KNOXVILLE, Iowa – After a rough preliminary night on Wednesday, Kerry Madsen came back for FVP Hard Knox Night at Knoxville Raceway and locked himself into the Knoxville Nationals with authority.
Madsen led all 25 laps of Friday night’s feature at the Marion County Fairgrounds to head the four Hard Knox transfers into Saturday’s $150,000-to-win, $10,000-to-start grand finale.
The No. 2m Big Game Motorsports-owned, KI Crossbows-backed machine raced from the outside pole into the lead on the opening lap and never trailed after that, beating runner-up Logan Schuchart to the checkered flag by 1.232 seconds in the end.
Friday night’s victory was the 23rd of Madsen’s Knoxville Raceway career, and arguably one of the most important he’s ever had at the black-dirt, half-mile oval.
“That’s a big relief, I can tell you that,” the Australian said in victory lane. “We just didn’t perform and execute on Wednesday night, but the car was a rocketship all night tonight and we got the job done. I didn’t know exactly how hard to push there, but I felt like I had a good pace and I just tried to make smooth laps.
“The restarts are always nervous moments, because someone can try and throw a big bomb at you, but I was liking the clean air and we were able to do what we needed to do.”
Though Madsen led all the way, Friday night’s feature took a while to get started, after an aborted start was followed by a multi-car accident down the backstretch when a mechanical failure caused Brian Brown’s FVP No. 21 to slow in the middle of the pack.
That left Brown, among others, with too much damage to continue and puts the 49-time Knoxville winner in a precarious position going into the Saturday program. He’ll be mired deep in the C-main.
From there, Schuchart blasted from eighth to second in two laps and held serve there for the remainder of the race, despite four caution flags that slowed the pace during the 25-lap distance.
“I’m just happy for this team. Kind of like Kerry, we had a rough day on Wednesday, but when you put this team against the ropes, they come back swinging,” noted Schuchart. “This isn’t ever the way I want to make it in, but we’ve done it for the last three years now and it’s proof of how tough this race is to make. It’s the Knoxville Nationals; there’s a reason they call it the Super Bowl of sprint car racing.
“There cars are tough; Kerry was great tonight and we just never got to traffic to be able to catch him.”
Shane Stewart rallied from a nasty flip during his heat race on Thursday to finish third and move on in the CJB Motorsports No. 5, while Dominic Scelzi “did it the hard way again” and claimed the final lock-in spot by holding off a hard-charging Austin McCarl for fourth in the final four-lap dash to the finish.
Spencer Bayston, the night’s KSE Hard Charger, came from 17th on the grid up to sixth.
Madsen, Schuchart, Stewart and Scelzi will start 21st through 24th, respectively, on Saturday night in the 50-lap championship feature.
McCarl and Bayston will share row six of the B-main grid behind the 10 preliminary points lock-ins.
To view complete race results, advance to the next page.
