10-time Outlaws champion Donny Schatz itches to return to racing

By Apr 26, 2020, 8:00 AM EDT
Tony Stewart Racing
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Time off isn’t something sprint car racers ever really have to endure.

During the winter, there is always some place to race: Arizona, Florida or indoor venues such as the Chili Bowl. If they find an ambitious sponsor, there is always Australia or New Zealand.

But for Donny Schatz and the other stars of the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series, the choice about whether to race has been made for them.

Until racing resumes in the United States, and with fans in the stands, it will be difficult to re-create a comprehensive schedule.

And given the still shifting sands of local and state regulations, plus the uncertain trajectory of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, that could take a while.

“(The World of Outlaws) have definitely thrown every idea and scenario out there to get back going,” Schatz told NBCSports.com. “I think right now, it’s day by day to see what happens. At the end of the day, the World of Outlaws is a series that travels nationally just like NASCAR.

“But NASCAR could function, possibly, without fans in the stands because of television. We cannot. Our pay and everything is based on putting people in the stands. They’ve reached out to me and thrown a lot of ideas, some that are about as crazy as you can imagine. They’re putting forth the effort to try to get things going as soon and safe as possible.”

The volume of their calendar, the size of the markets they visit and the time of day they race can make dirt track racing challenging for a national network. Currently, the best way to watch the entire schedule is through the series’ online streaming service, DIRTVision.

And there are plenty of races in a typical season, which creates a critical mass. More than 85 races were scheduled before the COVID-19 outbreak pushed the pause button on racing.

Teams were on their way to Cotton Bowl Speedway, near Austin, Texas, when the dominoes began to fall. Since that first event was postponed, 19 races have been canceled or postponed, including the entire spring West Coast schedule.

Donny Schatz and Logan Schuchart battled for the win at Volusia Speedway Park in February (Tony Stewart Racing).

At the time, series director Carlton Reimers described the chaos involved with trying to continue racing with conflicting information from tracks, as well as from local and state authorities.

It has not gotten much better as states struggle to implement orders that will allow businesses to return while balancing the need for social distancing.

The next scheduled events are a three-race swing May 13-16 through Pennsylvania that includes one of the series’ most prestigious races, the Morgan Cup at Williams Grove Speedway. The current stay-at-home order for Pennsylvania is set to expire on May 8.

While NASCAR has attempted to stay resolute in its desire to race the entire schedule of 36 races, the Outlaws won’t be able to do that. There are simply too many races, and too many pieces of the puzzle already have fallen off the table with cancellations.

“It’s an unfortunate thing obviously,” Schatz said. “We have zero control over when it’s up. It’s just something that nobody ever looked at. … I hope that we get back going, and things get back to normal, and obviously there will be some build-up to that just like anything else. It puts everyone in a position where they appreciate all the freedoms that we have and forces a different perspective. As far as it affecting us, yeah we’re going to have less races.

“What does that do to our whole season? It’s yet to be determined so I can’t put too much emphasis on it one way or another.”

Donny Schatz sits in staging at Volusia, waiting to race (Tony Stewart Racing).

The break in action will change the arc of the season. The schedule always has been crowded. That won’t change. Dirt track sprint car racing will continue to be grueling. And winter weather provides a natural end point that can’t be pushed much further.

But there also will be fewer races to overcome a deficit. Or conversely, there will be less time to lose a lead.

Schatz doesn’t believe that will make much of a difference for a team with the resources of Tony Stewart Racing.

“I don’t know if it puts any more pressure on us,” Schatz said. “I race with a great organization that has nothing to prove. We love being competitive. It makes us appreciate some of the things that we take for granted some days. There’s really no pressure there. We have great partners.

“The people at Ford Advance put their money on us, and they expect results, and we know we will give them to them. It’s just unfortunate that we can’t be racing right now, but I think it is definitely going to set the tone for everyone. Everyone is rested up, they’re itching to get going, and hopefully, we can do that sooner rather than later.”

Of far greater concern for Schatz has been an increase in parity among the top five contenders.

The 10-time champion is accustomed to leading the points. Since he won his first title in 2006, only three other drivers have scored championships. Jason Meyers won in 2010 and 2011 before retiring in 2012. Daryn Pittman won in 2013 while running for Kasey Kahne Racing.

Schatz won five consecutive championships from 2014-18.

In 2019, Brad Sweet earned another title for Kahne, denying Schatz the opportunity to tie Steve Kinser’s record of six consecutive championships from 1983-88.

