SHELDON HAUDENSCHILD
As he has begun to mature as a racer, Sheldon has grown consistently faster. This is his fourth season piloting the Stenhouse Jr./Marshall Racing No. 17 and his fifth season as a fulltime Outlaw.
The second-generation Outlaw has earned four wins with the series thus far in 2021, with one coming at the half-mile Eldora Speedway. He also won the Knoxville Raceway regular season opener in April.
Like most racers, Sheldon‘s struggle will be with mental consistency throughout the most stressful week of the year. He‘s made the A-Main twice, finishing 14th in 2015 and moving forward from 15th to seventh in 2019. Haudenschild finished seventh in the 2020 Capitani Classic and third in the Outlaws finale in June.
DARYN PITTMAN
Pittman has the talent to win the Knoxville Nationals. The 2013 World of Outlaws champion has been in the big show for the last 10 consecutive runnings and has been in the starting lineup a total of 17 times. He pulled off the Outlaws tour for 2021 and was prepared to move on to a new career but, after his original plans fell through, returned to driving behind the wheel of the Swindell SpeedLab No. 39. But Daryn‘s been running only a limited schedule and he and Kevin Swindell have been seeing mixed results heading into August, which is the reason we have not ranked Daryn higher.
Ironically, in the 2019 Nationals he finished third, his career best finish, and post-race stated that he felt like he‘d finally figured out the Knoxville oval. He‘s finished in the top-five twice before (fifth in 2011 and fourth in 2016 after starting on the pole) and has recorded four additional top-10 finishes. If he and Swindell can click, Pittman could have a big finish in the Nationals.
SHOW MAKERS
RICO ABREU
Rico Abreu has put his No. 24 in the field for the past five consecutive runnings. His career best finish was a run from 14th to eighth in 2017. Abreu ran fourth in his prelim and ninth in the finale in the 2020 Capitani Classic. It‘s likely he‘ll be on the starting grid for the 60th Nationals.
LANCE DEWEASE
PA Veteran Lance Dewease is currently leading the Williams Grove Speedway points battle after claiming three wins so far this season driving the Donny Kreitz-owned No. 69K with crew chief Davey Brown.
Dewease has made the Knoxville Nationals A-Main eight times, with his most recent start coming in the last Nationals. He has finished in the top 10 twice, driving from 24th to ninth in 2011 and from 15th to eighth in 2012.
CORY ELIASON
Cory Eliason should be able to put the Rudeen Racing No. 26 in the show. He earned his first spot on the grid in 2017, then raced to a 17th-place finish.
In 2018, the Selma, California racer ran to an eighth-place finish in his qualifying night feature, placing him in a fifth-place starting position in the Saturday B-Main, needing only one spot to make the show. Instead, he drifted to 14th in the B-Main on Saturday and his Nationals was over.
However, he rebounded in 2019, finishing fourth in his qualifying night feature to lock into a 13th-place starting position in the big show. He finished 13th.
TIM KAEDING
Tim Kaeding has made the Knoxville Nationals A-Main nine times, including the last Nationals, in 2019, when he drove one of Jason Sides‘ mounts to a fourth-place finish (he also finished fourth back in 2009). In 2018 he landed in the top-five.
He‘ll be back in one of Jason Sides‘ cars again this year, with additional help from his California car owner, Roger Hamilton. There‘s no doubt that Kaeding not only knows how to make the show, but also bring home some strong finishes.
IAN MADSEN
Though he and his brother Kerry hail from New South Wales, Australia, Knoxville is Ian Madsen‘s American home track. Ian has put himself into the big show for the past four consecutive runnings (with a career total of six starts) and hasn‘t finished worse than 15th in those last four outings, with two top-10s (ninth in 2016 and 10th in 2017) as his best finishes. The two-time Knoxville Raceway champion (2014 & 2017) struggled in the 2020 One and Only and was competing with the All Stars when the Outlaws ran Knoxville in June.
Madsen got mixed results with Sam McGhee Motorsports, but earned five runner-up All Stars finishes before finally nabbing the Ohio Sprint Week opener at Attica Raceway Park in June. He parted ways with the No. 11 car shortly thereafter, and at the time of this writing was planning to compete in the Nationals, however, had not yet finalized with which car owner. How Ian performs will hinge upon what car he‘s piloting.
TERRY McCARL
Only Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell, and Danny Lasoski have more career starts in the Knoxville Nationals A-Main than Terry McCarl. McCarl has made the finale an amazing 22 times, tied with Donny Schatz.
McCarl has earned 59 career feature wins at Knoxville Raceway, ranked third all-time behind Danny Lasoski (112 wins) and Doug Wolfgang (60). The Iowa native made his first Nationals A-Main in 1987 (finishing 12th) and has been in the finale the majority of years since 1992. To date, his best shot at a win came in 2004 when he started from the pole and brought home a fifth-place finish. His career-best finish came in 2007, when he started sixth and landed on the podium. He‘s cracked the top-10 six times throughout his career.
The seven-time Knoxville Raceway champion missed the show in 2019, but made the field the previous five consecutive years. The Hall of Famer will likely race his way into the Saturday A-Main.
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