Being the 10-time Knoxville Nationals champion that he is, Donny Schatz has experienced Knoxville Raceway in virtually every context. Wednesday’s first of two qualifying nights for the legendary event, on the other hand, was apparently new terrain for the future National Sprint Car Hall of Famer.

“Tonight was just a … I don’t know … something I’ve never seen there,” said Schatz, ultimately referring to the half-mile’s narrow and difficult racing conditions that only saw two of the top 20 drivers in time trials advance outright to the 25-lap main event. Schatz and 2019 event champion David Gravel were those lone two drivers that avoided the B-main after qualifying in the top 20.

“I don’t know what you say there,” Schatz added.

Sprint Car enthusiasts are well aware that the Knoxville Nationals format is unique as it gets.

There’s an eight-car invert for the 10-lap heat races and only the top-four advance to the 25-lap main event among two qualifying nights. The top 16 in points combined from Wednesday and Thursday lock in to Saturday’s grand finale, as qualifying awards just as much as the feature finish at 200-198-196 and so forth while the heats award 100-97-94 and so on.

Schatz (469), Gravel (469), Brent Marks (462), Parker Price-Miller (457), Justin Sanders (456), Aaron Reutzel (447), Giovanni Scelzi (445) and Wednesday winner Logan Schuchart (444) make up the top-eight in points following night one.

Wednesday’s conditions, which Schuchart described as “slop” his first heat race, hurt a slew of fast starters, such as Sheldon Haudenschild, who timed eighth of 51 cars but couldn’t make the main event from the eighth-starting spot in the B-main.

The fastest three qualifiers in Price-Miller, Marks and Sanders were three of the four transfer cars in Wednesday’s stiff B-main that also featured Ian Madsen — the remaining transfer car — as well as Shane Golobic, Justin Henderson, Brady Bacon, Cory Eliason, Brock Zearfoss, Terry Phillips and seventh-fastest qualifier Sawyer Phillips.

“The format is tough. We didn’t qualify well, and had to run in the first heat race. It’s all slop,” said Schuchart, who qualified 26th but finished well enough in his heat to leverage the eight-car invert in the feature. “You can’t really pass. We took what we got there. We got lucky and started up front. Took advantage of that to win the A-main.”
Schuchart took his second checkers at Knoxville in four days, backing up Sunday’s win in the Capitani Classic at the famed half-mile. But the Shark Racing driver said Wednesday he “didn’t feel stuck to the racetrack like on Sunday.”

“I felt locked down on Sunday, and today, it felt like I had to drive to the top and run around with some speed to get going,” Schuchart said. “Through qualifying, it looked like the track wasn’t going to be ready to race for a while. Even once they ran it in in the first heat race it still wasn’t really ready to go.

“There was a lot of slop on the racetrack. I felt like I ran through the grease and slid across the track the first two corners from the tires having slimy stuff on them. It took a while to run. It just makes it hard, especially for a guy like Parker Price-Miller, who started eighth in the first heat race after going quick time. You really have no chance, especially in today’s day and age when they don’t give you a racetrack to race on.”

Gravel, meanwhile, finished on the podium of his qualifying night for the fifth Knoxville Nationals in a row. That stat suggests he isn’t bothered by the format on the whole.

He also knows he’s narrowly avoided trouble like some of his fellow competitors that weren’t so fortunate on Wednesday.

“There are some guys that get shafted that don’t even make the A-main that qualified good,” Gravel said. “It’s a unique format. There’s some dead spots in it but there isn’t any format  no perfect format — there’s good and bad things about every one. It’s kind of a tradition now. The only thing I’d like different is maybe no break and no new tires. It’s two short races, and you can go fast and burn (the tires) off, which to me — a big race, a long race — there should be a little bit of game planning there, you know?

“The track conditions will be different on Saturday. Guarantee that. It’s going to be a lot hotter, a lot more laps, it’s a long week. We’ll see what happens.”