KNOXVILLE, Iowa — Rico Abreu, who won Friday night’s Hard Knox feature and made his way into his sixth Knoxville Nationals main event, seems to be taking a bit of a Zen approach to racing and life these days.
Abreu missed being locked into Saturday night’s B main by a single point, putting him into the Hard Knox program.
“I feel like everything happens for a reason,” Abreu said. “There was a reason I qualified 30th last night and there was a reason I missed the B main by one point. I’ll take this. I love racing. I love any chance that I get to race. I wasn’t worried, I knew I could win this race tonight.”
The 29-year-old driver has definitely matured in his approach to racing.
“It is the circumstance we were in. I show up at these races to win,” he continued. “I worked on my mindset and my emotions as a driver to not beat myself up so much about a poor finish. As I have gotten older and matured, I’ve come to understand sprint car racing and how difficult it is and how important it is to be consistent in this sport.”
• Paul McMahan, who was involved in a multi-car crash on Thursday night that saw his CJB Motorsports No. 5 burst into flames, was in the pits on Friday. McMahan is locked into Saturday night’s B main and said his participation on Saturday will be a game-time decision.
“I feel OK,” the 50-year-old drier said. “It’s just my head and it’s getting better by the hour. We’ll just have to wait and see tomorrow and see if I can get in the car and run that B main.”
McMahan confronted Carson Macedo, who took blame for causing the accident, on Thursday night and explained what he said on Friday.
“I was very upset last night that I didn’t get to make my 21st Knoxville Nationals because somebody made a stupid mistake,” McMahan said. “I just wanted to let him know that I wasn’t happy about it because he upset both of our Nationals. He has a lot of Nationals left and I don’t have very many.”
• Shane Stewart came out of retirement to take another chance at the Nationals and qualified for his 20th main event, driving for Bernie Steubgen. Stewart, who is 45, says a lot has changed in recent years.
“The speed here has changed so much here over the last three or four years with these young guys racing,” Stewart explained. “Kyle Larson has made me such a fan of sprint car racing because I know how hard it is to race these cars and he makes it look so easy. I tried to study a little bit of what he was doing last night. You can always learn from somebody and I try to do that. I don’t know how many more races I have left in me.
“My main focus is Port City Raceway (he’s the promoter) and we race all the way through October. We talked about maybe doing World Finals and maybe picking and choosing a few races next year and maybe trying to do this race again next year. I’m thankful that they have this race on Friday night. The last two years I had to come through this year and the last two years have been my toughest races to make in the Knoxville Nationals.”
• Shane Stewart, Brock Zearfoss, Anthony Macri, Daryn Pittman, Logan Wagner, Austin McCarl, Terry McCarl and Lucas Wolfe were among the drivers in Friday night’s first heat. That’s a lot of race wins right there.
• Sixty-nine of the 71 drivers and teams eligible to compete on Friday night made the call. Parker Price-Miller and Cale Thomas, both who crashed on Thursday, did not make the call.
• There was a huge double flip in the first heat race. Austin McCarl missed his timing on a slide job of Logan Wagner and both cars crashed into the turn-two wall and flipped high above the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum. Neither driver was injured.
• Jacob Allen shredded a tire while leading Friday’s second B main with two laps remaining. Allen will start deep in the alphabet on Saturday night.
• McKenna Haase won her heat race and Harli White finished second after a strong drive in the first B main, putting both in Friday night’s feature.