PETERSEN MEDIA
The Knoxville Nationals haven’t been very friendly to Cody Darrah over the past few years, but the 2012 edition saw Darrah overcome adversity and put his SurePoint Medical/Sage Fruit/Team ASE machine into the 50-lap feature event.
Qualifying on Thursday night, Cody Darrah turned in an impressive lap that put him 11th quickest and in the first heat race.
On the opening lap of the heat, Jason Johnson lost the handle on his machine, and got into Darrah. The result of the contact was Darrah upside down, and his crew thrashing in the work area to get him back out, but just narrowly ran out of time.
Relegated all the way to the C main, Darrah started on the pole and dominated the race, to tag the rear of the B, where he would take the green in the 21st position.
Poised to make up for the heat race incident, Darrah had his elbows up in the B as he simply passed cars at will, trying to get up to the fourth spot.
Going where there was open space, the Red Lion, PA driver wheeled his Schroth Racing/Roth Motorsports/Speedway Engines No. 4 up to the eighth spot at the line, but missed out on transferring.
Relegated to running the Friday night portion of the Nationals, CD4 continued to show speed as he timed in second fastest in the event.
Scoring a second place finish in his heat, Darrah’s entry would be on the front row for the feature event, with the top four finishes locking themselves into the Saturday night A main.
Falling back to second on the start, Darrah would ride comfortably until Dale Blaney began pressuring him for the bridesmaid position. Falling back to third around the halfway point, Darrah was passed by a hard charging Justin Henderson, dropping him into the fourth and final transfer spot.
With just three laps remaining, Darrah and Kerry Madsen hooked up for a very entertaining fight for fourth, and Madsen got the spot in turns three and four as they were coming to the white flag.
In turns one and two, Darrah through a textbook slider at the Mad Man and re claimed fourth, and took the final transfer spot.
On Saturday night, Darrah was a little off in the feature event as he simply couldn’t get moving forward.
As the race closed out Darrah found himself 21st.
“It was definatley nice to make the show with SurePoint on the car,” said Darrah. “We kind of got a raw deal in our heat on Thursday, but my guys are awesome and gave me a great car on Friday, and luckily we were able to secure a spot in the A. Saturday night we just struggled but we will be okay and will move forward from here.
ON TAP- Cody and his KKR team will be in action on Tuesday night as they take to the dirt at the Junction Motor Speedway in McCool Junction, NE.
STAY CONNECTED- Check in to www.codydarrah.com or visit his facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cody-Darrah/164513250262145?ref=ts for the latest news on Cody.