The Camping World SRX Series has made some tweaks to the race format for Saturday’s dirt race at Knoxville Raceway. Many of the changes come on the heels of the series’ inaugural race at Stafford Speedway last week, which served as a guinea pig of sort as SRX evaluated fan comments from the event and took them into consideration.
For starters, the two heat races have been shortened from their original fifteen-minute lengths to twelve. Like at Stafford, a random draw sets the starting lineup for the first heat while the second is based on an inversion of Heat #1’s results. However, the grid for the feature will be based on the average finish of the two heats rather than just the finishing order of the second heat, which raised some questions about drivers potentially sandbagging said qualifying race to have a better starting spot.
The feature will be 50 laps long rather than the previous 100. The Stafford race—which included the heats, breaks between sessions, and delays to address mechanical issues—overshot the two-hour CBS time slot. Perhaps exacerbating the matter is the fact that caution flags are not counted. It is not known if the changes will also apply to the second dirt race at Eldora Speedway on 26 June.
The series also announced slight aesthetic changes such as larger number and driver names on the cars. To further assist recognition, drivers will remain in the same car colour for the full season rather than the initial plan of switching between colours as cars are randomly assigned.
Series co-founder Tony Stewart leads the full-time standings after being the highest such finisher at Stafford in third. Doug Coby won the opener, and Brian Brown will take over the local car for Knoxville. Greg Biffle, who finished second, passes his Ringer car to Scott Bloomquist. Hailie Deegan will take over for full-timer Tony Kanaan due to scheduling conflicts.
