Reinhardt’s Qualifying Struggles Tough to Overcome at Knoxville Nationals

The teams that were not already in a good position for Saturday’s finale were pit-side for Friday night’s Hard Knox Night to take another shot at locking into the Nationals A-main, or to at least improve their position on Saturday.  The large field of 78 cars was split into two groups for qualifying.

Reinhardt drew pill 93 of 100, putting him deep in Group 2 qualifying, the 71st car to hit the track overall.  It wasn’t the ideal way to start a night where he needed things to go his way to have a shot at making Saturday’s A-main.

Reinhardt and team didn’t hit the combination they needed.  He ended up 25th quickest in Group B time trials.  He was able to bounce back in his heat race though.  

Showing a lot of speed, Reinhardt went from 9th to 4th in the 10-lap race, but it wasn’t quite enough.  He missed the A-main transfer by one spot.  

Unfortunately, the heat race progress was all wiped away because officials set the B-main lineup using each competitor’s original qualifying time.

In that 12-lap B-main, Reinhardt advanced from 16th to 12th, bringing an end to his night.

Ultimately it ended up being the end of the Nationals week for Reinhardt.

“Overall, we just did not time trial well and that was just the entire week. We worked hard to get out of the hole, but the format just doesn’t allow you to do that. You can’t chip away and get out. We almost did it on Friday but came up one spot short and basically got completely reset. Saturday we just decided to cut our losses and pack it up.“, Reinhardt commented.