KNOXVILLE, Iowa – Aug. 8, 2014 – Daryn Pittman is the defending World of Outlaws STP Sprint Car Series champion who is looking to win the FVP Knoxville Nationals for the first time in his career. The 1998 Knoxville Nationals rookie of the year, Pittman has a career-high 11 victories this season, including four victories in July alone. He’s as prepared as ever to challenge for the $150,000 victory on Saturday night.
But before he can get to Saturday, Pittman must find a way through Friday night’s qualifier, which was held over from Wednesday when rain saturated the half-mile Knoxville Raceway. It forced the more than 50 competitors, including seven-time Knoxville Nationals winner Donny Schatz, to wait another couple of days in order to attempt their qualifying effort for the richest week in sprint car racing.
“It just made us think about it for two more days,” said Pittman, a native of Owasso, Okla. “We were ready to race on Wednesday, we just need to keep an eye on the track and just make changes for the night depending on what the track does. It just makes you think about it more. You were antsy to go to bed on Tuesday because you were going to run your Nationals night on Wednesday. We’re ready as we were and we’ll go out and see what we can do.”
Overall, Pittman and his championship-winning Kasey Kahne Racing crew, looked to be quite calm leading up to Friday night’s hot laps.
“I’m as relaxed as I’ve ever been for Nationals,” Pittman said. “I’m more confident personally in what my car can do than I was here last year and years past. I know I still need to get better as a driver at certain things here and keeping up with what I need to do on the racetrack, but I’m confident that no matter how things fall we can dig ourselves out of it and still contend. Fifty laps is a long race, we got to get in that first and then get focused on trying to get a good setup so that when we get in that 50-lap A-main on Saturday we know we’ll have something we can drive to the front.”
