KNOXVILLE, IA. — Rico Abreu did everything he could to hold off Kyle Larson, but a lapped car sliding in front of the No. 24R machine was all it took to give Larson an opening to snatch the lead and the win in Thursday night’s 25-lap preliminary feature at the Knoxville Nationals.
Abreu started on the outside of the front row and grabbed the lead on Lap 13 from polesitter Bill Balog. Larson moved around Carson Macedo to snatch second place at the end of the 18th lap, giving the two-time Knoxville Nationals winner seven laps to figure out how to get around Abreu.
Larson got the break he needed when a lapped car made a mistake in front of the leaders. That gave the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion all the room he needed to surge to the front.
“He (Abreu) got to that lapper, couldn’t follow him, had to go to the top or middle and that lapper just hit the berm in front of me, gave me a bunch of clean air and probably messed him up,” Larson said after climbing out of the Paul Silva-owned car.
After making the move in Turn 2, Larson just needed to hang on for the final few laps to pick up enough qualifying points to guarantee him the pole position for Saturday night’s 50-lap feature. Behind Abreu was the No. 41 of Macedo, with Tyler Courtney and Balog rounding out the top five.
Because of his heat race performances ahead of Thursday’s A-Main, Daryn Pittman will start on the outside of the front row in Saturday’s feature. The top 16 starting drivers of Saturday night’s A-Main were locked in based on their respective qualifying night performances. The next 10 drivers were locked into the first 10 starting positions of Saturday night’s B-Main.
The top four finishers of Friday night’s A-Main will start Saturday night’s A-Main in positions 17-20. The top four finishers of Saturday night’s B-Main will start in positions 21-24 of the A-Main.
Friday night is Hard Knox Qualifying night for all drivers not locked into the Saturday night A or B-Mains. Each driver’s heat race and feature race performance will determine their seeding in Saturday night’s Alphabet Soup.
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