All you Flomeisters will get to watch the Knoxville Nationals I'm sure, but I'll have to follow along by reading your posts. Is there a Twitter feed you'd recommend for in-race updates?
Speedsport breaks down the field...
No driver from Iowa has ever won the NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals.
www.speedsport.com
Follows on Twitter for in-race and on-the-scene updates:
@WorldofOutlaws
@Walkapedia
@tjslideways
@BradDoty
@cfchangs9 is a local Iowa racing reporter who puts out good independent content, also operates @AlwaysRaceDay
The first three nights of preliminary action have been interesting. Wednesday night's track was way too heavy and wet for the bulk of the program. The unique format used for the Nationals involves heavily inverted heat races (8 of 10 cars are inverted according to time trials), and it can "work" when passing is possible. It essentially wasn't on Wednesday, which led to a bunch of top qualifiers being buried in single file parade heat races and in many cases failing to make the A-Main. Thursday was somewhat better, but it was still very difficult to make passes in the heats even for the top drivers. There is a lot of debate over the format and whether it's a problem or just track conditions are. My take on that is that it used to be much easier for the fastest cars and drivers to overcome the inverts and "put on a show", because the gap from the top of the bottom of the field was huge. Today it is much closer, and clean air is more important than ever, especially on a wet track. Some adjustments are overdue so that sandbagging in qualifying doesn't become the norm.
That said, very cool to see local Austin McCarl (son of Terry McCarl) on the pole. The McCarls are a huge part of Iowa sprint car racing history. Donny Schatz looks really, really good, much like the Donny of old. Larson put on a clinic on Thursday and went 20th to 5th in the feature. He's the defending champ, so obviously the favorite. Macedo and Gravel also look strong. I'm not sure about Sweet's raw pace, he didn't look great on his qualifying night, but you'd be a fool to not think that team will be up there. Tyler Courtney could certainly surprise everyone, having the advantage of a front row starting spot. I'd look for Rico to move through the field from 21st after winning last night's "Hard Knox" program. There are a lot of possibilities, as I said the competition is probably closer and deeper than it has ever been.