Giving up the lead to Carson Macedo with eight laps remaining and then dropping to third after Brian Brown blew by him a lap later, Terry McCarl looked like he was going to have to work just to stay on the podium for Saturday's Knoxville 360 Nationals presented by Great Southern Bank. When Brown went by him though, McCarl took notice of a lower line and he used it to come charging back to drive to return to the front and win his fifth 360 Nationals title at the Knoxville Raceway.
Pole-sitter Joey Saldana would lead the opening laps before McCarl sailed around him on the outside in turns one and two to take the point on lap five. The race would go red three laps later when Jamie Ball rolled hard in turn two and after a couple of minutes of silence the crowd gave the hometown favorite a nice round of applause when he climbed out of the car under his own power.
McCarl would pull Saldana on the restart only to have the caution wave three laps later when Wayne Johnson slowed in turn four. The two veteran drivers appeared to have a little game of cat and mouse going during the caution laps and again McCarl got the jump when the green flag waved. Only one more lap was scored though before Scott Bogucki got sideways entering turn one collecting Cole Duncan who ended up on his side creating another red flag situation.
On this restart Carson Macedo would take the Jason Johnson Racing #41 to second driving around Saldana on the outside and he would bring Brian Brown with him to third as they both started to track down the leader. With McCarl still riding the cushion it looked like his tires might be going away as Macedo had a run at him as the leader completed lap sixteen of the twenty-five lap distance. Diving to the inside the young Californian made it look easy as he slid up in front of McCarl to take the lead and once again Brown followed by dropping McCarl to third a lap later.
TMAC tried to come back at Brown and when Brian used the middle to block the move McCarl took notice of the speed of that line and decided to give it a try. Even though the leaders had been using the top, the rest of the field had laid down the rubber about two car widths up from the berm and when McCarl found it he was now a rocket driving past Brown for second with three to go and then blowing by Macedo who was a sitting duck still up on the cushion with just two laps remaining. As he entered turn one on the winning pass McCarl cleared the lapped car of Trey Starks by inches for if he would have broken his momentum this one would have went a different way.
Both Macedo and Brown dropped down to the rubbered line, but it was too late now as McCarl later noted that he was simply in the right place at the right time to come back and take the win. It would have been a storybook ending if Macedo had driven Johnson's car to the win, but he would have to settle for second while Brown was close behind in third. Saldana would take the fourth position as Thomas Kennedy was the top finishing driver who races a 360 on a regular basis in fifth. Greg Hodnett finished sixth, sixteen-year-old Gio Scelzi was seventh after starting second, Cory Eliason was eighth, Dominc Scelzi was ninth and Tim Kaeding made it five California drivers in the top ten.
Saturday Notes......Sawyer Phillips and Tyler Blank finished one-two in the D-Main and both made noise in the C, but in different fashions. Phillips made a big charge through the field only to come up two spots short of making it to the B-Main while Blank went for a hard roll on the front stretch with his car landing on the back of Scottie McDonald's slowing car on the front stretch.....Five cars transferred out of the C with Jonathan Cornell leading the distance to win and Chris Martin going the distance in second. Calvin Landis made a big charge after the lap six red flag to come from eleventh to third as Matt Covington and Jon Agan also advanced to the B-Main.....The top four would make the show from the 15-lap B that saw the first try at a start called back when Bill Balog helped himself to a couple of rows before the leaders hit the stripe. On the second try McKenna Haase got a similar jump but the race stayed green and three laps later the only female to win a feature here at Knoxville jumped the cushion in turn two and went for a tumble. After the red this one saw the top three, Shane Golobic, Brooke Tatnell and Ryan Giles go the distance to make the transfer while John Carney II held off Johnny Herrera to apparently join them. However! It was later announced that Carney was found to be light at the scales and nearly a half an hour later after the 305 feature and the introductions of the 24 championship race starters his crew was seen pushing the #7c car across the scales once again, apparently just for their own satisfaction.......The battle at the front of the feature for the 305's was nothing short of spectacular as Devin Kline and young Kelby Watt went back and forth, and back and forth......and back and forth the entire race. In fact there were seven lead changes between the two in the 15-lap distance, and that was just at the stripe! They almost crashed each other on lap four when Kline tried to get to the cushion in front of Watt and the contact knocked Kelby's nose wing askew and tore off the left side panel. The damage was not too much to overcome though as Watt would retake the lead for good with four laps remaining to take the win over Kline, Jayce Jenkins, Eric Bridger and Ryan Leavitt......Starting on the outside of row one for the finale Gio Scelzi flared out to the cushion coming to the cone and he would like to have that move back as the youngster dropped to fifth by the time the field went down the back stretch for the first time. With Scelzi flaring out it was a ragged looking start with Wayne Johnson getting a row as the green flag waved......The post race press conference was entertaining with the three well spoken drivers on the podium. McCarl explained the evolution of the chassis, known as "FrankenART", that carried him to victory. Using the front half of an ART chassis that he had trashed and the back half of an ART chassis that his son Carson had crashed, Terry had Scott Bonar of Midland Performance in Burlington, Iowa, weld the two good halves together into one Nationals winning chassis......McCarl had high praise for Macedo who he calls "Caramel Macchiato", a drink that he likes at Starbucks, and said that it was nice of the rising star to let him get this fifth win. Later Brown also said that he has the same nickname for Macedo, but prefers to get his caramel macchiatos at Casey's.
After three spectacular nights of 360 racing the 410's now takeover the Knoxville Raceway first with the annual Capitani Classic on Sunday followed by the 5 our Energy Knoxville Nationals Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Oh yes, and don't forget that McCarl trades the helmet for the promoter's cap with the Front Row Challenge on Monday and the Ultimate Challenge on Tuesday at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. We hope that you will join us there on the Back Stretch.
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