KNOXVILLE, Iowa — Death, taxes and Brady Bacon winning USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship races at Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway.
Few things can be said to be certain. Yet, Bacon’s prowess of Knoxville’s half-mile dirt oval continued on Saturday night as he took the lead from Jake Swanson with 11 laps remaining, and fended off Briggs Danner in the waning laps to win the Avanti Windows & Doors Corn Belt Clash.
Bacon pocketed a cool $15,000 for his efforts aboard the Chris Dyson Racing/Concord American Flagpole – Racer Magazine/Triple X/Rider Chevy.
In 15 career USAC National Sprint Car feature starts at Knoxville, Bacon has won six times and finished inside the top-three on 13 overall occasions.
On top of all that, Bacon’s Knoxville win was the 63rd of his USAC National Sprint Car career, moving him past Dave Darland and into second place on the all-time list. Bacon now trails only Grant now who remains at 67 career series victories.
Bacon had his work cut out in this particular one as he started seventh on the grid for the 30-lap main event. But pretty much instantaneously, he was moving forward. On the opening lap, he used the low line to elevate three positions up the pecking order to fourth. By the second lap, he’d surged by Friday night feature winner Kyle Cummins on the back straightaway to take over third.
“I know the wing guys maybe don’t like it that good on the bottom, but we kind of have to have something like that to be able to maneuver around and run the middle a little bit,” Bacon said of the track conditions. “There were a lot more options tonight and it just gave me more opportunities to pass cars. Starting on the inside on the initial start was pretty helpful and we got to fourth right away. I honestly thought Jake was pretty much gone, but fortunately, the lapped traffic kind of held him up enough to where we were able to catch him and capitalize on that, and get by him, then hold on during that restart.”
Swanson was running up front in a backup ride after severely damaging the car he ran 24 hours earlier, which he flipped hard after a right front spindle suddenly broke, sending him flipping in turn three. This ride was much smoother and faster for Swanson who led second place runner Justin Grant for the initial six circuits.
On lap seven, Bacon got a drive under Grant on the back straightaway to slot into the second spot. However, by that point, Swanson was long gone, and Bacon was forced to overcome a nearly six second deficit. Without the benefit of a yellow flag for the majority of the race, Bacon was going to be tasked with erasing the substantial deficit under green flag conditions.
Kevin Thomas Jr. got up into the mix on lap 11 as he drove under Grant on the front straight to grab third. Meanwhile, Swanson began to work lapped traffic at the halfway point of the race, which began to crimp his style as his lead dwindled from just a tick under six seconds to a little over one second in the span of about three laps, and was continuously shrinking.
By the 19th lap, Bacon had caught Swanson as the top-two drivers employed two different tactics with Swanson running the top and Bacon occupying the bottom as the pair ran side-by-side through the long, sweeping corners. As the two entered turn one for the 20th time, Swanson altered course and dove to the bottom ahead of Bacon.
However, Swanson couldn’t stick the bottom and drifted up into no man’s land in the middle of the racetrack. As Swanson fought to attain any sort of traction through the slick, Bacon had all four wheels in the moisture along the bottom, which he utilized to rush by Swanson and into the lead with 11 laps remaining.
Over the ensuing next six laps, Bacon spiked his lead to 1.7 seconds over Swanson, but a caution with four laps to go changed all that in the blink of an eye when Thomas Jr. and the lapped car of Clinton Bruns got together in turn four, resulting in Bruns spinning to a stop to necessitate the feature’s only stoppage.
With a clear track ahead of him, but a full hornet’s nest behind him, Bacon had a couple of options on the lap-27 restart. To go high or to go low, that was the question.
“I knew I probably needed to be on the bottom because you get such a good run down the back straightaway if you do it right,” Bacon explained. “I was being a little conservative on the first couple of laps after the restart, and I knew I just needed to pick up the pace and not miss it. Sometimes, a little faster you go, the better your car works, but you run the risk of missing it. If I would have missed it, he would have blown right by me. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.”
The he was Danner who was among a swarm of drivers on the attack for the win with three laps remaining. As the triumvirate of Bacon, Swanson and Thomas Jr. scratched along the bottom, Danner took to the high side, taking advantage of a two-for-one deal when he blitzed around the outside of Thomas Jr., then Swanson in turns one and two to take over second.
It was there, however, that Bacon saw the nose of Danner’s racecar make an appearance on the right side of his peripheral vision. In counterpoint, Bacon immediately eschewed the bottom in favor of the top entering turn three, and throughout the rest of the way.
