410 Knoxville Nationals 2009 night 2.

Hi all,

We got up at 10 am today after not getting in until 3 am this morning.

After much time spent showering and getting the sleep out of our eyes we headed back to Knoxville to survey the damage to the Hall motor sports car and talk transport of our goodies home with Brian.

The car was a right off (I have to tell you it is hard to talk Australian on this site as everyone around us at the track talks differently) Glen the language policeman tunes me in constantly, words I like to use are "the car is junked", instead of written off, "torn up" instead of crashed and a few other phrases.

Torn up though is the best description for the Hall chassis, it would have been broken in 5 to 6 spots, the cage amazingly was totally intact, when you hit the Knoxville fence the forces are huge due to the 118 mph average speeds these guys are doing and Hally's engine is no slouch let me tell you, not to many people get by it in a drag race down the straight, it is a credit to Mawill in South Australia, Reedy runs a Maxwill as well but I would think it is a lesser spec motor.

We ran into Kerry Madsen's team today and suggested they go borrow one of the Hall motors.

They had the car stripped but for the diff, the diff was also bent.

We then went down to see the new cars in town for night 2.

The Steve Kinser car was the nicest in the pits, his team is only second to the Tony Stewart operation.

After the pit walk around we headed to Dingus, it is the bar across from the track, we watched the first heats of the bikini contest and thought it was to hot in the sun to stay, so we headed off to Wackos a bar on the other side of town, they were running another bikini type show and we won the "Travelled furtherest for the nationals" competition.

After much sunburn we headed back to the track for the nights racing.

Time trials were slow compared to yesterday, about .6 sec off.

Aussies on night 2 were Madsen and Lynton Jeffery, Lynton won his heat but Kerry only made it through to the B main, running 6 th in that and failing to transfer to the A main.

We witnessed the first pass for first place on the track since we have been here, normally the track is that fast that the front car has just pulled away and no one has been able to challenge, tonight the lead changed in a few heats and the mains.

The A main was won by Tim Kaiding at great pace, Craig Kinser was catching him fast with Joey Saldana right behind.

It is looking good for a big final on Saturday night.

Tomorrow we see the world challenge so hopefully the Aussies will pull it off.

Bye for now.

3:30am update of night one.

Hi all

Well we got racing at 11:30pm, hot laps and then time trials, the good news out of night one is Brooke Tatnell's lap record still stands, although three of the young guns gave it a good shake.

Kerry Madsen somehow managed to not have to qualify tonight, we think he will be out for Thursdays qualifying.

All the Aussies time trialled in the mid 15s, this gave them all a heat race start from near the front, so all qualified direct through to the a main.

Matt Reed ran 3rd in his heat, Greg Hall ran 2nd in his heat, Gary Brazier won his heat, Skip finished 2nd in his heat.

The C main had only 4 cars line up, Erin Crocker (Female driver) became the first female to hold a track record at Knoxville when she won the c main over 6 laps from the front, she was fast as she was in time trials.

The B Main was a top class a main field, From Schatz to The Dude Danny Lasoski and about 10 other Outlaw drivers, Schatz went through after easily winning the B.

The A got away badly for Greg Hall, he was collected by another car but luckily kept running with only his front push bar torn off.

On the restart everyone got away cleanly, the aussies however after all qualifying well started their charge to the rear, by the next stoppage, red flag for Greg Hall they were all lapped except for Skip Jackson.

Greg Hall spun and collected the fence, as his car reared up the leaders who were lapping him came on the scene with Craig Dollanski who was running third getting caught up in the accident, Greg's car was towed back to the pits but Dollanski's Kasey Kahne car was taken to the work area, a quick wing change, front end change and minor repairs were done and he tagged back onto the rear of the field, Knoxville has a lapped car rule so he only had to start behind the last unlapped car, but his race was run with only five laps to go, Donny Schatz had moved from 21st to 7th on the restart, he did not make up any other positions.

Finally the race was won by Tim Schaffer, he led for most of the race after passing Jason Johnson on about lap 10 when in traffic, Johnson finished second.

Unofficial points leader for the night however appears to be Donny Schatz, he is looking good for another win this year already.

It is 4 am in the morning here so bed is calling.

Night all.

Night one off to a bad start.

