DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Big pressure, best wraps, what's next for Sunshine, Knoxville Nationals day 1 preview | Daily 8-6-2025

It's Knoxville Nationals time, and today we'll talk format, the first prelim night, who to watch, who's got pressure on them, and more. Plus we'll react to some of the special Nationals paint schemes, there's news about injured driver Tyler Courtney, and a lot more. Let's go!

It's Wednesday, August 6th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

It is officially day one of the 64th Knoxville Nationals. Split field prelim nights today and tomorrow, and after Thursday we'll have 26 teams locked into their Saturday races. The top 16 in combined points will automatically go to Saturday's feature, 17th through 26th in points will lock into the B, and then everyone else will try again on Friday with four feature spots available in the Hard Knox program. The format the next two nights will be the standard Nationals setup, with points on the line through the program. One big flight of qualifying will set heat races, with points paid for each spot. Heat races will have eight car inverts, so fast cars in qualifying will start deep and need to pick their way forward, because only the top four finishers in heats transfer to the night's main event. Heats also pay points. Then it's regular alphabet soup, going C to B to A. Top four in the C and B move on. The first four rows of the feature are then inverted by qualifying time. Where you finish in a feature will also get points. A perfect score is 500, and there will be a lot of attention paid to where that feature cutoff will be. To get into the Saturday main event after prelim nights, drivers will need to be in the neighborhood of 450 points. That 16th place driver earned 453 points last year, and it was 449 and 447 the previous two years. The heat races at the Nationals are probably the most important all season, and you'll see drivers making big moves to get to the transfer spots. Drivers that start deep, ninth and tenth, basically have no shot at a feature transfer. The outside rows are favored over the inside for starts, with the outside pole transferring most often. I made this graphic last year to give you an idea on what exactly the chances are for each heat starting spot to transfer to the main event.

Moving on to tonight's field, we should be across 50 cars for night one. The drivers to watch tonight include David Gravel, Justin Sanders, Anthony Macri, Rico Abreu, James McFadden, Sheldon Haudenschild, Donny Schatz, and Corey Day. Outside of that list, we've certainly seen Austin McCarl have success at Knoxville, Justin Peck will want to have a good night, Tanner Holmes is trying to lock into his first main event, Sam Hafertepe is racing, Daison Pursley was second in the Cappy, and Ryan Timms and Chase Randall are two young guys to watch. I think this year there is a lot of pressure on Gravel to make waves, especially given some of the Kyle Larson banter. He'll want to avoid a repeat of last year, where he needed a seventh to fourth charge in the B to get into the prelim feature. That left him buried on Saturday night. He hasn't won it since 2019, car owner Tod Quiring wants to win this event, and him beating Larson would add some fuel to this rivalry fire. I don't know that anyone else in the field has that same level of pressure. Everyone always wants to know who are the darkhorses at the Nationals, and it's really tough to make calls given the format. There will be some big names who find themselves outside looking in after tonight, and somebody you won't expect will impress. A driver I'd be concerned about is Donny Schatz. He needed a Hard Knox win last year to get into Saturday's big show, and so far this season hasn't finished better than 15th in three Knoxville World of Outlaws appearances. That included needing to burn two Outlaw provisionals to even make those shows. He looked better at Pevely last weekend, and finished top ten in the Cappy, so maybe they are headed in a better direction. Drop me a comment below and let me know who you'll be watching tonight and who your favorites and darkhorses are.

Before we move on, should we talk some Knoxville paint schemes? Every year a bunch of teams do special wraps on their sprint cars, and this year is no different. It seems like this two-sided wrap thing has emerged this year as a theme, and I wonder if everyone just independently decided to do this on their own, or if the car designers all got together and talked about making this happen. Drivers with split schemes this year include Garet Williamson, Donny Schatz, and Tanner Holmes. I don't usually love this, and if I had to pick a favorite among them, I like Holmes' the best. There are also new looks for Carson Macedo, Spencer Bayston, Chris Windom, and Brenham Crouch among others. I do like Windom's Sides throwback with the flames. Easily my favorite though so far is Sheldon Haudenschild's NOS look for the week. This is really cool looking, and I think it will pop really nice under the lights at Knoxville. Lots of other drivers and teams with fresh looks this week as well. You can see a lot of photos and designs floating around on social media.

Yesterday on the Door Bumper Clear podcast with Freddie Kraft, Tommy Baldwin, and Karsyn Elledge, we got an appearance from injured sprint car driver Tyler Courtney. He sat in on the whole show and talked a bunch of topics, including his recovery. Sunshine was hurt in that ugly crash at Eldora a few weeks ago, and last Thursday we talked on the Daily about what was left of his crashed car. Chassis builder Schnee-Lawson shared photos and talked about some things that went right. It was great though to see Sunshine up and around, and he's actually at Knoxville this week hanging out. He talked with DBC about his back and head injuries, needing surgery, he's currently wearing glasses because of some vision problems, and that he knows he's lucky his injuries weren't worse. Courtney did confirm that he's done for the season, which we basically already knew with Clauson Marshall announcing Gio Scelzi in that car for the remainder of 2025. He did say though he expects to race at Volusia in February, which will give him plenty of time to recover. Rushing back isn't something he wants to do for his own sake, or the team's. Watching the show, outside of his comments and the glasses, you might not even realize he was injured, which was great to see.

If you want to get into some other racing tonight, Appalachian Midget Week gets rolling for the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series. They've got Action Track USA tonight, then Linda's Speedway, Path Valley, and Clyde Martin through Saturday. Jacob Denney currently the series points leader over Cannon McIntosh, with Gavin Miller third. Denney leads all drivers with six wins in 14 races. So far, 11 drivers have made all races. These teams are coming off the Ironman 55 weekend at Pevely where Karter Sarff and Kameron Key picked up victories. These next few nights will all be live on DIRTVision. Tonight's action here, and at Knoxville are just a few of the streaming options you have for this Wednesday. Drop by dirtrackr.com/watchtonight to see everything coming up, including IMCA and WISSOTA action. That page has everything you need to know, including links to watch.

Before we wrap up today, if you are in Knoxville this week, stop by the Dirt Empire Magazine booth in the Skate Pit trade show building. Their newest issue has a piece on DIRTRACKR and how we've gotten to where we are. Thanks to them for the coverage, pick one up while they are available.

That's all for today. Hope you guys have a great Wednesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!