David Gravel (Watertown, Conn.) led drivers with local connections at the 61st Knoxville Nationals as he finished second in Saturday’s A Main at Knoxville Raceway. Donny Schatz (Fargo) won his 11th Knoxville Nationals title.
Gravel started on the outside of the second row in Saturday’s 50-lap main event. He advanced to third on the opening lap and he maneuvered into second place approximately a quarter of the way through the race.
“When I got to second I let Sunshine (Tyler Courtney) go and charge and do his thing,” Gravel said. “There was a comforting feeling running second at the halfway break. I didn’t know I’d take the lead so quickly into the second half of the race. He went down the track and I ran the top and got a run and passed him. That actually hurt me later on. If he stuck the bottom and pulled away I would have known the bottom had something.”
Gravel took the lead on Lap 27 and maintained his advantage running the top lane until Lap 46.
“It was getting a little trickier to run the top,” he said. “I drove as hard as I could and did what I thought I needed to do and that’s just the good or bad thing about sprint car racing, there’s no spotter or rear view mirrors. There’s an element of surprise. I heard Donny (Schatz) going down the backstretch and he slid in front of me and passed me.
“In a perfect world you’d want to run the bottom of turns one and two and the top of turns three and four. After he passed me I went low in turns one and two behind him. Then I missed the bottom in turns three and four. The next corner I really lost ground on the top. After that lap and a half I was faster. With five laps to go and you screw around for two laps there’s just not enough time to get back there.”
Gravel won the Knoxville Nationals in 2019 with Jason Johnson Racing.
“I really want to win this race for Tod (Quiring) and the team,” he said. “I think we had a good week. We were pretty fast every time we hit the race track. We put ourselves in position to win the race. That’s all you can ask for. Leading the race with six laps to go you want to complete that. Sometimes being out front and not being challenged, nothing tells you to try anything different. At the end of the day we got beat by one of the best ever. You just learn from the experience for the next time.”
Logan Schuchart (Hanover, Penn.) was third, Tyler Courtney (Indianapolis) fourth, Jacob Allen (Hanover, Penn.) fifth and 2021 champion Kyle Larson (Elk Grove, Calif.) sixth.
Larson was in Richmond, Va. Saturday afternoon for qualifying for the NASCAR Federated Auto Parts 400, earning the pole position for Sunday’s race. He ran at Knoxville Saturday night and then returned to Richmond Sunday to place 14th.
Brooke Tatnell (Sans Souci, NSW, Australia) drove the DeWall Racing No. 16 to an 16th-place finish in Saturday’s Knoxville B Main.
Two other local drivers were in the E Main, with Matt Wasmund (Jackson) and Skylar Prochaska (Lakefield) 17th.