KNOXVILLE, I.A.- Saturday night (Aug. 10) marked the 63rd running of The Grandaddy of Them All, the Knoxville Nationals. A full card of alphabet soup starting with an E-main led us to the 50-lap finale at night’s end.
In the end, all the pomp and circumstance wrapped up with a familiar result. For the second-straight year and third time in four runs, it was Kyle Larson that emerged victorious.
Larson led all 50-laps of the main event, dominating Saturday’s feature for the second time in a row. The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion has now led 100 consecutive A-main laps in the Nationals after also leading wire-to-wire from pole in 2023.
The win continues a run of terror for Larson and crew chief Paul Silva, as they’ve now won five consecutive Sprint Car races. The pairing swept the Ironman weekend at I-55 Speedway, won the Front Row Challenge at Southern Iowa Speedway and have now claimed both their prelim night and the Nationals main event at Knoxville Raceway.
“The first one is always going to mean the most I think,” Larson told Frontstretch. “But this one means a lot, just because of how bad we’ve struggled leading into the last couple weeks.
“Two weeks ago, I did not think that we would win the Knoxville Nationals. I mean we’re just fresh off of missing the Kings Royal, so I didn’t think we could do it. Paul [Silva], Trevor (Canales) and Doug, they worked their asses off and found some speed and you know, equated to a win.”
Larson was joined on the podium by Gio Scelzi and Corey Day, who completed the California sweep of the podium. Scelzi, the Wednesday night winner, seemed to have something for Larson just past halfway, but faded in the closing laps.
Day earned the hard-charger award, driving from 11th to third in his Nationals run. He was a recent Knoxville winner, having won at the Iowa track in a June World of Outlaws, but Day simply ran out of time to challenge the leaders without a late caution to bunch up the field.
The race was split in half by a lap-25 halfway break, where the entire field came to pit road with three minutes to work on their cars. While most of the field elected to change at least a right rear tire, Larson and Silva opted not to change any tires at all.
“I’m not sure, I think our tires just looked good,” Larson said. “You know there’s really no reason to change if they’re not damaged or blistered or anything so, I was happy when I heard them say to keep them on. It gave me more confidence leading the second 25, like knowing what I already had was going to be fine.”
Both Donny Schatz and David Gravel had to come from deep in the A-main field, after Schatz won Friday’s Hard Knox and Gravel transferred through a B-main on Saturday.
Both ran out of time and laps as Gravel climbed from 19th to 12th and Schatz charged from 21st to 13th.
On the other end of the spectrum was outside pole-sitter Daryn Pittman, who fell down to 11th at race’s end.
“You know I think a lot of it had to do with tire temps,” Pittman said. “You know obviously the racetrack is changing a little bit. Just once you start to feel it go away, everything sort of compounds from that point and everything just kind of starts to get worse.”
“I went from feeling really really good to really just hanging on in a matter of about four or five laps. I don’t know if that’s just something I need to do better as far as moving around. … You’d think I’d know better. Been here 25+ years or so it seems like, and I still seem to fight the same things no matter what car it is.”
63rd Knoxville Nationals A-main Results
- Kyle Larson
- Gio Scelzi
- Corey Day
- Carson Macedo
- Anthony Macri
- Brian Brown
- Tyler Courtney
- Scott Bogucki
- Sheldon Haudenschild
- Jacob Allen
- Daryn Pittman
- David Gravel
- Donny Schatz
- Logan Schuchart
- Brady Bacon
- Justin Peck
- James McFadden
- Bill Balog
- Brad Sweet
- Emerson Axsom
- Brent Marks
- Chase Randall
- Rico Abreu
- Justin Henderson
The 2025 Knoxville Nationals are scheduled to run from Wednesday, Aug. 6 through Saturday, Aug. 9.
Chase began working with Frontstretch in the spring of 2023 as a news writer, while also helping fill in for other columns as needed. Chase is now the main writer and reporter for Frontstretch.com's CARS Tour coverage, a role which began late in 2023. Aside from racing, some of Chase's other hobbies include time in the outdoors hunting and fishing, and keeping up with all things Philadelphia sports related.
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