Defending Lucas Oil Knoxville Late Model Nationals Champion Mike Marlar set himself up for a possible repeat by posting a perfect score during Friday night's qualifying action setting quick time in his group, winning his heat race and then taking the 25-lap main event. This followed up a Thursday night performance that was equally impressive until an early incident in the feature making Marlar the man to beat as the Crown Jewel event wraps up tonight at the Knoxville Raceway.
With Rodney Sanders giving up the pole position after smoking a motor late in his heat race, Brandon Sheppard would line up next to Tim McCreadie on the front row for Friday's main event with McCreadie holding the lead on lap one. Sheppard would come back to take the lead on lap two and those two would separate themselves from the field over the first ten laps. As Sheppard closed in on traffic McCreadie would close the gap to within a car length and was set to challenge when Jason Feger and Boom Briggs tangled exiting turn two sending Briggs for a spin right in front of the leaders.
The lap fourteen caution would bring the field back to Sheppard and McCreadie with Mike Marlar, Josh Richards and Chris Simpson, who were previously racing hard for third, now with the front back in sight. McCreadie would take the lead from Sheppard with seven laps remaining just before the caution waved for Jared Landers who had spun the Larry Mooring owned car at the exit of turn four.
For this restart Sheppard and Marlar would go side-by-side behind McCreadie with Marlar setting sail on the cushion to take the lead with five to go. There would be no touching the Tennessee driver from there as he captured the $7,000 win ahead of McCreadie, Richards, Sheppard and Simpson.
It is interesting the parallels that can be drawn between Knoxville's Sprint Car and Late Model Nationals. In 2016 the Thursday night show at each event was threatened by weather with both races being hustled through to complete before 9:30 and beat the rain. This year, on the second night of qualifying at the Sprint Car Nationals David Gravel posted a perfect score and on night two of qualifying for the Late Models Mike Marlar tallies a 500 point night. Now Marlar will hope for a better Saturday night outcome as Gravel suffered mechanical issues after leading the first twenty-two laps of the Sprint Car championship main event.
Friday Notes.....Marlar's perfect score was aided by Rodney Sanders' mechanical woes as Sanders appeared to have the win in the first heat well in hand until smoke started to trail from his car with two laps to go allowing Marlar to take the win.....Sixteen-year-old Hudson O'Neal was impressive winning heat two, a race where the two fastest qualifiers Jimmy Owens and Dale McDowell failed to transfer.....Shannon Babb drove around front row starter Randy Timms coming to the green to take the lead in heat three, but he then faded to third until the final lap when Iowa's Tyler Bruening nipped him for the third and final transfer spot......The fourth heat race was absolutely stacked with talent and it would be an impressive win for Chase Junghans over Tim McCreadie. After a poor qualifying lap Bobby Pierce started from the pole and finished third while Jonathan Davenport punched a ticket to the B-Main in fourth and Scott Bloomquist found himself headed to the C-Main after finishing seventh.....Thursday's winner Josh Richards won the fifth heat as Chris Simpson made a late charge up to second......The sixth heat had a close call when Darrell Lanigan, Earl Pearson Jr. and Don O'Neal went three wide down the front stretch with contact sending all three drivers scrambling to maintain control. Lanigan kept his foot on the throttle though and scored an impressive win......Knowing that he already had a Thursday point total that would put him in the show Bloomquist must have been trying some other stuff tonight as he finished second to Dennis Erb Jr. in the C-Main and then only made it up to 17th in the B. Don't be surprised to see him challenging for the win on Saturday though as he will roll off twelfth......With only one car in G.R. Smith's hauler, Jonathan Davenport needed to be careful tonight after having the best point total on Thursday and when something broke in the driveline on the opening lap of the B-Main he was lucky to be able to bring the car back to the pits in one piece. Davenport was running second coming off of turn four before slowing up near the guardrail and there were several close calls as drivers narrowly missed him as the caution waved.....Six drivers would transfer from the B-Main and it would be a talented bunch with Don O'Neal, Jimmy Owens, Earl Pearson Jr., Dale McDowell and Chad Simpson in the top five. Tyler Erb threw a couple of big blocks on Billy Moyer during the final lap to hold on to the sixth and final transfer position as Moyer ended up in the turn three guardrail.....The first attempt to start the feature was a sloppy one as Sheppard and McCreadie brought the field to green at a very slow pace and when they were both slow to get on the throttle at the stripe the accordion effect took hold with Don O'Neal and Earl Pearson Jr. both suffering damage.
Marlar and Davenport will start from the front row in tonight's 100-lap finale and while I would love to be there I realized last night that after being put under twice this week for surgery to remove a kidney stone that perhaps a trip to the race track wasn't a wise decision. Obviously at the age of 54 I do not bounce back like I used to so I will take tonight off to rest up for Sunday night's visit to Quincy by the Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders. Hope to see you there!
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