Lanigan wins Friday prelim to 5th Annual Late Model Knoxville Nationals
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Lanigan wins Friday prelim to 5th Annual Late Model Knoxville Nationals
By Stacy Ervin
Darrell Lanigan won the second night of the 5th Annual Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals presented by Super Clean. The $7,000 victory came on Friday, September 26, at the Knoxville Raceway in Knoxville, Iowa.
It was an incredibly exciting win for the driver from Union, Kentucky, who won with a last-lap pass under the checkereds in 0.108 over Jimmy Owens, who dominated most of the race.
Lanigan started on the pole and led the first lap of the 25-lap main before Matt Miller stole the lead on lap two. Miller led for two laps before Lanigan regained the lead under the flagstand on lap four. Just after that, though, he skimmed the turn-two fence and fell back, allowing Miller to lead again.
The race’s only yellow flag came out after lap five when debris was spotted under the flagstand.
After the race went back to green, Miller led two more laps before Owens raced by him in turn one and kept the lead down the backstretch and to the flagstand.
While the two were racing for the lead, Lanigan skimmed the fence again and lost third spot to Billy Moyer.
By the 10th lap, Owens had pulled away from the others a bit and was cruising around on the slick surface until he came to lapped traffic at lap 13.
Owens did a masterful job negotiating traffic from there, but Moyer and Lanigan began closing on him late in the race after Miller slipped back several spots.
Owens looked to be on his way to his first victory here but Lanigan came on so strong out of turn four coming to the checkereds and took the exciting victory.
Donnie Moran set the night’s fastest time trial at 17.662. This was a good recovery after being on his lid for the first time in his career the previous night. A total of 55 cars attempted to race on this night.
Heat races were won by Moyer, Brady Smith, Scott Bloomquist, Steve Francis and Brian Birkhofer. The C-Main was won by Darin Duffy. The B-Main was won by Shannon Babb.
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