“There’s no question that it’s been more competitive in the top five,” Schatz said. “Why is that? I don’t know. Is it because we’ve slipped a little bit or because everyone else has gotten better? I don’t know the answer to that. I know that we haven’t had the stats the last couple of years that we would like to have had.

“If you take last season, for instance, I feel like it was one of our worst years in the last 10, and we missed out on a championship by four points. Two positions on the racetrack on one night. Is it really that bad? No.

“There’s a lot of guys that have stepped up their game a little bit, and I think some of that comes off of feeding off some of the things that we’ve done. Some of the precedence that Tony Stewart Racing has set. There’s been a lot more parity in the top five, and all we can do is keep working like those guys always have and try to be on the better spectrum of it.”

Currently, five of the top seven teams in the points have a NASCAR affiliation.

Donny Schatz (center) won the opening race at Volusia, followed by Logan Schuchart (left) and Brad Sweet (right). Schuchart and Sweet won the next two events (Tony Stewart Racing).

And while it would seem those teams have a distinct advantage, Logan Schuchart’s win for Shark Racing at Volusia and Pittman’s third-place standing with Roth Motorsports underscore the strength of the field.

“We don’t operate any differently than the other teams,” Schatz said. “Sometimes there’s a lot more pressure that goes on the NASCAR owner and the NASCAR-affiliated teams because they have more requirements, more commitments and more events that they have to be a part of. It has to be a shiny bus 24/7/365, and I think that wears on the crew guys a little bit instead of it just being simple and homegrown. But it’s great to have the involvement.

“It brings different fans to the sport, and it’s grown the popularity of dirt racing on their platform as well as ours.”

There have been three winners in the first three Outlaws races. Schatz got off to a great start by winning the opening night of a three-race stand at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Florida. But a sixth-place finish in Night 2 and a seventh in Night 3 has him 14 points out of the lead.

Is that bad? Certainly not, and whenever the series gets back to action, there is still a lot of racing to be done.

Follow Dan Beaver on Twitter

With fierce racing, IndyCar found redemption and rebirth on the streets of downtown Detroit

By Jun 9, 2023, 6:00 AM EDT
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DETROIT – A lap in the IndyCar Grand Prix had yet to be turned on the streets of Detroit, and race drivers were doing what they sometimes do best – expecting the worst of a new race course.

It was the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, and some of the top drivers in the NTT IndyCar Series, including pole winner Alex Palou, were questioning the nine-turn, 1.645-mile street course in downtown Detroit. Even after he won the pole on Saturday, Palou had said the Indy cars were too big, the race course was too small, too tight and too bumpy for the series to put on a competitive race.

It was Sunday morning, five hours before the race, and the IndyCar morning warmup session just had ended. Penske Corp. president Bud Denker, the Detroit GP chairman, was talking to NBC Sports as the Indy cars were being wheeled back to the paddock following the warmup session.

Instead of his trademark smile and optimism, Denker was determined and stern. As Palou’s No. 10 Honda was being pulled by the team’s tire wagon into the paddock, Denker expressed his feelings.

“I’m really not happy with some of the comments that driver has been making,” Denker said.

Denker’s team had spent the better part of two years envisioning and developing a street course that could create a major racing event without shutting down the Detroit business community.

Jefferson Avenue, the main thoroughfare in the city’s business district, remained open thanks to some creative track design (because the race course crossed Jefferson over a bridge and also couldn’t impede the adjacent tunnel that was an international crossing to Windsor, Canada).

From an event standpoint, the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix was already electric with a vibe that brought tens of thousands daily to this revitalized urban center known as “Motor City.”

But would the actual race prove to be worthy?

Fast forward to Sunday late afternoon and – wouldn’t you know it – the winner of the race was its most vocal critic leading up to the green flag.

Alex Palou.

It was a chance for Denker and Palou to speak.

“Alex and I actually had a conversation after the race on the way to pit lane,” Denker told NBC Sports. “I congratulated him because he was a worthy champion, did a great job, great win, great run, pole qualifying also.

“His comment to me was, ‘This track proved very worthy.’

“I’ll take that from him.”

The race itself exceeded expectations. It may have been the best street race of the season on the NTT IndyCar Series schedule.

The racing was fierce, the competition phenomenal, and the restarts brought even the most jaded motorsports observers to their feet.

“Oh yeah, myself included,” Palou admitted to NBC Sports. “The event was amazing. The crowd we had was unbelievable. The energy was great. It was a really great race.”

