DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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60th Knoxville Nationals begins: event purse, format, entries, win picks | DIRTRACKR Daily 8/11/21
Today is Wednesday, August 11th, two thousand and twenty one. This is DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Coming up we do a full rundown on the Knoxville Nationals including the purse, format, who to watch, win predictions and alot more. We've also got some news from Max Blair, last night's Short Track Super Series results, and new podcast episodes.
Before we dive in, if you like what I'm doing here, please subscribe to the show, leave a review, and hit those follow and notification buttons depending on where you consume this. Make sure to follow @dirtrackr on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. And don't forget dirtrackr.com has a bunch more cool dirt racing stuff. Now, let's get going.
The long wait is finally over. After two years since the last running of the race, the Knoxville Nationals are back tonight to begin the 60th edition of the event. With all of the covid issues in 2020, we still had racing at Knoxville during this week, but it wasn't the Nationals, so David Gravel is still the defending champion of the race from 2019. Since 2006, we've had 14 Knoxville Nationals but only five different winners in that span. Donny Schatz won ten of them, with Tim Shaffer winning in 2010, Jason Johnson winning in 2016, Brad Sweet in 2018, and Gravel in 2019. The competition in 2021 will be fierce and there are a number of drivers who could win this year's race. Over a million dollars in purse money will be paid out over the next four nights, with Saturday's feature winner taking home $150,000 for the win. On top of that, drivers that lead laps in the feature will also get $1000 per lap, so if the winner was able to lead all 50, they would win an additional $50 grand on top of the $150 for the win. The Wednesday and Thursday prelim features are $12,000 to win and $1000 to start, so they are nice paying shows already. Just making the Saturday feature will pay $10,000, which is equivalent to winning a standard Outlaw show. There are also extra awards on the line, including rookie of the year, the pole, Mr. Sprint, throwback, and best appearing car and crew.
The name of the game for the next two nights is accumulating as many points as possible. Drivers will hot lap, qualify, run heats, a C Main, B Main, and the feature. The top 50 in qualifying make the night's heat races, with the rest of the cars being placed in last chance heats if necessary. The top eight in those heats will then fill the back of the C main. All heats will have the top eight inverted, with the top four finishers to the feature, fifth through eighth to the B main, and 9th and 10th going to the C. From there, the top four finishers from the C go to the tail of the B, and top four from the B go to the tail of the A. Points are awarded for qualifying, heat finish, and feature finish. A perfect prelim night score is 500. After Wednesday and Thursday, the top 16 in combined points are locked into the Saturday night A main. Teams 17th through 26th in points are in the first 10 spots in the B main. The rest of the field comes back to race on Friday. Friday is split field qualifying, six heats, a C, two Bs, and 25 lap feature. The top four finishers from the Friday feature will earn the last four starting positions in the Saturday night feature. And for Knoxville Nationals Saturday, we run the alphabet depending on car count. Laps vary by main, with the top four from each tagging the tail of the next event. The top four finishers in the B main earn starting spots 17 through 20 for the 50 lap finale. Those 24 drivers then battle it out for 50 laps for the Knoxville Nationals trophy. Don't forget that there is traditionally a fuel stop near half way where teams can not only add fuel but make adjustments.
At last check last night, we had 49 cars on the entry list for each of the prelim nights, so that puts us at 98 total for the week. The field tonight includes Logan Schuchart, David Gravel, James McFadden, Zeb Wise, Spencer Bayston, Donny Schatz, Sheldon Haudenschild, Gio Scelzi, Cory Eliason, Danny Dietrich, Anthony Macri, Justin Peck and more. Thursday will feature Tyler Courtney, Kerry Madsen, Brian Brown, Rico Abreu, Daryn Pittman, Carson Macedo, Brad Sweet, Kyle Larson, Shane Stewart, Kasey Kahne, and many more. We've talked some in recent weeks about possible win picks for the week, and I do have some numbers today to take a look at. Back through the 2018 season, I have 20 Outlaw races at Knoxville in the dirtrackr.com database. In that span, Kyle Larson has the best feature finish sitting at 2.75. In nine appearances, his worst finish was a 6th in a B main on a prelim night in 2019. His feature finishes are third, third, 10th, first, first, first, second, first. Larson didn't race on Saturday of the Nationals in 2019, and his most recent Nationals feature appearance was that 2018 race when he finished third behind Brad Sweet and Donny Schatz and led two laps. David Gravel is next in Knoxville average finish, sitting at 5.13. He has five wins in recent years, including the '19 title, but wasn't super impressive with the Outlaws back in June with finishes of 7th and 11th. He'll be looking to build on that Capitani Classic win from Sunday. Filling out the rest of the top five in average finish are Logan Schuchart at 5.56, Carson Macedo at 6.0, and Brad Sweet at 6.69. All have won at Knoxville in the past and all will be tough to beat this week. We've talked about Carson Macedo's growing prowess on big tracks, and his weekend sweep at Knoxville back in June was an eye opener. He leads the Outlaws with six wins on half mile tracks in 2021. Looking at a win pick for Saturday, the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula favors Kyle Larson. His past wins there and recent success make him an easy pick for fans and my formula. Gravel, Sweet, Schatz, Schuchart and Macedo trail in win chances from the formula. I also think you need to throw Kerry Madsen in the mix for a possible winner. He's been very good in that Tony Stewart Racing 14 this season, including a recent All Star win at Knoxville. Brian Brown is much improved in recent weeks with Danny Lasoski spinning the wrenches. Sheldon could get hot and be towards the front. I would also take a look at Cory Eliason, Tyler Courtney, Gio Scelzi and Daryn Pittman. Eliason was strong at the Cappy, Courtney has already shown this season he can win on the big stage, and Gio won the 360 Nationals last weekend on top of other recent strong Knoxville runs. For Pittman, driving for Kevin and Jordan Swindell, he has looked really good lately. He nearly won the 360 Nationals last weekend, and was fast at Osky on Monday. Drop me a comment below or on social and let me know who you're picking this week. Do you think it will be one of the usual suspects, or someone else entirely? Let me know.
