian Madsen swapped the position a couple of times. As it turned out, with his hard crash in the feature, Martin would have had just two fewer points and an intact race car if he had finished fifth.......The big news earlier in the day was that Thursday's third place finisher Scott Bogucki had been disqualified for an engine violation.....With the early finish I tinkered with the thought of making the seventy minute drive to Marshalltown to catch the features of the Dale DeFrance Memorial, but instead I decided to go back to Barry's house and watch it on Flo. Good thing as this one looks like it will go past midnight!
As of this writing the forecast for Saturday's finale has improved with rain chances now coming later in the evening. And, with that in mind, the Knoxville Raceway will likely again be in hurry up mode to present the Championship Night of the 33rd Annual Xtream Powered by Mediacom 360 Knoxville Nationals presented by Great Southern Bank. And this, courtesy of the Knoxville Raceway website, is how they will line them up:
A Main
1 8 Aaron Reutzel 486
2 21 Brian Brown 481
3 9P Parker Price-Miller 476
4 24W Garet Williamson 476
5 1K Kelby Watt 474
6 5T Ryan Timms 472
7 22K Kaleb Johnson 472
8 26 Zeb Wise 470
9 24 Terry McCarl 469
10 18T Tanner Holmes 469
11 36 Jason Martin 466
12 55 Kerry Madsen 465
13 4W Jamie Ball 463
14 2C Wayne Johnson 462
15 15H Sam Hafertepe Jr. 460
16 16A Colby Copeland 459
17 9 Chase Randall 451
18 2M Davey Heskin 450
19 5 Daryn Pittman 450
20 9G Ryan Giles 449
B Main
21 39M Justin Sanders 446
22 7BC Anthony Macri 443
23 21H Brady Bacon 443
24 88 Austin McCarl 442
25 22 Ryan Leavitt 442
26 3P Sawyer Phillips 439
27 24R Rico Abreu 438
28 2 Lynton Jeffrey 435
29 40 Clint Garner 434
30 24H Kade Higday 434
31 20 Justin Peck 433
32 1 Brenham Crouch 432
33 9T Kasey Kahne 429
34 8M Kade Morton 425
35 7TAZ Tasker Phillips 424
36 4 Cam Martin 423
37 17W Shane Golobic 422
38 35 Skylar Prochaska 421
39 14T Brooke Tatnell 420
40 27 Carson McCarl 420
C Main
41 83H Justin Henderson 419
42 44 Chris Martin 417
43 83T Tanner Carrick 411
44 17 Tyler Groenendyk 410
45 11N Harli White 409
46 5M Collin Moyle 407
47 6A Alex Vande Voort 403
48 99 Tony Rost 403
49 42 Sye Lynch 403
50 50YR JJ Hickle 402
51 86 Timothy Smith 401
52 41 Colton Hardy 401
53 24T Christopher Thram 381
54 1E Ian Madsen 376
55 52 Blake Hahn 365
56 15 Ryan Turner 364
57 83JR Sam Henderson 363
58 53 Joe Beaver 362
59 7A Jack Anderson 362
60 6 Dustin Selvage 360
D Main
61 70 Calvin Landis 359
62 8H Jacob Hughes 359
63 7M Chance Morton 358
64 95 Matt Covington 347
65 75X JT Imperial 347
66 98P Miles Paulus 345
67 27B Jake Bubak 342
68 18 Ryan Roberts 339
69 87J Jace Park 334
70 4J Kevin Thomas Jr. 334
71 01 Sammy Swindell 332
72 11X Ayrton Gennetten 331
73 3J Dusty Zomer 328
74 2JR Kelly Miller 327
75 35H Zach Hampton 326
76 35L Cody Ledger 326
77 77X Alex Hill 321
78 9M Liam Martin 320
79 55B Brandon Anderson 317
80 10 Landon Britt 312
E Main
81 33 Alan Zoutte 308
82 75AU Tyler Blank 304
83 83 Austin Miller 303
84 3 Howard Moore 302
85 45X Kyler Johnson 301
86 87X Shone Evans 300
87 11M Brendan Mullen 293
88 14M Jordon Mallett 290
89 6T Christopher Townsend 286
90 4C Tuesday Calderwood 285
91 G5 Gage Pulkrabek 284
92 105 Cody Ihlen 274
93 B29 JJ Beaver 273
94 41D Dan Henning 265
95 22W Aaron Werner 265
96 4CW Chris Windom 265
97 938 Bradley Fezard 264
98 14 Aidan Zoutte 264
99 T4 Tyler Graves 263
100 17N Ben Woods 229
101 4H Cody Hansen 228
102 5D Grae Anderson 216
103 1A John Anderson 209
104 84 Scott Bogucki 0
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