In the Groove, Part One
Monday, August 8, 2005
by Stacy Ervin - The preview to the annual Knoxville Nationals provided nothing but stellar racing at the Sprint Car Capitol of the World at the Knoxville Raceway.
Starting with the 15th annual 360 Nationals on Thursday, August 4, and Friday, August 5, the annual pilgrimage to the hallowed half-mile kicked off. Thursday’s action saw a record number of entries for this event and found defending champion Billy Alley revved up to defend his title.
On the track Thursday night, Stevie Walsh took perhaps the worst ride of the evening when he flipped violently in turn two after coming together with John Schulz in his heat race. Walsh did not return to action the next night and did not compete on Saturday night either.
Bad luck also plagued Bryan Gossel in one of the B-Mains when he tagged the turn one fence at the start and flipped badly. Darren Stewart suffered his own taste of bad luck on the white flag lap when he was running in the fourth and final transfer spot and suffered a flat left rear tire.
In the other B-Main, Steve King made contact with someone and looped his car, but kept going down the frontstretch on the white flag lap. But the yellow came out for Jamie McDonald, who spun in turn one. Under the caution, leader Johnny Herrera had a flat left-rear tire and fourth and final transfer spot runner Travis Rilat had a flat left-front tire. Neither driver wanted to lose track position by pulling to the work area for the change.
But without the use of the race radios to the drivers, the competitors had a hard time figuring out where to line up. So after several caution laps, Herrera’s tire finally gave out on the restart and blew up. Rilat was also called in when the caution came out.
The first A-Main of the night was a really wild affair from start to finish. The original start was yellowed when Larry Ball Jr. stopped on the backstretch. On the next attempted start, Kerry Madsen stopped in turn one with front-end damage. On the next attempted start, Mike Dussel looped in turn three. On the next attempted start, Bronson Maeschen was sent to the tail for jumping the start. Roger Rager also pulled to the work area.
When the race finally got going, Dusty Zomer built a straightaway lead, coming to lapped traffic by the fourth circuit. On the 10th lap though, Zomer’s lead was nullified when Joe Beaver turned sideways and collected Ryan Anderson, who flipped. Jeff Mitrisin suffered damage to his wing in the incident.
On the restart, Curt Michael grabbed the lead away from Zomer with a slide job in turn one, but the two raced side-by-side with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Loren Langerud right on their tails. Shortly after, just when Michael and Stenhouse had moved into the first and second positions, they got together in turn one and their nerf bars became hooked together, sending them spinning in turn one. Stenhouse kept going so as to avoid the caution, but his right-front tire was flat and he was called into the work area.
That put Langerud in the lead with Zomer second. On the restart, Zomer tried the slide job in turn four but it didn¹t work. The next time, he tried again and cut off Langerud, who took a big flip toward the fence in turn four. In the melee, Dave Hall and Nick Mulheim got together and Hall cartwheeled over the frontstretch inside fence and into the work area.
Zomer had the lead for the restart and went unchallenged to get his first career win at Knoxville. Though he noted he didn¹t mean to hit Langerud, the crowd was not on his side as he tried to celebrate with a victory lane wing dance. The mover of the night was Gary Wright, who came from 22nd starting position to finish second.
The second A-Main of the night was a much quieter affair as Alley flat ran away from the field. On the start, cars tried to go four wide and Eric Baldaccini flipped coming off of turn two. After that, Alley grabbed the lead from Zach Chappell on lap two and never looked back.
The next night, for the finale of the event, fans would see more of the same. As the A-Main pulled onto the track amidst some pageantry set up by the Speed Channel television crew, Jesse Giannetto had to pull in on the pace lap with a broken throttle linkage and he was unable to start the race.
The first yellow came out with nine laps down as Nate Mosher spun in turn four. Alley had built a big lead before that and Brian Brown had just gotten second away from Jake Peters.
With 20 laps down, the second caution came out when Mosher spun again in turn two. Brown had been closing on Alley before that, but could not mount a big enough run.
The yellow came out again on the white flag lap when John VanDenBerg stopped. At that point, Wright had gotten Brown and was on Alley’s bumper. Maeschen and Eric Jobe also spun at this point.
When the race restarted, Alley held off Wright through the green-white-checkered shootout and became only the second driver to win back-to-back championships in this event.
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