Neither cautions nor a fierce battle with Shane Stewart could stop Donny Schatz on his way to a sweep of the World of Outlaws STP Sprint Car Series’ three-race Canada swing and 12th win of the season at Ohsweken Speedway Tuesday night.
Schatz won the Six Nations Showdown after winning the two previous events at Cornwall Motor Speedway and Autodrome Drummond.
“I just did everything I could,” Schatz said. “A lot of it comes down to [crew members] Rick Warner, [Steve ‘Scuba’ Swanson], Eric [Prutzman], Bill Klingbeil – these guys do a phenomenal job working on this racecar and making STP look good.”
In addition to winning the feature at Ohsweken, Schatz was third quickest in hot laps, took home the quick time – his sixth of the season – won his heat race and finished second in the dash.
“The [STP/Armor All] car was fun to drive all night long, right from the word go,” Schatz said. “Hot laps, qualifying, heat race. Shane got out front there pretty early. I expected the track to slow down and slick off there a little bit more than it did but it was fast. It was an awful fast race. Hats off to the whole STP team, they did a great job getting me what I needed.”
“I enjoyed being in Canada. It’s been great to me. O Canada!”
Cautions plagued the early part of the race. Just after the drop of the green flag, an incident left Paul McMahan on his roof in the middle of turns one and two and Jason Sides and Kraig Kinser with damaged racecars. Sides and McMahan were able to return to the track while Kinser had his night ended.
Two more cautions followed in quick succession for Sides and Logan Schuchart. With Stewart leading, James McFadden in second and Schatz in third another caution came out with eight complete after a mechanical issue led to a fire on the No. 52 of Jesse Costa. Costa was OK.
On the restart, Schatz fought his way around McFadden for second. What commenced was a ten lap battle for the lead between Schatz and Stewart. On laps 10, 11 and 12 Schatz looked low and in the middle to get around Stewart but couldn’t make it work. With a decent lead built up, Stewart hit lapped traffic on lap 15. As he worked his way through it, Schatz began reeling him back in.
By lap 18, Schatz was again on Stewart’s rear bumper bar, challenging him for the lead. After a hiccup for Stewart, Schatz got around and led lap 19. Stewart however was able to use lapped traffic as a pick, sliding Schatz through turns one and two. He led lap 20.
Schatz was not done though, on the next lap he too was able to use lapped traffic as a pick, getting back around Stewart to lead lap 21. Though Stewart tried to reel Schatz back in, Schatz took the checkered flag for his third win in a row. His current streak is the second longest of the season.
Schatz extended his points lead over Daryn Pittman to 106. After a difficult night that saw him finish in 18th, third place Paul McMahan fell to 178 points back.