Knoxville Raceway
Juiced track produces carnage at Knoxville
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Hudson O'Neal's violent tumble; he was OK. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
KNOXVILLE, Iowa (Sept. 18) — Brutal. Just brutal.
There was no other way to describe Thursday’s opener of the Lucas Oil Knoxville Late Model Nationals at Knoxville Raceway. With the sprawling half-mile oval juiced up following earlier showers and an overcast afternoon, lightning-fast speeds created a test of man and machine that left a significant amount of carnage behind. | RaceWire
The scheduled 25-lap preliminary feature became a 49-minute marathon — thanks to four caution flags and three reds — and was ultimately declared official after 19 circuits because of intensifying rain with Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M., the $10,000 winner.
Brian Shirley and Tyler Bruening slammed the turn-three wall after experiencing apparent right-front tire problems. Hudson O’Neal and Carson Ferguson slipped wildly into the steel guardrail between turns one and two. Others succumbed to vision issues resulting from the heavy conditions (Chad Simpson slowed on lap 15 because he was out of helmet tearooms), a cut right-front tire (second-place Brandon Sheppard on lap 16) and motor woes (third-running Ryan Gustin on lap 19).
All the mayhem produced deep stress among everyone in the race who managed to complete the distance, including Alberson. Even while leading every lap, the 36-year-old couldn’t help worrying that he could be next to plunge into misery, though he attempted to block the possibilities from his mind.
“Racing is such a tough deal because, you know, you got a job to do, so obviously (after passing the scene of accidents) you pray for a second and hope the guys are all right and then you just have to try back on to do what you gotta do to do your job the best you can on the next restart,” said Alberson, who won his third full-field Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature of the season. “But seeing Shirley right-front first in the wall and Tyler right-front first on the wall, I didn’t know if they were blowing tires out or what the heck was going on. So for a second there, that’s kind of concerning. You're leading with the right-front here more than most tracks, and you’re going fast, so you’re like man, ‘Are they blowing tires?’ ”
The race actually began in a manner that made is seem it would be spun off quickly and beat the approaching rain. There were no interruptions for the first eight laps, but they proceeded to come hot-and-heavy starting with Shirley’s incident that triggered the first caution flag.
Shirley, 44, of Chatham, Ill., was running sixth when a blown right-rear tire sent him into the turn-three wall. He was able to avoid a catastrophic impact, but his Bob Cullen-owned Longhorn Chassis still sustained damage that would give him and his crew plenty of work before Friday’s second preliminary program.
“I got lucky,” said Shirley, the 2006 Knoxville Nationals winner. “It knocked out all the right-front suspension, got some of the right-rear, the deck, but it all looks like it can be fixed.”
Bruening wasn’t as fortunate. The 39-year-old from Decorah, Iowa, had his strong outing — he held third place from the initial green flag — come to an abrupt end on lap 13 when he hurtled into the third-turn guardrail in nearly the same place as Shirley.
A red flag was displayed because the accident “knocked the wind out of me,” said Bruening, who needed a few minutes to collect himself before climbing out of his Skyline Motorsports Longhorn Chassis. He walked gingerly to the waiting ambulance and was checked over by the medical team before being dropped off at his trailer in the pit area.
“That was the hardest I’ve ever hit,” said Bruening, who winced in pain while discussing the crash because he was dealing with a sore back. “I’m not sure if something broke in the right-front and cut the tire or if it blew out — the tread looks good though — but it just went right into the wall. I was kind of just running there in third because I knew the track was pretty brutal, but you carry so much speed here and never lift. It’s scary fast, especially tonight.”
A lap-15 restart brought another red flag, this one for Martinsville, Ind.’s O’Neal. The 25-year-old star had advanced from the 15th starting spot to seventh and was looked for more with an outside charge through turns one and two when eventual third-place finisher Daulton Wilson of Fayetteville, N.C., slid up the track between the corners and made contact with O’Neal’s SSI Motorsports Longhorn car. Wilson’s right-rear bumped the left-rear of O’Neal’s mount, launching O’Neal into a frightening series of flips.
O’Neal’s car was upside down when its front end hit the top of Knoxville’s high outside guardrail. It then bounced back toward the track with its left-front wheel hanging by a thread, had its nosepiece and front bumper rip off and came to rest with its left-front corner burrowed into the cushion.
Moments after the first flipping accident of the young driver’s decade-old racing career (“I’ve never turned over before”), O’Neal emerged from the cockpit without injury. He said he felt “a hundred percent” and thanked the manufacturers of his safety equipment — K1 Race Gear, Bell Helmets, Armor Seat Belts, Ultra-Shield Seats and Sharp Advantage Safety Products — for keeping him that way amid a vicious wreck.
“I was getting into (turn) one, I had a good run around that top and I was against the cushion,” O’Neal said. “I was kind of laid on the right-rear a little bit and then I felt somebody hit me in the left side and it kind of turned me over.
“It sucks. This place is so big to be that fast, and then to get a little bit of a cushion or something like too, it’s tough. Lot of torn-up race cars (in the race), but we’ll try to to get our other car out — this one’s toast — and we’ll see what we can do the rest of the week.”
Ferguson, 25, of Lincolnton, N.C., added one more calamity to the feature on the lap-19 restart. Running 13th after starting 23rd, he went to the outside entering turn one and his Paylor Motorsports Longhorn Chassis “kind of biked up a little bit,” resulting in a wild series of flips during which the right side of the car smacked the outside wall.
“I tried to turn out of it, and then the wall was right there,” Ferguson said. “I don’t know if I was flipping before I got in the wall or if I got in the wall and that’s what caused me to flip.”
Ferguson said he was “just a little shaken up,” but he acknowledged that the crash was worse than his flip in June during a preliminary feature for the Dream at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.
“That was a little more violent than the Eldora crash flip-wise,” Ferguson said. “Luckily I didn’t get hit like I did there.”
The most disappointing part for Ferguson was the fact that, like at Eldora, his machine fielded by Donald and Gena Bradsher was damaged beyond repair.
“Another new car down the drain,” Ferguson mourned. “It was new (two weeks ago) at the World (100).”