“I saw him poking his nose on the outside of me there,” Bacon recalled. “So, I just knew I had to pick up the pace over here and then get back to the top and run my line where I needed to be. I was just scared to be too tight up there on that restart with my air being low. But on the bottom, I wasn’t any good down there. Luckily, I was able to not lose the lead there, then I picked up the pace on the bottom in one and two before getting back up to the top in three and four.”
Danner closed to within a single car length of Bacon who once again hit the bottom of turns one and two. But the turn two cushion proved to be a bit tricky for Danner. On the final lap, Danner snagged the turn two ledge, which snapped him sideways and deterred his momentum. On the final trip into turn three, Bacon once more swapped lanes to the top, deterring Danner from making one last ditch effort to steal the win.
Bacon emerged across the finish line as a winner, 0.675 seconds ahead of Danner who finished as the runner-up with Thomas Jr. third, Swanson fourth and C.J. Leary fifth.
USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship, Knoxville Raceway, Knoxville, Iowa, May 30, 2-26
LEARNLAB QUALIFYING: 1. C.J. Leary, 53, Fox-19.017; 2. Justin Grant, 4, TOPP-19.027; 3. Gavin Miller, 21AZ, Team AZ/Curb-Agajanian-19.062; 4. Kyle Cummins, 3p, Petty-19.079; 5. Kevin Thomas Jr., 3R, Rock Steady-19.113; 6. Jake Swanson, 5T, Daming Swanson-19.144; 7. Cale Coons, 63, Dooling/Curb-Agajanian-19.189; 8. Logan Seavey, 57, Abacus-19.301; 9. Mitchel Moles, 19AZ, Reinbold/Underwood-19.321; 10. Brady Bacon, 20, Dyson-19.330; 11. Briggs Danner, 39, Hogue-19.356; 12. Ryan Bernal, 17, Dunkel-19.433; 13. Chase Stockon, 92, Sertich-19.501; 14. Hayden Reinbold, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-19.535; 15. Riley Kreisel, 91, Kreisel-19.572; 16. Kobe Simpson, 21K, Simpson-19.686; 17. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-19.753; 18. Steven Snyder Jr., 87, CB/Spire-19.807; 19. Charles Davis Jr., 47, Davis-19.835; 20. Justin Zimmerman, 1, Herrell-19.851; 21. R.J. Johnson, 1p, Petty-19.857; 22. Troy Carey, 45N, Carey-20.244; 23. Glen Saville, 75, Grasmere-20.475; 24. Jake Kouba, 6K, Kouba-20.769; 25. Clinton Bruns, 7, Bruns-20.890; 26. Dakota Earls, 15E, Earls-21.089; 27. Ben Woods, 11B, B & R-21.110; 28. Lance Silvers, 7x, Silvers-23.641.
K1 RACEGEAR FIRST HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Brady Bacon (3), 2. Chase Stockon (2), 3. Cale Coons (4), 4. Kyle Cummins (5), 5. Kobe Simpson (1), 6. C.J. Leary (6), 7. Charles Davis Jr. (7), 8. Troy Carey (8), 9. Clinton Bruns (9), 10. Lance Silvers (10). 2:45.220
TJ FORGED SECOND HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Briggs Danner (3), 2. Robert Ballou (1), 3. Justin Grant (6), 4. Logan Seavey (4), 5. Kevin Thomas Jr. (5), 6. Hayden Reinbold (2), 7. Glen Saville (7). 2:44.831
K & N FILTERS THIRD HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Steven Snyder Jr. (1), 2. Ryan Bernal (3), 3. Jake Swanson (5), 4. Gavin Miller (6), 5. Mitchel Moles (4), 6. Riley Kreisel (2), 7. R.J. Johnson (7), 8. Ben Woods (9), 9. Jake Kouba (8). 2:46.151
FEATURE: (30 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Brady Bacon (7), 2. Briggs Danner (8), 3. Kevin Thomas Jr. (2), 4. Jake Swanson (1), 5. C.J. Leary (6), 6. Gavin Miller (4), 7. Justin Grant (5), 8. Kyle Cummins (3), 9. Logan Seavey (11), 10. Cale Coons (10), 11. R.J. Johnson (20), 12. Mitchel Moles (12), 13. Steven Snyder Jr. (9), 14. Ryan Bernal (13), 15. Chase Stockon (14), 16. Robert Ballou (18), 17. Kobe Simpson (17), 18. Hayden Reinbold (15), 19. Charles Davis Jr. (19), 20. Jake Kouba (24), 21. Troy Carey (22), 22. Ben Woods (23), 23. Clinton Bruns (25), 24. Riley Kreisel (16), 25. Glen Saville (21), 26. Lance Silvers (26)
