PONTOON BEACH, Ill. — Donny Schatz earned his fourth Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series victory in the last five races Sunday night at Tri-City Speedway.
The only blemish on the two-time defending series champion’s record during that stretch was a second-place finish Friday at Knoxville Raceway.
Schatz led all 35 laps of Tri-City’s three-eighths-mile dirt track to snag his fifth victory of the season and the 75th of his career.
“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.”
Just five laps into the race, Schatz was in lapped traffic and setting 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.
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 events this season.
Jason Meyers picked up the KSE Race Products Hard Charger Award on Sunday night after earning a runner-up finish after he lined up 18th. Meyers leads the series with 14 top-five finishes.
“It’s certainly not where we wanted to start,” Meyers said. “I think if we would have started up front, we would have had the car to win the race. We minimized our damage by being able to come from the back up to the front.”
Steve Kinser drove from seventh to finish third, with Craig Dollansky and Shane Stewart rounding out the top five.