Palou’s complaints entering the race were from his frustrations in finding a clean lap during qualification sims in practice and the actual qualifications on Saturday.

With 27 cars on a 1.645-mile street circuit, just do the math – it’s hard to get a gap.

But the race course proved to be a much better “race” track than a qualifying layout.

“Yes, 100 percent,” Palou said. “I like to go fast. I like to race. When you have traffic every single lap, you don’t like it that much, but for the race, it was great. It was a great event for the fans, for the teams and for the drivers.

“The energy we had here was amazing.”

The drivers’ worst fears never developed in the race. There were no blocked corners. No red flags. Plenty of passing zones.

Denker and his team could feel vindication and a strong sense of redemption.

“It is ironic,” Denker said of Palou winning the race. “I think a lot of the comments early on was because of the first practice. There was no rubber on the track. A new track for them. A lot of cars going into the runoff and stalling their cars in the runoff, not turning the cars around fast enough. I think a lot of perceptions were created in that first practice.

“Some of our turns look tight. Turn 1 for instance, the apex is 27 feet, much larger than some other tracks where it is tight. The issue going into the race was, are you going to have two cars block the entire track and then you have to go Red Flag.

“We never had that situation today where you had a car block the track, even in the tightest turns. We never had an issue where cars could not get around you.

“The corners were wide enough to support the fact that when you had an issue, cars could get around and continue moving around without having a red flag.”

It also proved that in an actual competition, the teams and drivers in IndyCar can figure out how to adapt and put on a good race.

“We saw them figure it out in the Indy NXT race on Saturday,” Denker said. “It was a great race. We saw so many IndyCar drivers go off into the runoff on Friday that there were concerns. Many of them were stalling their cars and couldn’t get them spun around.

“That led to, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re going to have caution after caution after caution because we aren’t going to be able to get our cars stopped to make a turn, or slowed down to make a turn, and the runoff will happen continuously.’ “Guess what? We had seven cautions for 32 laps and very few of those were for a stalled car in the runoff. It was for a mistake on the race track made by a driver.

“We proved the thoughts that came out on Friday, we proved them very, very wrong in the race on Sunday.”

As the president of the Penske Corp., Denker is a man who understands business and decorum. He is one of Roger Penske’s most valued executives, practically his right-hand man.

The impeccably dressed Denker is never rattled, and he backs up his style with substance.

IndyCar racing, however, is a highly competitive game and in the heat of battle, the energy level tends to increase.

That is why Denker was more emphatic than usual once the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix had concluded.

“Eighteen months ago, it was an idea that Michael Montri had after the success of the Nashville Grand Prix and what it did for that city,” Denker said. “The businesses coming together, the community coming together and the city just glowing.

“We came back in August of 2021 and asked if that could ever happen in downtown Detroit and off Belle Isle. We found a great circuit that was worthy of that, that wouldn’t compromise business or the international tunnel in the middle of our race track. That was a dream at the time.

“It’s a cliché, but dreams really came true this weekend. We saw the success of great racing, competitive racing, safe racing and very importantly, fans that we haven’t seen came out in a very diverse way and enjoy this sport.”

It was certainly a major weekend for Detroit as the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix was the lead story on seemingly every TV newscast in the city. The business community of the city flourished – something that didn’t happen when the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix was held 4 miles up Jefferson at Belle Isle Park from 1992-2022.

“One hundred percent,” Denker agreed. “The fact of the matter is most of the people that come to our race are within a four-county area. Just like Indianapolis, one state for them.

“I think the fact is Belle Isle you came down, you parked in the same parking deck where the sponsors parked that had been there for 13 years, get in a bus, come back, get in their car, they go home.

“Here you had to park somewhere. You had to come downtown. Took the People Mover, the Q Line, all these different places and you came downtown. That was the difference for us.

“Belle Isle in my mind, it’s 50 miles away from Detroit in some respects because we didn’t see the benefit the city would get. We saw the benefit this time because of how busy it was. You saw it. You were staying here at a hotel somewhere and saw it.

“We know we made a big impact on the city. Why? Because the hotels were all filled up. They weren’t filled up when Belle Isle was there.”

Already on its way to have a dramatic economic impact to Detroit, on Sunday, the competitive level of IndyCar was on full display.

“The facts are there were 189 on-track passes at Detroit, 142 of them were for position,” Denker said proudly. “At St. Pete, great race this year, 170 on-track passes versus Detroit’s 189 and 128 for position versus Detroit’s 142.

