The greatest 10 days in Sprint Car racing are underway, and Kaleb Johnson kicked things off in style by leading all 20 laps of Thursday’s Feature at Knoxville Raceway on night one of the Xtream powered by Mediacom 360 Knoxville Nationals presented by Great Southern Bank.
“If you would have told me this morning that I was going to be here winning a 360 Feature at the Knoxville Nationals, I would have told you you’re crazy,” Johnson said after his first Sprint Car victory of the season. “I’ve been very close before, just haven’t been able to put a whole night together. So it felt really good.”
Johnson shared the front row with Knoxville local Kade Higday and wasted no time taking an early advantage, hugging the inside groove to take a lead of nearly one second after one lap.
His gap only grew from there, up to almost three seconds over Higday at the halfway mark as Johnson entered lap traffic. Even when surrounded by other cars, the No. 6 rarely ventured away from the bottom, sometimes getting the left-side tires up on the berm to squeeze past the competition.
With no cautions in the Feature to give Higday and the rest of the field a shot at Johnson, the Sioux Falls, SD native was able to drive away to his first win at the “Sprint Car Capital of the World.”
“I think it definitely helped starting on the pole there,” Johnson said. “I’m a little tired, but I was going to make sure I didn’t lose that one. I feel like I’ve had so many chances, not only here, but other places, and I’ve just never been able to do it. It was good to finally be able to put a full night together.”
For Johnson, the win helped him prove to his car owner that he made the right choice of driver for his car.
“First of all, thank you to Dennis Gainey,” Johnson said. “Talk about taking a chance on a young kid from South Dakota. It means the world to me. He really took a chance on letting us maintain and work on this thing every week, and my guys do just that.”
While the top spot went unchanged from start to finish, there was plenty of shuffling for position behind him. Chase Randall moved from his 12th-place starting spot into the top three by the late stages of the race and overtook Higday on the outside of Turn 2 with three to go to claim the runner-up spot and the Hard Charger Award.
“I feel a lot better after that run, we were chasing some issues all night,” Randall said. “Just not feeling comfortable in the race car getting into the corners down the straightaways.
“I really want to say a huge thank you to Kelly Fisher, he was down at our trailer a lot of the night helping diagnose the issues, getting it all tuned up. And I think it ran a lot better there, and obviously it showed, passing a lot of really good cars.”
Higday’s third-place effort was a massive improvement from his previous career best of 20th in 360 Nationals prelim action and will put him in a strong position entering Saturday’s finale. While he’s happy with his performance on the night, he knows he’ll need to find even more pace to be a contender come Saturday.
“We’re really fast, just had to get a little bit better towards the end of that race,” Higday said. Just tried to capitalize once we get to lap traffic, we were pretty bad there once we got in that really dirty air, and it allowed Chase to get by us. Luckily we didn’t run fourth or fifth there.”
Reigning Knoxville Raceway 410 Sprint Car track champion Austin McCarl came home fourth, while Emerson Axsom rounded out the top five in his first 360 Nationals start.
UP NEXT: The other half of the field will take to the track Friday night for prelim action aiming for a spot in Saturday night’s $20,000-to-win Feature. Tickets are still available online or at the gate, while those unable to make it to Knoxville can catch every lap live on DIRTVision.
Feature (20 Laps): 1. 6-Kaleb Johnson[1]; 2. 2KS-Chase Randall[12]; 3. 24-Kade Higday[2]; 4. 88-Austin McCarl[6]; 5. 27A-Emerson Axsom[8]; 6. 27H-Justin Peck[3]; 7. 01-Terry McCarl[5]; 8. 4W-Jamie Ball[7]; 9. 95-Matt Covington[4]; 10. 22X-Riley Goodno[9]; 11. 09-Matt Juhl[15]; 12. 64-Hunter Schuerenberg[13]; 13. 21T-Cole Macedo[22]; 14. 23W-Garet Williamson[16]; 15. 87-Aaron Reutzel[21]; 16. 18T-Tanner Holmes[19]; 17. 4J-Chase Johnson[20]; 18. 55B-Brandon Anderson[11]; 19. 8H-Jacob Hughes[14]; 20. 36-Jason Martin[18]; 21. 23-Seth Bergman[24]; 22. 70-Calvin Landis[10]; 23. 4G-Cole Garner[23]; 24. 52-Blake Hahn[17]
