I could just go back and dig up the Saturday night story from last year's Knoxville Nationals......or the year before that, because for the third year in a row Donny Schatz fought off Brian Brown to win Sprint Car racing's most prestigious event. For forty laps this one was nothing more than a chase, but when the fourth-place car of Shane Stewart slowed and produced a caution the action definitely picked up in those final ten laps and we ended up with quite a race.
With Schatz digging around the bottom, Brown circled the top and unlike earlier he was now able to keep pace with the leader. With eight laps to go Brown made a run off of turn two and the near capacity crowd came to life as he was able to pull to the rear bumper of Schatz. And two laps later the place went nuts when Brown drove around Schatz down the back stretch and then closed off his bottom groove into turn three to take the lead. Brown went back to the top line and Schatz showed the spirit of a champion by coming right back the following lap to drive under Brown exiting turn four to regain the lead. And that was it, there would be no catching Schatz who would win his fourth straight Nationals and an eighth Knoxville title in the last nine years.
For Brown it would be his third straight runner-up finish, something that Schatz himself went through before he broke through for that first win in 2006 and during the post race press conference Schatz saluted Brown for his efforts and said that while it might not feel good right now, all of those second-place finishes will mean much more to him when he does get that first win.
Kerry Madsen was solid in third, Craig Dollansky moved from seventh to fourth and Justin Henderson followed up his third-place finish in 2013 with a fifth-place run tonight. Paul McMahan, Terry McCarl, Mark Dobmeier, Joey Saldana and Kraig Kinser completed the top ten in a race that was run clean until after the checkers waved when Clint Garner hit the fourth turn wall and got upside down. Brad Sweet was the event's hard charger coming from 23rd to 13th.
Sweet was involved in one of two nasty accidents during the preliminary events that fortunately saw all drivers walk away uninjured. In the B-Main Sweet was racing for one of the final four starting spots in the Championship race when he caught the berm exiting turn four and darted up the track into a hard charging Sheldon Haudenschild. The contact sent Haudenschild into a wild sequence of end over end flips down the front stretch and thankfully the fans had to only hold their collective breath for a few seconds before Sheldon climbed out of the mangled car and walked dejectedly toward the pit area.
The start of the C-Main was marred by a multi-car incident that started when pole-sitter Cole Wood got crossed up with Caleb Helms racing to the green flag and the wreck was on. At least three cars got upside down in the wild scramble with Brent Marks and Rico Abreu taking wild rides along with Helms. Eight cars were eliminated in the opening lap incident.
So another Knoxville Nationals is in the books and despite it being altered by the weather, my unofficial estimate would be that the crowds were up, especially on Saturday night where it looked like the front stretch grandstand was completely full and there were only a few open spaces down low in the back stretch stands. I know that my seat was a tight one in Section H row 26, but we were sitting with good people who knew that they were at the races, not at a bar.
The only sad thing is that the events here in Iowa will not be the biggest story in the sport on this night.
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