Since he won his first of 10 World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series championships, Donny Schatz had never gone deep into the month of May searching for his first win of the season.
This year, seemingly stuck at 299 career victories with the series, he and his team have made it to June 12 without one.
Schatz finished fourth with the World of Outlaws on Friday at Knoxville – one of his best tracks on the tour. He wasn’t pleased.
“It’s a shitty finish,” Schatz said. “I don’t know, if you think fourth is good, I guess we’re in the wrong sport. Absolutely not very good at all. “Do I really want to come back tomorrow,” Schatz said. “This is getting kind of embarrassing really. We cant win a race, cant race for wins. I don’t think any of us want to be in that position.”
Not many people would call a fourth-place finish bad, let alone ‘shitty.’
Although, that speaks to the amount of success Schatz has had with the series. He’s the only active, full-time driver to surpass the triple digit mark in wins with the series.
He’s one of just two active champions – in large part due to the amount of titles he won in a row.
But what was working on Schatz’ cars in the past isn’t working anymore.
“Right now, I’d just like to be competitive enough to race for a win,” Schatz said. “When I move my foot, I’d like to get something to happen the right way and I can’t. I’ve got to change everything I do. I’m doing everything I can. These guys are doing everything they can.”
The veteran driver isn’t the type to throw in the towel, though.
That mindset doesn’t mesh well with the phrase, ’10-time champion.’
“It’s just the nature of the beast,” Schatz said. “300 may never happen. You just never know, but we’ll keep digging. It is what it is. (Friday’s) over now. We’ll sit down in a minute here and try to figure out what we can do to make it a little bit better.”
The No. 15 team will keep working and No. 300 could come as soon as Saturday.
The tour is back at Knoxville Raceway for a second night of racing to conclude the Brownells Big Guns Bash. Only time, trial and error will tell if he makes it there, but Schatz will strive for No. 300 once more.
