Knoxville Raceway general manager Jason Reed knew there wasn't a perfect solution. By early Saturday morning, there wasn't much of a choice, either.

With Friday's Hard Knox Night postponed by rain and the Knoxville Raceway grounds further saturated overnight, Reed and his team faced an increasingly difficult task: squeeze what amounted to two programs into one day and somehow complete the 65th annual Knoxville Nationals with more threatening weather looming.

When overnight rain pushed the start of Saturday's Hard Knox program from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the next solution meant overhauling the format. Knoxville transferred four additional drivers directly into the 50-lap A-main, placed preliminary-point positions 21-40 into the B-main and 41-50 into the C-main, leaving the remaining 47 drivers to race for 11th on back in the C-main through a 25-lap preliminary program that was no longer the Hard Knox format.

It was a drastic move officials knew wouldn't be popular, but one they felt was necessary on a day that eventually brought six hours of on-track delays and racing into Sunday's wee hours.

"I hated it just as much as the drivers and the teams did," Reed told FloRacing. "But ... we just knew we had to get the show in."

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Ultimately, they did. Kyle Larson's fourth Knoxville Nationals victory wasn't official until 1:41 a.m. Sunday, completing a marathon day Reed was relieved to finish.

"Really happy, yeah," Reed said. "It was a stressful last 24 hours. ... We had several plans, and having to change plans and just trying to keep figuring out, you know, our main goal was to get it done today.

"I know there's a lot of people that were saying, 'Well, just run it on Sunday.' But there's a whole bunch more people that can't stay for Sunday. ... So I was like, we got to try to get it in no matter what."

Sunday presented its own problems. Staffing would've been a significant hurdle, with Nationals week coinciding with college move-in weekend.

"We have a lot of help that moved themselves or their kids to college yesterday," Reed said.

Knoxville also had Friday ticket-holders to consider, wanting to at least accommodate fans who had paid for Hard Knox Night through single-day tickets or four-day Nationals packages.

With overnight rain delaying Saturday's scheduled on-track activity from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., officials then streamlined Friday's postponed program. Time trials were scrapped, heats were lined up by prelim points and a 25-lap feature determined where the remaining 47 drivers — those ranked 51st on back — would start from 11th on back in the C-main.

It was a drastic departure from the traditional format, especially for 11-time Nationals champion Donny Schatz, who won the rubber-down 25-lapper but made his frustration known in victory lane.

"Really disappointed in the change of formats, really. I guess it's their baby and we're playing in it," Schatz told pit reporter Wade Aunger. "Yesterday, if we came here tonight, you were racing for four lock-in spots. Tonight if you win, you're racing for 11th in the C. That's a pretty big change up."

Reed understood the frustration, but starting the afternoon program at 1 p.m., time-trialing roughly 70 drivers, running heats, consolations and a 25-lap feature, then turning the track around for the scheduled 6:30 p.m. evening program presented an insurmountable task.

"We know on a day show that ... the track's just not gonna hold up," Reed said. "We're just trying to think, how can we get this show in and reduce the number of laps on the track? I hated it just as much as the drivers and the teams did, but ... if we would have done time trials for everybody and ran heat races, I mean, we'd have been reworking the track a couple different times in the afternoon."

Even the abbreviated program left the crew scrambling to restore the rubbered-down surface for 6:30 p.m. hot laps — a target they weren't going to meet even before more rain arrived.

"We didn't want to ruin the track for tonight either," Reed said. "We know that's not what we want to do. But ... we tried to come up with what we could do with the hand we were dealt."

The condensed format wasn't something Reed devised Saturday morning, either.

Promoter and race director John McCoy proposed the contingency plan, one he'd contemplated for years for precisely such a predicament. A Nationals program hadn't been rained out since Aug. 6, 2014 — a Wednesday prelim — but McCoy, retiring after the 2026 season, had kept the contingency in mind.

"John McCoy's race director. He kind of heads that up, and he had that idea and he comes to me," Reed said. "He came to me and said, 'Hey, this is all I think we need to do.'

"He's talked about that for several years," Reed added. "That's always been in the back of his mind. If that's what we have to go to, that's what we have to go to."

Then came more rain. With the scheduled 6:30 p.m. D-main hot laps in limbo, Reed checked with McCoy and his crew around 9:15 about whether they could realistically continue.

"I said, 'What do you think?' And they go, 'I think I can have cars on there by 10:15,'" Reed recalled. "I'm like, 'Oh, let's do it.' "

Cars ultimately hit the track at 10:36, a 4-hour, 6-minute delay. Another potential shower missed Knoxville and officials pressed forward. Another round of storms very likely would've done them in.

"Hats off to the track crew," Reed said. "Those guys put in hours, incredible hours this week. ... I'm happy we got it all done."

The lengthy delay also produced another improbable development: Larson actually made it back.

The Nationals polesitter spent Saturday competing in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond (Va.) Raceway. That race ended at 10:17 p.m. ET and Larson was airborne 40 minutes later. He arrived at Knoxville Raceway via police escort around 12:15 a.m. CT — in time to climb aboard his No. 57 Sprint Car.

For all the attention surrounding whether Knoxville would wait for its polesitter, Reed emphasized the program never slowed for Larson.

"Just so everybody knows, we didn't hold the show up, nothing for him," Reed said. "We were running full speed ahead and ... it all just worked out perfectly."

There was only one brief accommodation, Reed pointing out "we literally held the cars for like 10 seconds on the B-main from pushing to get him in the track."

Larson ultimately turned the improbable dash into his fourth Nationals crown in six years.

"It's great to have him here," Reed said. "He's great for the sport and so happy he got here."
Reed knew the week could've gone worse. Showers threatened Wednesday and Thursday's prelims but missed the Marion County Fairgrounds.

"We actually ... got kind of lucky on Wednesday and Thursday," Reed said. "We could have really been in trouble if we'd lost those two days too."

For a staff that had spent months planning Nationals week, adapting also meant scrapping some of the spectacle surrounding Championship Saturday as weather hamstrung the schedule.

"We put a lot of time and effort into planning this year of stuff that we had to scrap," Reed said. "That's kind of hard on my team."

But after Friday's postponement, an overhauled format implemented on short notice, two rounds of Saturday rainstorms that amounted to six hours of on-track delays and a race against the clock that stretched into Sunday morning, there was one plan that mattered most.

At 1:41 a.m., they pulled it off.

"At the end of the day," Reed said, "we just knew we had to get the show in."