Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing (TSR) driver Donny Schatz continued his torrid start to the 2015 World of Outlaws (WoO) Sprint Car Series campaign by outdueling Shane Stewart Saturday night in the Texas Outlaw Showdown at Devil’s Bowl Speedway in Mesquite, Texas. The win was his sixth WoO A-Feature victory in the first 17 races and second at the historic dirt track located outside Dallas, where the Outlaws held their inaugural race back in March of 1978.
Schatz, the six-time and reigning WoO champion, led the first seven and final 13 laps of the 30-lap A-Feature behind the wheel of the TSR No. 15 Bad Boy Buggies/Chevrolet Performance J&J en route to his 178th career WoO A-Feature victory.
“This race team is amazing,” Schatz said. “The Bad Boy Buggies/Chevrolet Performance car was fast all night. I enjoyed racing with Shane up front. He’s a class act. He races hard and he races clean and it’s fun to come out on the better end of him. Tonight just proved you have to be able to move around and be able to deal with lapped cars. We had a problem with one early in the race and Shane took advantage of it. I kept working on getting better the rest of the race and, when he had a similar issue, we were there to return the favor. This race means a lot to me. To win here for the second year in a row and to have my name on the (WoO founder) Ted Johnson Memorial really means a lot.”
The evening began with Schatz qualifying second in the field of 30 cars. He raced from fourth to second in heat two and won the six-lap dash from the third starting position. That win earned Schatz the pole for the 30-lap A-Feature. He set the pace early after taking the lead at the drop of the green. Entering turn one on lap eight, he tried the high side trying to get around a lapped car, but he wasn’t able to get the car to hold his line, as well, opening the door for Stewart to dive under and take the lead. Schatz got to Stewart’s bumper and chased him throughout the next eight circuits and, when Stewart got bottled up behind a lapped car, Schatz made a move under him and retook the top spot. The top two cars would race away from the rest of the field and Schatz pulled away late in the race to pick up the victory.
Twenty-time WoO champion Steve Kinser, who was piloting the TSR No. 11 Bad Boy Buggies J&J, joined Schatz and the rest of the Outlaws at Devil’s Bowl for one of the stops on his limited schedule this season. Kinser qualified eighth and won the second heat to grab a coveted spot in the dash where he finished seventh. “The King of the Outlaws” finished 14th in the A-Feature.
Schatz has earned 2,529 championship points and leads Shane Stewart by 26 markers through 17 races. His six A-Feature wins, 12 top-five and 16 top-10 finishes leads all drivers.
The TSR team returned to the raceshop in Brownsburg, Indiana following Saturday’s race in Texas and will spend the week preparing for this weekend’s tripleheader starting Friday at the Salina (Okla.) Highbanks, followed by a stop in St. Louis Saturday at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55, and concluding Sunday at Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Indiana.