I Know Who I DON'T Want To Win The Knoxville Nationals.....

Thought I was gonna say Donny Schatz, didn't ya?

As of 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the day before the 54th Annual FVP Knoxville Nationals presented by Casey's General Stores is supposed to take the green for another four day run the new pre-race "favorite" appears to be Mother Nature. Looking at the forecast for Knoxville on Weather Underground right now paints an ominous picture in regard to the rain chances over the next four days:

Wednesday - 80% Day; 90% Night

Thursday - 60% Day; 60% Night

Friday - 30% Day; 40% Night

Saturday - 40% Day; 40% Night

And even when you look to Sunday the rain chances still remain at 40%. Now granted, we all know that weather forecasts can change from hour to hour and here is hoping that this one does just that as it has been a long time since I can remember going into the Nationals with such a significant threat from weather.

By all means though, don't let a weather forecast like this scare you away as Knoxville rolls with the punches as good as any dirt track event can. First of all you know that they will do everything possible to run each show off on its scheduled night and with a full brigade of push trucks for track packing along with a paved infield, they can usually recover from a pretty good rain.

Obviously if it continues to rain though, then the schedule might need to be altered. In the past the Friday "Non Qualifiers" program was the "wild card" that could be run during the day on Saturday or, as I recall one year it was even run on Sunday night AFTER the Championship features were presented, as scheduled, on Saturday night.

However, now that the Friday program is so vital to the qualifying process it will be interesting to see how that might be handled if either Wednesday or Thursday is lost to the weather. That is something that I am hoping won't even be a consideration in the days ahead, but if it is my guess is that for weather related purposes only, the points from the first two nights would set the top 50 qualifiers and the "Friday" show format would return to what is was.......whenever they are able to run it.

Either way though, you will find us there, in Knoxville hoping for enough breaks in the weather to see the premier event in dirt track racing roll off as planned!

Tonight (Tuesday) I will make the short trip north to the West Liberty Raceway for the Open Late Model Shootout along with the IMCA Late Models, hope to see you there and if not check in here tomorrow for a report on the Back Stretch!