Hi all

Well day one of the Nationals is on us, we went to Oskaloosa to check out the souveniers and parts trucks.

It would be best described as "The circus has come to town" There is 24,000 people walking the streets of a small town, golf carts that look like stretched Limos, scooters everywhere and T Shirt shops every 10m or so.

We walked through the other big budget team area Kasey Kahn Racing and looked over his cars, they run a much tighter budget than you would think, normal sprintcar parts, second hand spares etc, not what I expected after looking at the Tony Stewart team the other day.

We are still trying to get to the Hall teams workshop but just cannot find it.

We went back out to the Sprintcar go carts for another couple of races, got battered by Gavin and some locals so I took revenge and launched Gavin onto two wheels into and almost over the fence, wish I was wearing my hans device as my neck stretched about 10 inches, then sorted the local yokel out with a quick shove in the rear and turned him around, while this was going on Glen slipped by for the win, no black flags this time but I am sure Gavin is tipping the flag marshall to turn a blind eye to his fender bender antics.

So to the racing, what racing, it rained at 7:30pm so we came back to the hotel, the racing may restart at 10:30pm and go into the morning again, the worst part about that is I will have to put up with the children wanting McDonalds for breakfast.

There are 5 Australians racing tonight.

Gary Brazier, Skip Jackson, Greg Hall, Matt Reed and Kerry Madsen.

We are sitting in the Pensylvania Posse area of the grand stand, these guys are the most vocal supporters you will ever hear, we are a bit scared to let go with the Aussie Aussie Aussie chant.

Bye for now, will blog after the races if I can stay awake that long.

Oskalooska non wing 410's.

Good evening all,

Well tonight at Oskalooska we had a blast.

I was allowed to return to the steering wheel again, but as we neared McDonald's they started again, we want McDonald's, I am awaiting for the "Are we there yet chant" to start, never have I had to drive such a big bunch of juveniles around, I thought my two kids were bad but Gavin and Glen make the kids a joy to be around.

We started at Knoxville and looked over about 8 teams cars, we looked at Tony Stewart Racing's 4 trailers and 4 cars, a sprintcar team they are not, the parts on their cars are more like formula one and Nascar, carbon fibre radiator deflectors that are moulded around the bottom bars, chassis with the rear radius rods that have slides for adjustment on the old car, the new car has two holes for mounting the rear shocks, the Craig Kinser car has slides for adjusting the left front shock and more small mods than you can poke a stick at.

Donny Schatz unveiled a new car paint job, it is sponsored by STP, a long time since we saw that brand sponsoring anything in Australia.

We visited the Simpson van, purchased a trick Hans device quick detach mechanism, it has rings on the tether and you pull a cord and a latch opens on the helmet, no more trying to get the slides to line up with the clips on your helmet anymore.

Impact have a stand with some of the best helmet paint jobs you will see except for the Mud Crab painted on my helmet holding Watto and Dhuys cars in its claws.

Tomorrow the Motorsports shops will start selling their gear so we will check out what is for sale.

Gavin went and checked out the motorhomes and decided that my good lady Janette should have come over and seen the vast selection of motorhomes, some of them would be worth more than 1m US each.

The outlaws have rolled into town and their are transporters are everywhere, you cannot go anywhere without running into a driver/mechanic working on a car.

Gary and Steve Brazier were working on their new car on the main street.

We arrived at Oskalooska after a small detour off the track to let a few of the fireworks off that we brought in South Carolina, we got 4 rockets that fly at the speed of sound and let off a little pop at the end, we also got some crackers that you throw on the ground, Annette has been throwing them at our feet for 2 days, Gavin got a 2kg monster thing that we are to scared to set off incase we end up in jail.

So finally at Oskalooska we went to our seats and who should be sitting next to us but the Dillon family from South Australia, Gary, father of Luke and Lee is a great guy, he has a wise head on his shoulders and we chewed the fat on speedway politics for a fair while, he has some views that most of us would concur with, it is easy to see why his boys are going ok in the sport.

So to the racing.

Dean McAllen from the WA midget scene was running, he did hot laps and missed heat one, he came out in heat 2 and off the start first turn he forgot that a wingless sprintcar was somewhat larger than a midget and put it in where it did not fit, his night was over right there, in the next heat we witnessed the most spectacular crash you will ever see, Brad Sweet also on the first corner poked the car in where it did not fit, he got flipped and as it end for ended the tail tank flew off and it went higher than our fireworks rocket with fuel going everywhere, he got out of the car slightly shaken but ok.

