Rolling Right Along: Schatz Wins Second Consecutive Race
Pontoon Beach, IL - In the first 12 Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series races of the 2008 season, Donny Schatz had just one A-Feature victory, but in that time, he and his team tried a number of different combinations that have recently paid off, as he has won four of the last five series events, including his second consecutive race on Sunday night at Tri-City Speedway in Pontoon Beach, Illinois.
The two-time defending Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series champion led all 35 laps of the event to capture the 75th A-Feature win of his career. It was his first win at Tri-City Speedway, and he became just the second driver to win on the reconfigured 3/8-mile version of the storied track. He continues to lead the series championship standings as he chases his third straight title.
“We are glad to get this thing back in victory lane,” Schatz said. “The hard part is keeping it there. We’re pumped to be running this good. We are having a lot of fun doing what we are doing right now.”
Schatz led from the drop of the green flag in the Armor All J&J, which took two starts to get going. The first start was interrupted by a Sam Hafertepe Jr. spin. On the complete restart, he again charged to the lead high off the second turn with pole sitter Tim Shaffer in his shadows. The second lap saw a big wheelstand from Schatz on the back straightaway, as he extended his lead. Just five laps into the race, he was in lapped traffic as he set a blistering pace. A couple of other times the caution flew right as he was about to enter traffic, giving him clean race track to operate with.
“Sometimes the toughest place that you can be is leading, because you can’t see what is going on behind you,” said the North Dakota native. “When you are running second, you really have nothing to lose, chasing the race track. I started to get loose there at the end, but everyone else seemed to be looser than I was.”
Schatz endured a number of cautions in the late going of the 35-lap contest. One of those was on the 14th lap for an accident involving Jac Haudenschild who was running third, which also collected Chad Kemenah who was running fourth at the time and who had nowhere to go. Also the caution flew for Tim Shaffer who lost a tire while running second on the 23rd lap, as well as Joey Saldana who also had a tire go down while running third on the 29th go-around. Schatz also made some contact with the fourth turn wall with just a handful of laps remaining in the race.
“Those last six laps, I think I bounced off it (the wall) coming off three and four every lap,” he shared. “When it gets that close up to the fence and you are leading and trying to keep your speed up you try to get everything you can. I did that. I tried to not cross the line and I may have gotten over one or two times, but I didn’t beat up the race car too bad. We got home first and that is what counts. It was an awfully hot night and it got real hot in the car.”
In a period of 11 days, Schatz has picked up four wins and a second-place finish. He remains the only World of Outlaws driver that has finished in the Top-10 of all 17 A-Feature events this season.
“We have tried a lot of things with this race car and learned a lot of things that we didn’t think we would learn in the last week,” Schatz explained. “All the testing that we did earlier in the year is really paying off.”
The Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series returns to action on Wednesday, June 11 at Sedalia’s State Fair Speedway in Missouri for an event which will benefit the Michael Ross Memorial Foundation.
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