With every position in each race representing valuable points, officials have to be focused on doing a perfect job to not allow anyone to jump a start or play games.
“It’s really tough,” said John McCoy, Knoxville Raceway’s race director and promoter. “A couple of years ago we toyed with bringing our starting line to the middle of the straightaway so it’s in front of everybody. We didn’t think that’d be safe. We put a person down there (in turn four). Guys are so smart. I used to do it when I worked in the infield. I listened for brake squealing. They don’t even step on the brake. They just get off the gas.
“As important as hitting your marks, getting off the line, usually the guy jacking around is going to hit someone else. Yeah, he might have dumped the guy behind, but he’s got to make it up. The ones who get away with it would probably say, ‘What an idiot. He doesn’t know what we’re getting away with.’ I’ve seen a lot more people screw up starts. If they were jacking around that’s what they got. It’s not very forgiving in the heat races here.”
Many drivers have noted that the most pressure comes during the preliminary night and if that goes well, the feature is just like another race. However, there is big money on the line on Saturday night.
“We all feel the intensity,” said Brad Sweet, who captured his first Knoxville Nationals triumph last year. “From the word ‘go’ on your prelim night you can feel the intensity in the air. Everybody is running the absolute hardest they can run. There are races during the year you’ll let a guy go or you know you’ll get chopped. That week you’ll run every lap as hard as you can.
“It’s just a different level. That’s the only race to me that is more important than winning a championship,” Sweet continued. “There’s just something special about it. It’s more like our Super Bowl or our World Series so to speak. That race can really make or break your year if you have a good Nationals or a bad Nationals. It moved our team to another level. You dream about putting your name in the Knoxville Nationals winners’ history book. The fact that we’re in it now felt like a calming feeling. The feeling of winning the Knoxville Nationals is so great I don’t think we’ll ever be satisfied leaving there not winning.”
Sweet had gone through the mental paces before as last year was his seventh Nationals feature start in eight years. However, racing in the main event versus competing for the victory are two different things. Especially when 10-time Knoxville Nationals winner Donny Schatz is on your rear bumper with two laps remaining as was the case last year.
“It’s the Knoxville Nationals and he’s the 10-time champion,” Sweet said. “I had a lot of confidence. My car was handling so good that I knew if I hit my marks he wasn’t going to pass me. He hadn’t passed me in the previous 48 laps.”
While Sweet sealed the deal, he and other drivers have noted that it’s easy for someone to take themselves out of contention mentally.
“I think you can get too worried about what other people are doing and not focusing on yourself,” Pittman said. “Everybody is worried about where the No. 15 is, but there are still 23 other cars you have to beat.”
Brown agrees, stating that being strong mentally encompasses what a driver thinks about entering the race as well as how he or she reacts under pressure.
“I’d say probably 80 percent mental and 20 percent to how you react,” he said. “Racing is mental in general. Race car drivers are head strong. You can mentally win and you can mentally get beat. You’re never as good as you think you are and are never as bad as you think you are.
“I’m not sure you can think too much. I just think sometimes you can maybe get off your game a little bit doing something to the car or driving-wise that you wouldn’t normally do. If you’ve worked around two or three setups that work really good and you pull a setup that you’ve never run, that doesn’t make much sense. Some guys bring a brand-new car with everything new. You get there and you have a problem with the steering or you have no brakes. Those are the types of things that can take you out before the race even begins.”
A lot is on the line when the sport’s top drivers arrive in Knoxville, Iowa, each August.
There are a lot of different approaches, but only one driver is able to conquer the intensity, pressure and butterflies to become the sport’s star for the next year.
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