The wingless division was 5 seconds a lap slower than the 410 winged warriors but it would be the most exciting close division you will ever see, the passing was on all night, 3 heats were won by people who were well behind going into the last turn, Kevin Swindell won the best heat race we have ever witnessed, he was fourth going into the last turn and crossed the line about half a front push bar in front.

The final winner of the A main was Jesse "The Rocket" Hocknett, he led all the way but was always under the pump.

I can recommend that you all come over and see these guys run, they are fabulous, it is easy to see why this is the most watched and supported division in the USA, and look forward to posting again tomorrow after the running of night one of the 49th KNoxville 410 Nationals.

Cheers.

Oskaloosa Front Row Challenge.

Hi all

Well they have finally banished me from driving, whilst listening to them whining about wanting McDonalds to eat before we got to Oskalooska I turnes into the wrong lane, no one coming or anything but it got their minds off McDonalds for a while.

The Oskalooska front row challenge started to fill in a couple of days that had no racing between the 360 nationals and the 410's. Terry McCarl or Tmac as they call him here and his wife Lori promote and run the event.

It is the usual lay format, time trials, one heat and the mains.

Australia was represented by Greg Hall, Mr Speed Matt Reed and Skip Jackson.

After the heats we got about 5mm of rain, we sat around while they ran their trucks around the track to get it back in, interestingly we would have put the sprintcars on and wheel pacled the track and been ready to go racing inside an hour, but here they don't like to get mud on their cars so we waited about 3 hours while they ran the trucks and a golf cart around, at 12:30am they put the B Main on as the crowd was getting very vocal.

No curfews here and the house are within 50m of the edge of the track.

The B main had Greg Hall and Matt Reed in it, Matt from the second row and Greg from row 3.

Mtt went through easy to the A but Greg did not, the first 5 or 6 laps Greg struggled with the track conditions but really got on the gas after that.

The a main line up had Slaamin Sammy Swindell on pole with Joey Saldana on the outside, Niether of these guys took the 50k us challenge to start from the back, Donny Schatz was on the second row with Craig Dollansky.

When the green flag fell Sammy drove away from the field, there were 2 restarts but he pulled away each time, second was Joey Saldana and third was Dollanski.

There were about 10 passes made during the feature, Dollanski passed Schatz with a slide on turns 3/4 and a couple made in the mid field, Matt Reed passed about 6 cars and was starting to come to grips with the track.

Matt is looking faster each time we see him, he has been the fastest of all the Australian including Skip and Lynton Jeffery, not quite at Kerry Madsen's pace though.

Tonight we are back at Oskaloosa for the 410 wingless sprints.

Well domestic duties and breakfast are calling.

Bye for now

Another update at last!!!

Hi all,

Well all is going well over here.

Night 2 of the 360 Nationals saw an Australian Brad Foster from Victoria running in the 360's.

He went ok but did not show up for the final night.

Gavin arrived and slept on the bench for the first half of the racing, don't know how as the noise is deafening.

Terry McCarl won the night 2 A main in a canter, not many crashes as the track is wide and cars spread out half a lap before the end of lap one.

Night 3 and the final night saw the 410's running 4 heats and a b and a main.

Greg hall from Albany was running and got into the B main, he was running well but had some handling issues with his new Schnee chassis.

Terry McCarl won the 410 a main and then went on to win the 360 A main making him the 2009 360 Knoxville Nationals champion and 10k us richer.

Sunday we headed off to look at a Schnee roller in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 520km away.

The car looks good and comes with heaps of spares, we then went over to the Schnee factory, about 15km further out of Sioux Falls, we met Brian Schnee and he seems like a great guy, we spent an hour chewing the fat and looked at some of the gear he builds, he has a CNC mill lathe centre and turns out some trick bits, without even playing poker he had around $800 us out of Gavin and I, look out for the trickest looking brake pedal you have ever seen in my car come October. I have the full list of components Schnee make to bring home, the items are the best made you will find and prices are cheap. Also have picked up the latest XXX catalogue which I will bring to the races this year.