We talked yesterday on the show about the Roth 83 car, and we found out for certain yesterday that Kasey Kahne will drive the car for the rest of the week. He finished 5th at Osky on Monday, and while I don't think he'll be a win threat, he should give that car a good run over the next few days.
Another fun thing about Knoxville that was on display yesterday was all the special paint schemes. We've already seen and shared some on the show, but yesterday we got to see unveils for Carson Macedo, Shark Racing, Sheldon Haudenschild, and Cory Eliason. Macedo is running a really cool gold paint scheme that features Jason Johnson's 2016 victory. The Shark Racing cars are both throwbacks for Bobby Allen and his 1990 Knoxville win. Sheldon's car is a throwback to a car his dad drove and is wild looking. And Eliason and Rudeen went with a white scheme with blue stripes and accents that is really sharp. If you aren't watching this, jump over to the Outlaw Twitter account to see photos.
There are things happening all day today around the event, but things get serious at 2PM CT with the pit gates opening. From there, the grandstands open at 5:30 and hot laps get underway at 7:15. If you aren't attending, DIRTVision has the live stream all week long.
In a release from the series yesterday, it was revealed that Pennsylvania's Max Blair is planning to join the World of Outlaws Late Model Series full time in 2022 for a rookie run. Blair has been racing recently for Shawn Martin and Viper Motorsports after that team's split with Darrell Lanigan. Blair is a regular with the ULMS racing series where he currently leads the points standings with 10 wins in 2021. He's also been a winner with the Outlaws three times in his career, including most recently at Lernerville in June of 2020. Blair has made nine Outlaw starts this season with a best finish of third at Stateline. In total, he has two top fives and six top tens, including a sixth last weekend at Cedar Lake in the USA Nationals finale. Through the rest of the season, Blair will continue running with the ULMS but does plan on hitting more Outlaw races to try and build a notebook for next season. If it does end up happening, Blair would be a solid addition to the Outlaw lineup and could easily be in line for rookie of the year. He's been a very good regional guy and with what we've seen already from him in the past and this season, shouldn't have any problem being up to speed quickly. For more on the story, checkout worldofoutlaws.com.
With the Short Track Super Series last night at Woodhull Raceway, it was Matt Sheppard taking home the $5500 winner's check. Danny Johnson and Andy Bachetti led laps early, but Sheppard took control on lap 15 of 55 and drove away to the win. Bachetti and Anthony Perrego tried to track him down late in lap traffic, but Sheppard was able to beat them to checkered. Sheppard's win will see him extend his north region points lead over Perrego with only three races remaining in 2021. Woodhull looks like a fun little race track. Very paperclip like with it's straightaways and tight, highbanked corners. You can check out highlights and the race replay from last night over on FloRacing.
If you would like to listen to other dirt racing podcast episodes this week, there is plenty to check out. Winged Nation has Kendra Jacobs, Open Red has Danny Lasoski, LoudPedal has Kevin Thomas Jr., Stick Signals has Dennis Erb Jr., the Rigsby Report has Steve Francis, SuaveTalk has Michael Rigsby, Forward Bite has Wade Knowles, Passing Points has Kyle Clark, TJSlideways has Parker Price Miller and Kaleb Hart, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, Dirt Nerds, Dirt From Knoxville, Quicktime, and Wednesdays with Wayne. To see the full list of podcasts and episodes, hit up dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
There are four shows on the streaming schedule for today. The opening night of the Knoxville Nationals is live on DIRTVision, FloRacing has racing from Action Track USA and Flo 24/7, and Speed Sport has weekly racing from Buena Vista. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
That's it for the show today, hope you have a good Wednesday. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!