The Knoxville Nationals is not an easy race to win.                   
The most prestigious and best-paying sprint-car race in the world was held for the 47th time on Saturday night at Knoxville Raceway, and Donny Schatz claimed the $150,000 top prize for the second-consecutive year. In the process, Schatz denied a long list of hopefuls an opportunity to win the event, which annually draws sprint-car followers from around the country to the Marion County Fairgrounds for four days in August.
Schatz was one of only three (Steve Kinser and Danny Lasoski) drivers in this year’s 105-car field that had won the event in the past, and one of only nine that have enjoyed a Nationals victory in the past 20 years.
During that span, Steve Kinser has won seven times, Lasoski four and Mark Kinser three. Kraig Kinser, Dave Blaney, Bobby Allen and Doug Wolfgang are the only drivers during that period to have won the race just once.
Winning the Nationals is elation of the highest level. Losing is agony.
Saturday night, several of the sport’s most successful competitors left heartbroken again.
Stevie Smith made his 15th start in the Nationals A main and a flat tire put him on the sideline with only a handful of laps in the books.
Craig Dollansky has been visiting the Nationals for nearly as long as Smith. He finished fourth Saturday and is still looking for his first victory.
One of the things that makes winning the Nationals so difficult is the unique format by which cars and drivers earn points every time they go on the track. Thus, one bad lap, or one bad decision early in the week, can make the difference when the Speed cameras fire up on Saturday night.
Just ask Schatz, who took home the big money, and Joey Saldana, who finished second for the second-consecutive year. Saldana’s dad, Joe, won the Nationals in 1970, and his son has been trying to win it since the early 1990s.
The difference for Schatz was his qualifying lap on Friday night. While he went out 51st of 53 cars that took time, he still managed to turn the fifth quickest lap of the night, and with Knoxville’s system of awarding equal points for qualifying and the feature during the qualifying nights, he dodged a bullet that could have left him far back in the field.
Instead, he turned a 15.24-second lap and left his qualifying night as the high-point man for the event and started the main event from the pole.
“I told my guys — they were pretty disgusted and they were counting us out — when all those other guys were going out and making 15.6- and 15.7-second laps,” Schatz said. “But I told them, ‘Guys, they are not running the corner right. I can do a better lap, don’t worry.’ That lap was what put us in a great spot for the whole week.”
Saldana, meanwhile, made some mistakes leading up to the final night and ended up starting eighth en route to his second-place finish.
“We screwed up in the scramble,” Saldana said. “We over-engineered our race car and we paid the price.”
For the record, the difference between finishing first and second was $75,000.
Six-time Knoxville Raceway track champion Terry McCarl may have come the closest to getting the monkey off his back. McCarl came up just inches of passing Schatz on a mid-race restart, but couldn’t quite make his bonsai run work.
Schatz pulled away, McCarl finished third and after more than 20 years of trying to win the Nationals, McCarl is still looking for that elusive first victory.
Amazingly, McCarl would have been the first Iowan to win the race.
“I’m waiting for it to pay a little bit more,” McCarl laughed afterward. “It would be an honor to win the race. It is kind of crazy that an Iowan that has never won.”
And that may be one of the reasons why it’s one of sprint-car racing’s great events — it’s a challenge.