After the tour of the Schnee factory we went to Hussets Speedway, this would be the shortest and highest banked track you will see.

The 410's get around here at an amazing speed, we watched in amazement at half time when a grader came out, do not believe the stories you here about not touching the track once the meetings start in the US, we also witnessed this at Oskaloosa on our first night.

Caught up with the Hall Motorsports team at Hussets, had a beer and a good laugh with Brian, Greg and Kent Roberts. Greg made it through to the A main and had a good run in the final, the Schnee chassis was working well, Greg prefers the Schnee to the Maxim's, Brian says David will keep running the Maxim's.

Tonight (Tuesday morning your time) we are off to Oskaloosa for the front row challenge, this is the start of the real racing for us.

The trip through the back woods of Nebraska and South Dakota was interesting, Glen just closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, my American driving is getting worse, only ran several stop signs, several red lights, drove on the wrong side of the road for a few miles, but no one else wants to give it a go, I just keep telling myself at each intersection, turn short or turn long, while I remember to say that we are almost safe.

Well got to go, we can hear Oskaloosa calling.

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

Knoxville at last.

Hello all

After much flying and not a lot of sleep we arrived at Des Moines, Iowa.

We picked up a hire car and after loading it up drove to Pella, a small town 20 miles out of Knoxville.

We didn't even get out of the car park before a disagreement on which side of the car park boom gates we should be on started, there was a big sign saying left side was the exit but the nervous amongst us wanted to be on the right, so we ended up parked on an angle between the two gates, after much laughter and slandering about my road driving abilities being as poor as my track skills we reversed up onto the left boom gate that I had lined up on to start with. Talk about a bunch of dumb Aussies.

Day 2 in Iowa came and went with a trip back to Des Moines to check out the local Malls, only 1 red light run (Who puts lights above the road anyway) with no casualties, then only 1 stop sign run (they have 4 way stop signs at intersections here) but this one was only a 2 way, wont fall for that mistake again, no locals shot at us so they must know we are tourists.

We are disappointed Brooke Tatnell has broken his leg, 3 places just like Norbert, the story in the press says he has told the crew to get the car ready for the nationals, that will be a true test if he goes through with it.

We are off to Knoxville tomorrow to look at the track and then down to Oskalooska to pick up our tickets for the show down there between the 360 and 410 Nationals, then we will probably take in a game of golf as the rules for that are the same as in Aus so we should be able to get it right, although the carts may have different rules.

Well it is after midnight and time for bed, will update on the days events tomorrow evening US time.

Steve

On the Road to Knoxville

Hi all,

Well we have arrived in Los Angelas and are resting ready for the next leg in the journey.

Tomorrow, Monday evening your time, we fly from LA to Fort Worth- Texas then on to Des Moines- Iowa and we are there.

Glen and Annette managed to get a lot of sleep on the plane while I stood at the rear for 9 hours, went shopping in LA today (for Annette) Glen and I just admired the view.

We intend to head to the Schnee chassis factory whilst in Des Moines, we want to get some set up tips or Mick Doble as he has the only Schnee chassis in WA I know of, however the Hall brothers from Albany have 2 new Schnees complete ready to run in the Knoxville Nationals.

Looks like the Aussies are having a good run over here at the moment, Kerry Madsen is going well, we really hope Brooke Tatnell has a competetive car for the Nationals.

Well folks that's all for today, hoe this post finds you all well over there, we are all ok but tired, looking forward to keeping you all updated with the latest happenings from the 360, 410 Nationals and the Oskalooska front row challenge.

Hi all,

Just thought I would add this to make sure I knew what I was doing before we headed off to Knoxville Sunday morning.

Martin is back and is in the process of firming up the race schedule for the season, it is a busy one with lots of options for different race meetings.

Lillian is undergoing a knee operation and we wish her a quick and speedy recovery.

Gavin is still in the bush and when he heads for Knoxville next Thursday I think he is going to set a new World Record for the most continuous hours spent on a plane, by the time he gets there he should be very tired and need a couple of days sleep to recover.

Norbert and Martin are the only people who have requested shirts etc while we are there but I will have my laptop if you want to email me to get you something.

So folks, the next blog should be from the USA on Tuesday, will upload some photos and any other interesting things we see.

Steve