KNOXVILLE, Iowa — Logan Schuchart has enjoyed plenty of success in the Friday night Hard Knox racing program during the NOS Energy Knoxville Nationals at Knoxville Raceway.
Schuchart won the race last year and finished the second the previous year, earning a starting spot in Saturday’s $150,000-to-win main event each time.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Schuchart has struggled to make it into the feature on his qualifying night.
While Schuchart will have to battle the likes of Shane Stewart, Brian Brown, Kraig Kinser and Sammy Swindell among others for the four transfer positions (starting spots 21st through 24th) into Saturday’s feature, he’s been here before.
“I’d like to think experience matters, but if it did I feel like we wouldn’t be racing on Friday,” Schuchart told SPEED SPORT Friday morning. “You can look back at your notes and see what you’ve done in years past.”
Schuchart qualified 17th on Wednesday and failed to make the feature.
“On Wednesday, we thought we were making ourselves a little better by trying something a little different, but it maybe hurt us in the long run,” the DRYDENE-sponsored Shark Racing driver said. “It’s a tough deal, I don’t feel like we were that bad. I feel like the way the situation played out we didn’t get the job done. But that’s the thing about tonight, you get to race again and try to put yourself in the show.”
As a result the team, led by his legendary grandfather, Bobby Allen, changed course — and cars.
“We had two different cars apart yesterday,” Schuchart explained. “We built a new car when we were home for I-55 and to run it here. That’s the car we ran here on Sunday night (Capitani Classic) and that’s the car we ran here on Wednesday and it didn’t seem to go very well. So we put the car we’ve been running all year back together.
“It’s the car that we ran at Eldora (Kings Royal) and it seemed to run good,” he continued. “We have four wins on this car this season, so we are going back to what felt good. Whether there is a difference in it I don’t know, but it makes us feel a little bit better and sometimes that’s all it takes.”
Schuchart realizes the difficulty of the unique format used during the Knoxville Nationals.
“It’s a tough deal in general,” he said. “The way this format works you have some cars I feel that they could luck into the feature and there are some cars that are really good and they’ll be as good in the Friday night show as they have been the last two nights. There are some really good cars that either had some issues or didn’t run as well as they needed to … there are some big names.
“Hopefully, we can get in that top 40. I won this race last year and I’d like to do that again to boost everybody’s confidence and keep learning for the next two nights.”
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