DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Why Donny Schatz is the real World of Outlaws championship favorite | Daily 2-24-2022

Coming up we've got schedule news from the Outlaws and USAC, and then we've gotta talk about Donny Schatz. Let's go.

Today is Thursday, February 24th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

We'll kick today's show off with a few news items for you from the last 24 hours. First up...

The dirt racing coming up this weekend got a little lighter yesterday with the cancellation of the two upcoming World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series events in Mississippi and Louisiana. The events at Magnolia Motor Speedway and The Rev on Friday and Saturday have been lost to weather. Rain all week has led to the facilities being too saturated, and to keep fans and teams from traveling for no reason, the events were called early. Fans who had purchased tickets in advance will receive a credit on their account, or can request a refund. For more info on the ticket policy, visit worldofoutlaws.com. This weekend's cancellation means we now won't see the series until March 4th and 5th when they are scheduled for a two race night event at Cotton Bowl Speedway in Texas. Following Texas, the Outlaws are headed west to California for the traditional spring time west coast swing.

In other schedule news, USAC announced yesterday the addition of Circle City Raceway to the national sprint car calendar. The series will take on Circle City on Friday, September 16th, which creates a doubleheader in Indiana with Haubstadt already scheduled for that Saturday, September 17th. Tanner Thorson won the first ever trip to Circle City by the USAC sprint cars last year. Following last weekend's racing in Florida, the series is quiet now until April when they return to action at Lawrenceburg Speedway.

Over to today's main topic. It was exactly two weeks ago that the World of Outlaws Sprint Car season opened at Volusia, and in advance of that race night, we talked on this show about the potential championship contenders. On that Thursday, we talked about the chances of what I consider to be the five drivers with a real shot at the title. They are Brad Sweet, Donny Schatz, David Gravel, Logan Schuchart, and Carson Macedo. I did have a complaint that Sheldon Haudenschild wasn't on that list, but until he can find some consistency, the jury is out on Sheldon's championship hopes. If you take the last three seasons as a whole, Brad Sweet is the easy favorite. Nobody has done what he's done en route to three straight titles. As for the others... I think Schuchart has some work to do to find his 2020 form, and Volusia showed they aren't there quite yet. He needed big charges to get his two top ten results, was in a B-Main one night, and had a 25th place finish. I'm also intrigued by the potential of Carson Macedo, and the improvement we've seen from him as he gets more experience as a full timer. I said as much two weeks ago. And, following the opening three nights at Volusia, the easy overreaction call is David Gravel. A fourth, a second, and a win showed that team has tremendous speed out of the gate, and their average finish of 2.33 is a series best early on. We even saw a little media reaction in this direction from my guy Jeremy Elliott over at Sprintcarunlimited.com. His post wrapping the sprint car openers down south led with him wondering if Gravel is the championship favorite. But, much like Sheldon, Gravel needs to do it over a full season. He's always good early in the night, but can he close. That's the big question. Over the past five plus seasons, nobody has done better in qualifying, heats, or dashes than Gravel. But he trails Schatz in wins, and both Schatz and Sweet in top fives, top tens, and average finish. He must be better come feature time to be a serious threat. I say all of these things to get to Donny Schatz. He opened DIRTcar Nationals with that emphatic win over Kyle Larson on a cowboy up surface, and finished 7th and 6th the next two nights. A very solid start to 2022, especially after it took him more than 30 nights to win a race last year. In my championship preview, I mentioned how strong Donny was over the second half of 2021, even though he only ended up fourth in the standings. I wanted to dive a little deeper into those numbers to see where Schatz really is in comparison to his peers since his season turned around during the summer of 2021 to get an idea of how serious of a title threat he might be this season. I pulled together race results from the previous 40 Outlaw nights for Schatz, which takes us back to Attica on July 13th of 2021. Over that span, 10 drivers made at least 30 features, and I ranked them by average finish. Kraig Kinser, Jacob Allen, and Brock Zearfoss all had average finishes outside the top ten and are on the bottom of that list. In seventh on the list is Logan Schuchart, 38 features, with an average finish of about eight and a half. I'm doing average finish here, because as we've talked about before, it's the stat the seems the most closely correlated to championship success. Lead in average finish, win championship. Sixth on the list is James McFadden, 39 features, average finish just north of eighth. Fifth is Sheldon Haudenschild, all 40 features, average just south of eighth, at 7.9. Fourth is Macedo, 40 features, average finish of 6.68. Third on the list... Drum roll please... Your reigning champion, Brad Sweet. 40 features, average finish of 6.18. Here is where things get interesting. Second on the list, with an average finish just a tick better than Sweet, is David Gravel. 40 features, average of 6.13. So that leaves just one driver. Topping the list in average finish over the previous 40 Outlaw nights is, you guessed it, Donny Schatz. And he's on top by a pretty significant margin. 40 features made, average finish of 4.88. That is one and a quarter positions better than Gravel on average over those 40 races. At about two points per position with the Outlaws, that means Donny has outscored Gravel by 100 points over these past 40 races, and the other drivers, including Sweet, even more. Last year's championship was decided by less than that, 20 points less to be exact. While we were watching Sweet win his third, and Gravel try and chase him down, Schatz very quietly snuck up on his competition. What's even more concerning for those other drivers, is that 40 race stretch includes basically every part of the country; Ohio, Central PA, the midwest, Knoxville, California and the west coast, plus Florida and World Finals. If you're going to win the World of Outlaws championship in 2022, you're going to have to go through Donny Schatz and that TSR 15. These numbers show a team that have found their stride. They clearly have gotten their package around that Ford engine better, and I do believe that adding Kerry Madsen to the mix last season helped the progression. Sweet is who they've been chasing. I'm very bullish on Carson Macedo. Obviously some out there like Gravel. But Donny Schatz is back baby.

If you want to see more stats and numbers like these for the biggest series in dirt racing, head over to dirtrackr.com/analytics.

There are two shows on the streaming schedule today. Speed Sport TV has late models, modifieds, and legends from Fayetteville and there is FloRacing 24/7. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

That's it for the show today, have a good Thursday. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me.

Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!