A stoic Donny Schatz sat down in front of the microphone Saturday night at Eldora Speedway after the sprint car great captured his sixth Kings Royal win of his career.
Schatz was grateful, and he always is after a big win, but it took him a bit to get there in his postrace press conference.
“I think it’s the adversity lately” Schatz said. “We’re not performing the way we want, and tonight we did. These guys brought a car down from upstairs with a two-year-old motor there. Obviously, it runs pretty damn good. We tried a lot of different stuff this week. We came here in May, and we were really good, but the racetrack is different. It just takes everything you can get. These guys just kept digging. There isn’t anybody in this pit area that wants to run seventh, eighth, twelfth, sixteenth, but we’ve done that. Tonight, I don’t know what you say. I guess the stars lined up.”
Schatz knows better than anyone that his performance over the past seasons hasn’t been what it needs to be. He knows that the hail mary move his crew made to bring out an older car for Saturday’s race was the call that made all of the difference.But while taking in his sixth career victory in the race, Schatz couldn’t help but look ahead.
“How we went about getting here – it worked tonight, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work Wednesday night at B.A.P.S. or Friday and Saturday at Williams Grove. Everything we’ve done for the last month, it’s like I can’t get out of my own way. It’s a combination of the direction we’ve gone with some of the engine stuff and the changes in the tire. Does this (win) help? Yeah, but maybe we went in the wrong direction and we’ve got to start visiting some of the things that we’ve already done. It’s a lot easier said than done.”
It’s a World of Outlaws race in Pennsylvania on a Wednesday night. It doesn’t get much more ‘normal’ than that as far as the schedule goes.
Yet, Schatz just wants to figure out how to win again, despite on July 16 being the most recent Kings Royal and Knoxville Nationals champion.
He did it on Saturday by using an older car that seemed to lock down onto the racing surface better than anyone in the field. Drivers behind Schatz bounced from the right side of the car to the left.”It was tough,” Kasey Kahne said after pulling into the pits with a P9 finish.
“You could enter a little bit wrong or make a little mistake and bounce all the way to the wall. Luckily, we were able to keep (the car) on the ground.
“The race saw the most cautions of any over the entire week, despite the move to single-car restarts due to the treacherous track conditions.
That was magnified after the fuel stop that took place with 17 laps to go. When the tank is packed full of fuel weighing about eight pounds per gallon in the minimum weight required 1425-pound car, the handling can become more difficult for the drivers. It took three restarts and a flip that sent Parker Price-Miller out of the race to get things started again.
It should also be noted that neither DirtVision nor the World of Outlaws posted any laps of green flag racing from the A-Main to their social media channels Saturday.
Even despite the visual of cars having to be tamed like a bull at a PBR show, some will speculate the move to single-file restarts as a protective measure by Eldora Speedway owner Tony Stewart to ensure his team’s driver won the race.
“People have these perceptions because your car owner owns the track and owns the team,” Schatz said. “The first thing I thought when I heard they were doing a fuel stop – I was like ‘oh my god, this is just for us because we’re starting on the pole.’ Someone’s going to say that. They have these preconceived notions where they say it’s fixed or it’s rigged. I would have rather ran 40 laps with no fuel stop, myself. But, I think (World of Outlaws race director Mike Hess) made the right the call. We were damn near track record speed all night long. So, it’s like single-file restarts in the matter of safety. Mike makes those calls and 99.9 percent of the time, he makes them right. There’s always someone that’s going to agree with it and there’s always someone that’s going to disagree with it. To be able to win at Tony’s house is pretty special.”
The track was one that may have postponed the race to the next day if it was a race like Wednesday night at B.A.P.S.But Eldora Speedway was tasked with a difficult decision, racing after a morning of rain showers in front of what ended up being the biggest attendance number in its 70-year history.
That’s a record you don’t want to see get passed up, no matter where you fall in the politics of the sprint car industry today.
Those debates were ongoing through the week, with the most encompassing on social media coming in the format for the race.
In the past, Eldora would have a driver spin the “wheel of misfortune” after qualifying to determine if the heat races – which transfer the top three finishers to the main event – would line up with an invert of zero, four or six.
However, this was weighted. The wheel in recent races would have double the spots for 4’s and 6’s than the two 0’s that showed on the wheel.
Saturday, the wheel was scrapped and an invert of six was given to the drivers before the night started. It rewarded the drivers that qualified 31st-36th a pole position for their heat races. Drivers that qualified 25th-30th started on the front.
“I think the format could use a change in my opinion, just because I know people that sandbagged for years and it worked out for them,” said David Gravel, who rounded out the podium. “I know Donny is a guy who never sandbags and he’s won a lot of these Kings Royals that way. I just felt like tonight, you’re crucifying yourself if you run fifth or sixth in a heat race. I felt like youre giving yourself less of a chance.”
Gravel gamed the system, qualifying P33 in a pair of nearly identical laps, giving him a pole position for his heat race.The format does grant the top two qualifiers that don’t transfer a guaranteed spot in the race in row 10, but beyond that, a number of drivers capable of making the race didn’t qualify, like Thursday’s Eldora Million winner Logan Schuchart.
Gravel referenced Spencer Bayston, who qualified P4 in the 61-car field, finished P6 in his heat race and started the B-Main P18.
“When it doesn’t go back on qualifying, and it goes back to your finishing position, pretty much qualifying doesn’t mean anything, once you roll out there for the heat race,” Gravel said. “To me, that’s a double-edged sword. It’s a special race and it creates a lot of excitement, but usually it puts a couple question mark guys up front in the feature, and maybe they like that. It’s certainly a different format. I was just finally able to hit (the inversion bubble) right.”
The format ended Brad Sweet’s Cal Ripken-esque streak of qualifying for every World of Outlaws A-Main since the start of the 2014 season – the only format in motorsports that incentivizes race car drivers to go slower.
There’s not a perfect answer or method to fix a lot of these issues, and some will go to the lengths to say that they don’t consider them as such.
Then you remember the crowd at the track watched two grown men dressed in knight costumes joust on the frontstretch before the race and think to yourself ‘man, shit is just different here.’
“Eldora always puts on a show,” Dirtrackr columnist Matt Weaver reminded me after the race.
