By T.J. Buffenbarger
KNOXVILLE, IA (August 8, 2024) — On a Thursday night in mid-July there was a large crowd gathered around Bill Balog’s crashed race car after a vicious accident during the Jokers Jackpot preliminary night at Eldora Speedway. Just less than a month later another large crowd surrounded Balog at Knoxville Raceway. This time it was to celebrate Balog qualifying for the Knoxville Nationals finale for the first time in his career.
Balog found out he had made the feature from longtime supporter Wayne Corini shortly after the race, and from there on the 10-time Interstate Racing Association champion originally from North Pole, Alaska now living in Heartland, Wisconsin was basking in the moment with a large group of well-wishers.
“It feels great,” said Balog. “We started first coming to the nationals years ago and kind of just came here to drink beer, really. We didn’t really have any sort of real shot at it, I guess you could say. The last several times we’ve been here we’ve been trying hard to learn a little bit. We had some good help tonight. It feels really good to be locked in.”
Balog’s night did not start out promising drawing a number that sent him out 35th for qualifying. Balog and his team were able to take the late draw in stride due to a recent stretch of pulling bad numbers for qualifying for the past month with the World of Outlaws.
“We’ve been drawing pretty much like that for the last several months. We had one good pill draw at Eldora to kind of break it up, but we’ve been drawing horrible lately. If you’re good in your car is good, I think you can make it. But based on qualifying last night, it wasn’t very promising.”
After laying down the 15th fastest time, Balog was able to advance from sixth to third position in his heat race, which turned out to be the key component in helping Balog make the Saturday A-Main for the Knoxville Nationals.
“We were restarting really well,” Balog said of the good start that helped propel him forward in the heat race. “Grant was helping us kind of set the car up, which is a huge help. We just had everything kind of going right and things fell the right way. I didn’t run anybody over and was able to make a little bit of speed. We weren’t the greatest in the heat, but we made a little bit of speed and just got through there.”
Once the preliminaries were complete Balog found himself on the front row for the feature with Rico Abreu, who many feel is one of the favorites to win the Nationals. Balog was able to get out front and lead the first 11 laps before Abreu caught him in slower traffic and the handling on the car began to fade.
“I was just hitting the bottom good. I knew the bottom was going to be good,” said Balog of getting out front from the pole position. Then when we got to lap traffic, I started to get really free on entry and was having to slow down a little bit. There’s some disappointment. I think our car was a little bit better than fifth place, but those are four really good cars, so I’m pretty happy.”
For Balog, making the Knxoville Nationals is a high point of his first full season on the road with the World of Outlaws tour. While many onlookers felt this could be a bucket list item Balog wanted to accomplish before hanging up his helmet, Balog already hopes he can have a few more season on the road with the Outlaws.
“We’d like to run the Outlaw deal for a couple more years, and I’m getting older. I think we’ve been really fast the last two years most of the time. We’ve obviously had a lot of bad nights too. I do this for a living, and I like to not be bad at it. So, making the Nationals is an awesome accomplishment for me.”
In the immediate time Balog now is focused on preparing for his first Knoxville Nationals finale, which up until this point he has only watched from the outside. When asked how he would feel on the parade lap with a sold-out Knoxville Raceway, Balog had not really contemplated that until being posed the question.
“I’m not sure,” said Balog on what he might feel during the parade laps on Saturday. “I get goosebumps when I watch it every year. So yeah, it’s possible it happens in the car as well.”