Shane Stewart Wins At Knoxville Raceway
Shane Stewart won his fifth 360 Nationals title, as expected. He and Paul Silva have the right combination for this event, and should be close next week for Knoxville Nationals. Hope they can get up front then as well.
The race behind Shane Stewart was good, with Kevin Swindell, Kyle Larson, Brad Sweet, Wayne Johnson, Clint Garner, Jason Johnson, Danny Lasoski… all were swapping positions throughout the entire race. Larson was running eighth at halfway, and then all of a sudden he picked off cars quickly and moved into fifth by lap 20, and third on lap 24, and he and Kevin raced hard for second on the last restart.
Brian Brown came from 19th to sixth all under green flag conditions, and got to fourth on the last restart. One more restart or yellow early and he might have got up front to challenge Stewart I think. Sweet was up to second at halfway but couldn’t hold off Swindell and Larson at the end and came home fifth. Wayne Johnson held second until halfway, and then faded to eighth.
Scott Winters won the B-main and finished tenth in an impressive showing for him. Clint Garner was up to third early, then sixth at halfway, and finished eleventh. Was hoping Garner could stay up toward the front, but this was a stacked field of cars.
Pretty short blog, but that wraps up the 360 Nationals with a nice box, ribbon, and bow on top. On to Knoxville Holy Week present number two… The Capitani Classic is Sunday, the last 410 tune-up for the Nationals next week. It’s also a 410 points race and our weekly points race between Bronson Maeschen and Ian Madsen is a tight one, and tonight is a big night for them both. It’s a special format to work with 60-70 cars with seven heats and two or three B-Main’s. But it also pays $5,000 to win. We should see several WoO teams tonight, some All-Stars, IRA, MOWA, PA Posse, and California teams here. But most of all this race honors legendary Knoxville promoter Ralph Capitani and tonight we celebrate his legacy at the “Cappy”.
My Knoxville Nationals preview will be here on Tuesday morning, so look for that! (It’s lengthy to make up for the shortness of this blog.)
Thanks to everyone who came out and purchased Bob Wilson and I’s book yesterday at the track, Hope to see more people in the coming days. Just amazing how many people come to Knoxvile from all corners of the world, and how many years in a row they come too.
*Be sure to use the official hash tag, #KXVNATS13 and #CapitaniClassic
*Eric can be contacted at arniebhg@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @_EricArnold.
*The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and not necessarily those of Knoxville Raceway.
Author: Eric Arnold, Knoxville Raceway Blogger & Twitter Commentator
Shane Stewart Photos
Photos: ShaneStewart.com
