Donny Schatz turned and faced the crowded Knoxville Raceway grandstands, raising his arms in jubilation. He had just won his second-straight SuperClean Knoxville Nationals and was nearly overwhelmed with joy.
Schatz is a little young to realize this — he’s 29 — but his victory is an important step toward the validation of his career, or perhaps the first step toward what might ultimately be legendary status.
Schatz is clearly the best driver in winged sprint-car racing today. He’s the defending World of Outlaws champion and leads the series with 14 victories, including some big wins that include Knoxville and the Kings Royal at Eldora.
But where does he stack up against the all-time list? That will be a hot topic among sprint-car fans in the coming months, but realistically it’s a little early for that conversation.
Schatz has clearly matured and is now a terrific racer. He’s smart. He’s savvy. He’s skilled. He’s paid his dues in terms of living in a race car for the past 10 years. He has a lot of numbers on the odometer, and that’s been the difference.
He’s the best among contemporary racers; now all he needs to do is sustain that level of success over a long period of time. Legends are never a flash-in-the-pan; legends are the people who can perform at this level year after year after year.
It’s very possible Schatz will do this: he’s got everything going his way, including a brand-new seat with the high-profile, high-budget Tony Stewart Racing for 2008.
One thing Schatz will be up against, however, is that he’ll forever be compared to Steve Kinser. That’s the situation with every sprint-car driver over the past 30 years. Kinser’s career has been so titanic that he has become the de facto standard against which everyone else is measured.
But Schatz is shaping up to be the standard of the next generation. He now has more than 70 WoO wins, and at age 29 could realistically be expected to win 10 to 15 features each year for the foreseeable future. At that rate he would surpass Sammy Swindell (268 wins, second all-time behind Kinser) while in his early- to mid-40s.
It sounds like a long shot, but that’s how great careers are forged: one season at a time, with continued success.
Schatz has been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of his popularity with the fans. He is often perceived as aloof or distant, and his mood can be prickly at the race track.
But in all fairness, think back 20 years to Kinser, Swindell and Doug Wolfgang at their zenith. They weren’t always a sunbeam of happiness on race day, either.
The truth: Schatz is actually a nice guy but is sometimes slow to warm to strangers. He’s quiet, and that makes him seem more distant than he really is. He has steadily improved in terms of dealing with the media and is today one of the best interviews out there, because he isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
His strong opinions sometimes lead him to complain about things he isn’t happy with. Whining? Maybe, but almost every racer has a dose of that disease now and again.
Then again, it doesn’t matter if you like him or not.
The fact is, Donny Schatz has now stepped up his career to another level, and it’s up to his competitors to match him.