Night one of the Knoxville Nationals 360's

Hi all,

Well night one of the 360 nationals has been run and won.

Got to the track at 5 pm and looked at the merchandise, gates opened at 6 pm and up the stands we went.

Sat in block D row 39 for those who look up the track layout, seats were great and we had a fantastic view of the track.

Engine starts happen inside the pits on a separate sort of track and then the cars go back to their transporters to warm up, first time on the track is hot laps in groups of around 12 cars, which is strange because they only run 10 in the heats.

Well the green flag dropped and so did our jaws, it is just flat out, at ground level when the cars come past going into turn 1 they are travelling faster than the 410's at Kwinana, they go around with not a lot of sliding just driving so hard the engines bog down on the turns.

The best time for tonight was 16.2 secs, the 1 lap track record is held by Brooke Tatnell (Aussie Aussie Aussie) at just over 14 seconds set in 2006.

Each car got a time trial, 3 laps with 2 timed, then each car got a heat, heat positions and time trials determined starting positions for the C Main over 6 laps, B main over 12 laps and the A main over 20 laps.

Tonight's winner was Wayne Johnson, he drove away from the field, Jason Johnson ran the B Main and finished 3rd then transferred to the A and ran 7th out of 24 cars, not a bad drive, he had engine problems and had to change his engine out after his heat.

There were about 4 rollovers, nothing major.

Even at this level there was at least 6 cars that did not start or expired before the night started, it must be shattering to go to the trouble to come here and have that happen.

We went out to Newton to look at Kustom Sprintcar parts, this is a new shop owned by the father of Lynton and Paul Jeffery of Vortex wing frame, Karl is his name, seems like a nice guy and has a lot of frames and parts, he is also the XXX dealer around here, I have his contact details and will post them latter this week.

Gavin phoned from LAX around 7 pm, lucky guy has a 5 hour wait there, he should be leaving LA about now, midnight and we are picking him up at 7:45 am Friday morning our time, 8:45 pm Friday evening your time, he tells us he has had some sleep so he should be not to grumpy, which is good as he has to sleep in the car for a couple of hours as we are going back to the Smokey Creek Mall to play in a couple of Nascar simulators after we pick him up, if he stays awake we should be able to beat him as he will be tired, if that fails we can arrange a broken arm.

Just before you get into Knoxville from Pella where we are staying there is a Sprintcar/Gokart track, we will be off there as well during the next week to test our skill.

Well got to get some sleep, post again tomorrow folks.

Happy car preparations ready for the season ahead.

Steve