After a spirited battle with Ryan Timms, Friday night's race winner Rico Abreu accumulated enough points over the two nights of qualifying to start from the pole position in Saturday's Knoxville 360 Nationals at the Knoxville Raceway.
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| Rico Abreu - Barry Johnson photo |
Tonight's twenty lap main event was a good one with polesitter Cam Martin outrunning veteran Terry McCarl to set the early pace while the fourth starting Ryan Timms quickly made his way to the front. Martin would be no match for Timms on lap five as the young driver from Oklahoma raced to the lead while the fifth starting Rico Abreu soon followed him in to second.
The caution waved on lap eight when Blake Hahn slowed on the back stretch with a broken birdcage and on the restart Abreu charged under Timms in turns one and two to take over the lead. Ryan would battle back though and regain the point two laps later with the lead duo running the next several laps in tight formation giving the good Friday night crowd all of their money's worth.
A short slider in turns three and four would put Rico back in front on lap seventeen and just after that the caution would wave one final time as Tim Kaeding spun in turn four. As Abreu would bring the field back to green, the back of the pack would stack up on the back stretch and when the leader pegged the throttle at the very start of the restart zone, Rico would have at least ten car lengths on Timms as they crossed under the flagstand.
It was all over from there as Rico would go unchallenged over the final three laps to score the win with Timms coming home second. Parker Price-Miller slipped by Martin in the closing laps to finish third while Carson McCarl passed his father Terry late to take fifth. Brian Brown edged out Clint Garner to finish seventh while Giovanni Sclezi came from row eleven to take ninth as Jake Bubak filled out the top ten.
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| Barry Johnson photo |
Abreu and Price-Miller would tie for the top spot in the points with tie breaker going to Abreu for Saturday's pole position. Carson McCarl would also score more points than last night's winner Kyle Larson putting the two of them in row two on Saturday night while Ryan Timms and Justin Peck will start from row three. Saturday's A-Main lineup has a family flair to it with the Martin brothers, Chris and Cam to start seventh and twelfth respectively while all three McCarls made the show with Austin starting eleventh and Terry, a five-timer winner of this event, will roll off fifteenth.
For the second night in a row it looked like the first car out for qualifying would set fast time with Parker Price-Miller setting the standard, but after falling off a bit the track came back late with Carson McCarl laying down the best lap as the 42nd car out to qualify. Brad Sweet's 360 Nationals came to an early end when he did not make weight after his qualifying effort and his team loaded up the #49.
First heat race winner Jack Dover got the call to drive the #03 car when Shayle Bade found out that she was pregnant a couple of weeks ago.
The first try at a start of heat race number two was called back when Parker Price-Miller was called for jumping and he was penalized a row to the eighth starting spot for the second try. He would later say that he was driving angry as he still raced his way up to fourth and in interviews after the night was complete he stated that he had watched the video and felt as though he had followed the rules. I guess I will have to watch the video as well to see how he came to that conclusion. Either way if it motivated him for the rest of the night, it was a good penalty.
It was the first night out for Giovanni Scelzi in the Clauson/Marshall #7BC as he subs for the injured Tyler Courtney and he would coast to a halt on lap one of the third heat race. That would land him on the pole of the B-Main that he won easily before marching through the field to finish ninth.
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| Gio Scelzi (7BC) and Ryan Timms (10) - Barry Johnson photo |
Riley Goodno was another hard charger out of the B-Main racing from twenty-second to tenth before retiring during the lap seventeen caution with an overheating engine.
A pair of teenagers that we get to see often with the Mohrfeld Solar Sprint Invaders introduced themselves to the world wide viewing audience on DirtVision as seventeen-year-old Cam Sorrels dominated from the pole to win heat race number three and then nineteen-year-old Tyler Lee did the same in heat race number four.
Tyler Groenendyk looked to have a transfer spot locked up in the final heat race only to slow with mechanical issues mid-race. He was then able to start the B-Main after a short intermission, but came up two positions short of a transfer in sixth.
The battle for the fourth and final transfer saw contact late between Tasker Phillips and Daryn Pittman that nearly sent Pittman into the front stretch wall and after the race the veteran served up a classy interview taking some of the blame for what was truly a racing incident.
For the second night in a row racing action wrapped up just past 9:30 in almost Fall-like conditions where a pair of jeans and a jacket felt pretty good even before the sun went down. Saturday's finale will be a good one that I will have to watch later on DirtVision as I will be headed up to the Independence Motor Speedway on Saturday night to join Jim Roper on the microphone as the track celebrates its 60th Anniversary of racing.
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