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By T.J. Buffenbarger
KNOXVILLE, IA (August 10, 2024) — The 63rd edition of the Knoxville Nationals is in the books with Kyle Larson celebrating his second victory in a row and third in the past four editions while flying back to Richmond for work on Sunday. Here are my three takeaways from the finale.
• One media member remarked jokingly that it was a pretty good race with the humans behind Larson. Larson had challengers in Daryn Pittman, Carson Macedo, and Giovanni Scelzi to knock him off the top of the mountain, but none ever got close enough to seriously challenge.
Larson has command of this event in its current form. Years of learning how to run this race are being used while driving for one of the best car owner/crew chiefs in the business in Paul Silva.
Much like Donny Schatz did for a decade, Larson has turned Knoxville on Saturday night into his personal atm machine. As dominant as Larson is he doesn’t make it look easy. There were moments of nearly bouncing off the fence, getting a little over the cushion and being able to pull the car out, and still be able to build momentum and maintain or keep his advantage.
The call by Paul Silva to not change tires turned out to be a great strategy to make sure a new tire that may not respond as well as the ones they had on the car didn’t derail their race.
The ability of Larson, work ethic and mechanical knowledge of Silva, mixed in with drawing the one pill for qualifying on his preliminary night is a master class in everything needed to win the Knoxville Nationals.
After having some struggles with the sprint car of late Larson went on a tear winning at Pevely, the Front Row Challenge at Oskaloosa, his preliminary night at Knoxville, and the finale of the Nationals.
We are once again witness to history just like when Kinser and Schatz were winning the Knoxville Nationals year after year. I get why people end up booing Larson. I’ve witnessed the same thing with Kinser, Schatz, and Lasoski over the years when they won a lot of races. Even if you are the one booing keep in mind Larson’s ability while winning these races if far beyond anything else I’ve witnessed being around sprint car racing my entire life.
• I’m a strong believer that it takes time to develop and win a Knoxville Nationals. Saturday we witnessed several young stars continuing their progress to possibly winning at Knoxville Nationals title in the future.
Giovanni Scelzi is knocking on the door of winning a Knoxville Nationals title. Scelzi now has made the feature event every time he has attempted the Nationals and looked at several points on Saturday, he may have the speed to catch Larson.
Corey Day assuredly has a career on asphalt ahead of him but seems determined to keep racing sprint cars like Larson. Day made a charge through the field well beyond his years on Saturday with his car coming on just a little too late to catch Scelzi and Larson. Day’s race with Larson at the Front Row Challenge on Monday will be talked about for years.
The young talent is not just limited to California as with Anthony Macri scoring a top five finish at the Nationals. When I spoke to Macri at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum he felt lucky to just make the top 16 to lock in. While Macri is modest, his top five performance in my eyes was a statement that he will be a contender at Knoxville for years to come.
• Every year at the Knoxville Nationals there is some discussion about the format, but this year it was intensified due to the new racing surface and conditions the Wednesday qualifiers faced at the Nationals.
I don’t feel a complete overhaul is needed if the format is needed at all. The cream does rise to the top and the buildup to Saturday makes it one of the best events in all of motorsports.
With the changes to the Friday program, I feel one adjustment needs to be made, and that is to start 28 cars in Saturday’s A-Main event.
Before starting to shout about tradition and how this would water down the value of making the Nationals A-Main, let me explain my reasoning.
Before Friday’s program changing the top 20 in points after the preliminary nights were locked into the Saturday’s A-Main event. Friday’s program took four of those spots away from Thursday and Friday and eliminates some of the margin of error for top qualifiers in the preliminary nights. Going to 28 cars in the starting field allows the preliminaries to lock in the top 20 in points, take four from Friday’s program, and four from the B-Main.
This also fixes the issue of not having enough slower traffic in Saturday’s A-Main event. Knoxville Raceway is large enough that we don’t see large groups of slower traffic due to the quality of the drivers and equipment in Saturday’s A-Main. Four more cars will produce the opportunity for more racing through slower traffic.
Granted I’m not the one that would have to pay for this as the Knoxville Nationals A-Main purse from first to last dwarfs anything else in the sport, but I feel the finale on Saturday would race better by adding the four cars.
This change has nothing to do though with Larson’s dominance. My opinion is strictly driven by what I’ve witnessed during the preliminary nights the past few seasons and seeing cars falling out and not leaving many slower cars for the leaders to navigate.