“Long Beach, great race this year, had the same for position passes as Detroit had. I think we had a pretty good race.”

Although Palou won the race, it was Team Penske’s Will Power that put on the show. He was a master on the restarts, going full throttle into the end of the long straightaway, pulling out from behind Palou and taking the lead by diving to the inside in the turn.

That move worked throughout the race until the final restart, when Palou was able to protect the inside line and make Power go to the outside.

The Team Penske driver (whose race weekend highlight was hanging out with Flavor Flav) was unable to use the high line and then proceeded to get into a street fight with Scott Dixon and others for second place in the closing laps.

“The restarts were great because we have this long straightaway,” Denker said. “We started the restart between coming out of Turn 1. Those that got a good jump, like Will Power did on Alex Palou on the second-to-last restart, could make a good pass. Those that had push-to-passes left later on could make a good pass.

“The fact we had this seven-eighths of a mile straightaway where the restarts were coming into was a great place to start the race versus an area not as long. We had the benefit of having a straightway as long as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and speeds that were just unbelievable going down through this track.

“I thought the restarts were great because of the positions Kyle Novak (IndyCar Race Director) and his team made for that.

“The other thing was the dual pit lane. This was really interesting because it hasn’t been done before to have 13 cars pitted on one side and 14 cars pitting on the other side and have six lanes merging to one in 315 feet. How is that going to happen?

“This time, because of the yellows, we never had a situation with 27 cars coming in at the same time. It was sporadic. That issue we thought would happen to create a calamity on pit lane never happened.”

Two of the Arrow McLaren drivers got into their own shoving match on the track with Felix Rosenqvist getting the best of Alexander Rossi for third place.

But none of the Chevrolet drivers were able to catch Palou at the end as the No. 10 Honda took the checkered flag.

“When you have Chevrolet as the backdrop, and them being the key partner and sponsor of this thing, you want to keep them happy,” Denker said. “They also know competition drives this sport. We saw some great action. Will Power made a great move late, some great action there. The competition between the Arrow McLaren cars were unbelievable the last 10 laps. Will Power made a great pass of Alexander Rossi to get position to take over second place. I loved the competition.

“We saw some passes late between Turns 8 and 9 and Turns 1 and 2 that I don’t think anybody thought would happen. This turned into a very, very competitive race track.

“Once this track rubbered up, the drivers said this track was very worthy.

“It’s a new place. They have to learn new things. There are some bumps in certain corners. Guess what? We’ll fix those things.

“No one got to test here because we couldn’t close the roads down a week ahead of time or a month ahead of time or two days ahead of time. I got some feedback from drivers who did simulation. I ground some track areas they wanted fixed. I put new pavement in Turn 3 to drivers right because of feedback.

“I got no feedback to repaving drivers left. If I had, I would have repaved that, also. It shows that I will make those changes because I made those changes to driver right, but I never got that feedback.

“It goes both ways. Provide me the feedback, I’ll make those changes. But now that we’ve had the race, we have a lot more opportunity to make changes based off of what actually happened.”

There were accolades and plaudits from some of IndyCar’s most accomplished drivers afterwards, including six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion and 2008 Indianapolis 500 winner Scott Dixon.

“It was wild,” Dixon said. “I had a lot of fun. The car was super difficult. The track was difficult. It had a lot of character. It was interesting but very difficult on the restarts.

“These things aren’t meant to be easy. I had a lot of fun, just frustrated with how my day went and not getting the most out of a really good car.”

From both an event and race standpoint, team owner Dale Coyne believed it was a blockbuster.

“This is a really big event,” Coyne said. “We’ve brought Long Beach to a major city like Detroit. This is the type of event that we should be doing in IndyCar.

“I would rather be in Detroit than in Milwaukee. Events like this one in Detroit are IndyCar’s future. Milwaukee is IndyCar’s past.”

While that comment may not resonate with some of IndyCar’s older fan base who long for the days of The Milwaukee Mile as the first race after the Indianapolis 500, that distinction has belonged to Detroit since it returned to the IndyCar schedule in 2012.

Now that it’s back on the streets of downtown Detroit for the first time since 1991, Denker predicts even bigger events to come for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

“Our city was showcased to the world in ways that people had probably never thought,” Denker said proudly. “The riverfront, you couldn’t tell if you were in San Diego, or even Monaco, these boats that were out there harbored. We couldn’t be more proud of our team.

“We are already planning for next year.”

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500