Swindell notches 44th win at Knoxville; Garner takes 360 Feature
Saturday, July 31, 2010
By Bob Wilson
KNOXVILLE, Iowa (July 31) – Sammy Swindell captured his 44th career win (5th all-time) at Knoxville Raceway Saturday night as this track inched ever closer to its 50th annual Knoxville Nationals (August 11-14). On the 360 side of things Clint Garner led flag to flag to register his 7th career win here in his tune up for the 20th 360 Nationals next weekend at this storied track.
Only two laps were in the books for the 410 feature when Jonathan Cornell made contact with the turn three fence. The altercation damaged his car too badly and he was unable to restart. When the race was restarted Brook Tatnell led Austin McCarl, Dusty Zomer and Swindell back to green. The top three running cars chose the high cushion as only Swindell tested his luck on the bottom. Right away Swindell moved into third and on the next circuit made a pass of McCarl to take second from this same line.
After that Swindell began to close the gap between himself and Tatnell. The half-way point in the 20-lap event saw the front runners head into lap traffic. The following circuit saw Swindell dive low in turns 3-4 and exit with the lead coming to the flag stand. He then began to pull away from the field. Swindell showed what a professional he was as not even the lap cars impeded his progress on this big half mile.
Behind him a great race broke out between Tatnell and young McCarl. As those two cars headed into the white flag lap, McCarl had the lead coming past the start/finish line. Seconds later McCarl slowed and brought his car to the pits at that late moment the victim of a broken rear end.
Swindell was paid $3,000 for the win as Tatnell followed and a late surge by Jason Johnson yielded third. Following were Trevor Green, Skip Jackson, Zomer, Brent Antill (from 11th), Bronson Maeschen (from 13th), Brian Brown and Josh Schneiderman.
Garner, who started on the pole, was up to the test as he led the 360 feature from start to finish. Tony Shilling finished third to secure a career best here. Two reds and two yellows slowed the event to single file restarts in this 15-lap feature.
Garner was chase early on by Johnny Anderson. Soon, Shilling passed for the runner-up spot and trailed in close quarters until a lap 14 restart saw Anderson retake second. In fact, Shilling had taken the lead on lap 14 but the yellow flag negated his newly-gained position.
In the end, Garner took the win by little more than ten car lengths with Anderson, Shilling, Dustin Slevage and Chad Humston trailing. Completing the top ten were Kyle Hirst, Jon Agan (from 15th) Ryan Roberts, Dave Hall and Austin Alumbaugh (from 19th). Several new teams were competing tonight in both the 360s and 410s in an effort to tune up for the Nationals events for both divisions as 38 cars in each division took qualifying time trials.
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