It's Shark Week At Knoxville!

Following up on his teammate's victory on Wednesday night, Jacob Allen made it a clean sweep of the qualifying features for Shark Racing when he captured the Thursday A-Main win at the 61st NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals presented by Casey's. It would be Allen's fist win at the world famous Knoxville Raceway and it would be well earned after fighting off a late charge from former Nationals champion Brad Sweet. The results of the qualifying night wins for the two teammates, however will be quite different when it comes to their setup for Saturday night's finale. More on that later.

Jacob Allen - Barry Johnson photo

Allen would start to the right of Zeb Wise on the front row for the twenty-five lap main event with Wise getting an early advantage before the second generation driver from Hanover, Pennsylvania, swept around the outside to be the official leader of lap one. With Allen starting to build up a lead, the third starting Brad Sweet would soon move to second and the chase was on. Meanwhile, back in the pack I wish that I would have paid more attention to Kyle Larson in the first four laps.

Barry Johnson photo

Starting from twenty-second after qualifying through the B-Main, the defending Knoxville Nationals champion Larson rocketed up to tenth in those first two miles and he was not done yet. As Larson continued to advance to the front the focus of the race went back toward the leaders in the non-stop event as Sweet was slowly reeling in Allen and looked like he was sizing up his prey for a late race pass.

With four laps remaining the move was made as "The Big Cat" put the slider on Allen in turn three only to have Jacob perfectly execute the crossover in turn four to take back the advantage coming to the front stretch. Sweet would keep the pressure on over the final laps, but with Allen working the lapped cars like a driver who has been to victory lane often here, Sweet would not get another clear shot at the leader before the checkered flag waved.

Carson Macedo had pulled within striking distance of the lead duo when Sweet made his late bid and he was ready to pounce on any mistakes while finishing third. Austin McCarl closed out a strong night by racing from seventh to fourth at the checkers, a performance that will put the third generation driver on the pole for Saturday's fifty-lap headliner. Larson would get all the way up to fifth at the checkers and one has to wonder if he would have been able to go all of the way to the front had there been just one caution mid-race.

The pole-sitter Wise slipped to sixth, Tyler Courtney also had a solid night running seventh and he will start next to McCarl on Saturday, Kasey Kahne advanced four positions to finish eighth, Lynton Jeffrey faded from a second row starting spot to come home ninth and J.J. Hickle locked himself into his first Championship main event at the Nationals after closing out the top ten.

Tasker Phillips - Barry Johnson photo

The Rest of the Story.....While it was still important to draw an early qualifying position, the track did hold it's speed longer than it has over the four nights of the Nationals qualifying (360's and 410's) as local favorite Tasker Phillips went out third and put up a time that would hold up through the full field of fifty drivers. Austin McCarl was aided by having the fourth qualifying spot and one has to wonder what could have been for Lynton Jeffrey. Pushed off eighth in the qualifying order, Jeffrey pulled to infield with mechanical issues before completing a lap and then came out at the end for just one lap on the clock. It was still good enough for 17th, better than most of the second half of the roster......Carson Macedo and Tanner Carrick banged wheels not once, but twice as Macedo made the pass for the fourth and final transfer spot in the first heat race.....Jeffrey would get by Matt Juhl coming to the white flag in the second heat race to take the fourth transfer position.....The makeup of the third heat would change when pole-sitter Chris Martin was penalized a row for jumping the start and on the second drop of the green J.J. Hickle went from sixth to first on the opening lap. He would go on to score the win while Chris Windom fought off the challenges of Brooke Tatnell to qualify in fourth.....As usual on the qualifying nights the race for fourth was the one to watch in the fourth heat as well with three cars involved in a heated battle. Tyler Courtney would take the spot from Kraig Kinser mid-race and Anthony Macri might have been able to mount a charge on Courtney if he had not been caught behind Kinser for an extra lap. Courtney would be the first driver of the week to actually start the ten lap distance from the fourth row and then crack the top four......Another thrilling three car battle for fourth would close out the heat races as Ryan Roberts did all he could to ward off the challenges of Austin McCarl and Rico Abreu. McCarl would prevail at the checkers making him the only driver who had started from eighth to make a transfer spot this week. And that is a big reason why he will lead the field to green for fifty laps on Saturday night......Brooke Tatnell was racing in fifth, one spot out of a transfer in the B-Main when his left front wheel came off on lap three. With Daryn Pittman well out front, the big crowd was thrilled by the battle for second as Tasker Phillips went back and fourth with Kyle Larson. After a couple of big sliders and a wheel bang or two, Larson would prevail by less than a car length to get the biggest crowd reaction of the week thus far. Spencer Bayston was holding on to the fourth and final transfer until the final lap when he slowed and pulled to the infield handing a gift to Buddy Kofoid. Without it, Kofoid does not lock himself in to the Championship feature.....As I predicted yesterday, only six drivers from Wednesday night were among the sixteen that you will find listed below and that means for the first time in the long history of this prestigious event, a qualifying night feature winner will still have to race his way in to the Championship event. Logan Schuchart will start Saturday's B-Main from the outside of row one. 

The first eight rows of the A-Main are now set with Friday's "Hard Knox" program to add four more drivers who will lineup in rows eleven and twelve. The final four starters will come from Saturday night's B-Main. There are still plenty of tickets for tonight's program, but they were within a couple of hundred tickets from selling out for Saturday night. If you cannot attend in person, you can dial up the Knoxville Nationals live on DirtVision.

Saturday's A-Main Qualifers

Austin McCarl - Tyler Courtney

Donny Schatz - David Gravel

Carson Macedo - Kyle Larson

Brent Marks - Daryn Pittman

Brad Sweet - J.J. Hickle

Jacob Allen - Parker Price-Miller

Justin Sanders - Buddy Kofoid

Tasker Phillips - Aaron Reutzel

Carson Macedo - Barry Johnson photo