By T.J. Buffenbarger
KNOXVILLE, IA (August 6, 2025) — The opening night of the 64th NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals Presented by Casey’s is in the books. After a roller coaster of a preliminary program, here are my takeaways from opening night.
• When Ryan Timms appeared on the sprint car scene and began winning races at the local level, I expected to see him competitive shortly after he became old enough to start racing at the National touring level.
On a night where eight of the top 10 drivers in qualifying failed to transfer through their heat race, Timms charged through his heat race to make the transfer backed up being moving up from eighth starting position in the A-Main.
I feel one of the keys to Timms success on Wednesday was competing at Knoxville on a regular basis this year. Timms is showing an aptitude for qualifying well. When a driver does this on a weekly show, they start sixth in the heat race and must pass cars to put themselves in good position for the feature event.
The two drivers that transferred out of the heat races that were top qualifiers were Timms and Austin McCarl, who both compete at Knoxville on regular, or in Timms case a semi-regular basis. That experience of having to pass cars on the track the Knoxville Nationals takes place and I feel prepared Timms for the pressure situation of the Knoxville Nationals heat race.
The Knoxville shows combined with some of the travel Timms has done with the sprint car this year appears to be a recipe for success.
The other factor I feel that is maximizing Timms talent moving from his family-owned sprint car effort into the Liebic Mototsports entry. In a few years I believe we will pinpoint that as a career defining moment for Timms. If you had asked me last year if Timms would have this kind of performance in his family-owned entry, I would have answered no.
For a short time, I felt when Timms went to Keith Kunz Motorsports some other form of racing would have swept him away and we would never get to see this opportunity. At this year’s Nationals we get to see Timms be one of the starring players at the Knoxville Nationals.
At just 18 years of age, I hope we get to see more Ryan Timms performances like this one in future Knoxville Nationals.
• While Timms may have put himself in the conversation as a potential driver to unseat Kyle Larson at Knoxville Nationals champion, for the second year in a row David Gravel ended up encountering problems that will make winning at Knoxville Nationals title this year extremely difficult.
When Gravel drew a number for qualifying that had him going out 49th and set the fourth fastest time overall, it appeared Gravel had overcome the biggest hurdle to putting himself in contention for being one of the highest in points.
Gravel’s Knoxville Nationals title hopes took a serious blow after contact with Hunter Schuerenberg sent Gravel into the fence and upside down in turn one before a single lap was completed in the heat race.
For the second year in a row Gravel appeared to be on the cusp of being one of the top, if not the top Nationals contender only to run into issues on his preliminary night.
To Gravel and the Big Game Motorsports team credit, instead of just packing in it for the night and deferring to Friday’s program Gravel made the attempt at an alphabet soup charge winning the C-Main and charging from 21st to 8th in the B-Main. Losing all the heat race points and not making the feature mired Gravel in 20th in points and will have him competing in the Hard Knox program.
With 50 laps there is time to work with to move forward, but with the level of drivers and teams in the sport now, the odds are staggering against a Gravel/Big Game win on Saturday in the A-Main and car owner Tod Quiring winning his first Knoxville Nationals as a car owner.
• Much like there are five stages of emotions while grieving, I believe there are five stages of emotions when at the Knoxville Nationals.
Tuesday the emotion is amazement. People are happy to be here and look forward to what is possible. With the pre-race parties and the night off to socialize everyone is typically in a pretty good mood.
Wednesday night is anger. Every year fast qualifiers tend to struggle early in the preliminary program and calls for burning the entire format down begin.
As I showed last year in a story I did leading into the Nationals seeing is racing on Wednesday or Thursday mattered (https://tjslideways.com/2024/08/04/by-the-numbers-at-knoxville-wednesday-or-thursday-does-it-matter/), the splits between 2021 and 2023 were 12-12, 11,13, and 13-11 for drivers from Wednesday and Thursday’s programs making the feature.
While other top qualifiers struggled on Wednesday, Timms and McCarl excelled in heat race action. McCarl had a tougher road having a start called back where he had a great start and was shuffled backwards on the subsequent restart, recovering to earn a transfer position.
By tomorrow happier emotions will return again as the track typically widens out and more of the top qualifiers transfer directly from the heat races to the A-Main, and by the time Saturday’s A-Main rolls around I think it’s highly likely that we see a near even split between the Wednesday and Thursday night competitors again in the A-Main.
The other aspect to remember when thinking of the challenging format is this race has a purse of over 1.1 million dollars and pays $15,000 just to start Saturday’s finale, which is more than the top national touring series pay to win a standard program.
With that kind of money and prestige on the line, it’s not supposed to be easy.