Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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Q&A: Candid interview with Donny Schatz on his motivation and issues facing Sprint Car racing

Good  interview  ,  Donny Schatz is  honest  , a   good   driver ,clearly  the best  as far  as his record goes . But one  thing may not  be  pointed  out  in this interview  , he  has  the  best  crew  chief  , best  equipment  , has something  that the other  drivers  don't  have in his  setup of the car ? it  appears  the other  teams  are  still  behind  him ?  his  car comes from  behind  like no  other  car ?  you don't  see  most  WoO CARS RUN THE WAY  HIS DOES ? Yes , he  is  a  good driver but as  I said  he  is  has  an edge over the other  teams along with having  Ricky  Warner .

How many WoO titles did Ricky win before he teamed with Donny?

Is Steve Kinser not the best because he had Karl as his crew cheif?

You are only as good as the guys around you. 

And do you really think they are spending more on his car then Steve's or the 3 KKR cars?

like him or hate him what Donny, Ricky and the rest of the crew are doing is remarkable. 

By the way: what great racing at the dirt track in Charlotte this weekend! I'm a sprint car guy through and through but the other two classes put on great shows as well! 

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great  comments ,yes it may be  remarkable , but  Ricky  Warner  could have  won with a  few  other  drivers he had  but didn't for various  reasons .Your right  you are  only  as  good as your guys  that  is why  Donny  is doing as well because he has  the best crew  chief. Yes, I believe  there  may be more spent  in the motor  department  , but the crew chief is  everything  in sprint  car  racing and he has the best . And yes  Steve  was  the best because  he had Karl , but Scott knows  his stuff  but not  like Ricky Warner . I would  appear  by  what  I read  Brianmight have  given his tires a  break ? usually  Donny  makes  the other  guys  run hard , so he out smarts them.

You just said it, he didn't win championships with those other drivers because those other drivers aren't Donny Schatz. I don't care what anyone says, he is the best DRIVER in the world right now. He was kicking ass before Tony Stewart was signing his paychecks.

Everyone has the same equipment. The playing field has never been more level.

My take is he has a little bit more in 3-4 places. A little more driver talent, a little more HP (you dont claw forward like he does in a flat playing field of power. We have all seen it in dashes where the top 6 or 8 cars after lap 1 can not move position wise), he has a little bit more organizational science and talent int he pits. Add all of these "little bits" up and maybe that is how you expalin it. Otherwise, it must be that they are flat out cheating and using traction control!

Seems to me like Schatz won no matter who his Crew Chief was (won with Kenny Woodruff and sat on the pole of the Nationals with him as crew chief a couple times too (and finished 2nd and I think even won his first Nationals with Woodruff).

Is Ricky Warner good?  yes, but he never had a consistent driver until Schatz (Walker was spectacular in the Airsep #35, but he'd win or run 15th.  Schatz wins or runs top 5 (and he was doing that before Ricky Warner joined the team).

Donny Schatz is head and shoulders the best driver of this era (blasphemy alert) and possibly EVER.  What he is doing right now is more impressive to me than when Steve won 50+ races in 1987 and when Wolfie won 45 in 1990.  Steve and Karl had a HUGE advantage over every other car pretty much the entire decade of the 80's and early 90's.  Wolfgang and the DP Motorsports #8d had a HUGE advantage over everyone in 1990 (horsepower and carwise). 

Schatz doesn't have that HUGE advantage IMO, but he races CLEAN (especially compared to the rest of his contemporaries) and passes people (doesn't chop them going into a turn or do huge slide jobs on people).  Pretty much their entire car is off the shelf components too (J & J Chassis, Shaver Engines (you can buy one just like it for $55,000 or so), Vortex wings, etc., etc.), that are available to every other team as well (the difference is, they have ran all those parts nad pieces for 10 years (except the shocks that they continue to experiment with from what I read in that Q & A). 

Other teams blame it on:  "He's got a better chassis", so they swith chassis after a year, or "he's out-horsepowering us", so they make Engine changes, or "he's got an advantage with those wings", so they switch wing manufacturers.  All this does is put him even farther ahead of them as all their notes are now worthless as they changed something.  You keep all the components the same, and you can adjust the set-up and see what happens.  You start changing components and you have no baseline to go off of anymore (IMO).

I was looking down thru the Late Model results from Charlotte and noticed Schatz ran 9th!

http://woolms.com/news/race-reports/124-2014-race-reports/1529-friday-s-action-gets-rolling-at-charlotte

Lincoln 1845 ft/.35 mile T1=118MPH 
Eldora 2287 ft/.43mile T3=135MPH
Port 2716 ft/.51 mile T3=TBD
Grove 2792 ft/.53 mile T3=135MPH
Selinsgrove 2847 ft/.54 mile T1=136MPH
"I didn't move to PA from El Paso in search of better 
weather." Van May

A team can have a great driver and fail. I team can have a great crew chief and fail. There needs to be good chemistry between the two. Warner is a good crew chief, he has shown that. Put him with a driver like Schatz with the right setting, and he becomes great.

You can have all the horsepower in the world and as it is important, it's not the end all, be all on a dry-slick surface. You need to have a driver pedal the car, and that is what Schatz is able to do better than anyone else. People say traction control, well if he has it, so does everyone else. As he put it, monkey see, monkey do. So that means we are back to square one, which is Schatz.

Watch him move around the track. He doesn't stay pinned along the cushion or in the middle or high. He puts the car where it needs to be to pass cars. To me, Schatz can do it all. He is a throwback to the guys that do what they need to do to advance. He doesn't limit himself. A pleasure to watch work.

As far as personality, he is focused. People have to remember that this is his office. And I appreciate that he isn't so vanilla and PC. He says what he thinks. 

I misread Schatz "personality" for years and opne night Smitty took me on the pits and we got Donny on the subject of his engine development program...if you ever get a chance to get him talking about that - it is a game changer.

Lincoln 1845 ft/.35 mile T1=118MPH 
Eldora 2287 ft/.43mile T3=135MPH
Port 2716 ft/.51 mile T3=TBD
Grove 2792 ft/.53 mile T3=135MPH
Selinsgrove 2847 ft/.54 mile T1=136MPH
"I didn't move to PA from El Paso in search of better 
weather." Van May

Good stuff, gators.

Standard chassis? Tell me this has no chance. Standard tires are bad enough.

If the WoO try to mandate "standard chassis", they are going to kill sprint car racing (they are emulating what NASCAR does with "approved" parts and pieces and will end up mandating every little part and piece on the car (and getting a cut of the $$$$ those parts cost).

As long as Williams Grove, Knoxville and Eldora stand up to them, I don't think this will happen.  If it does happen, I'd say they will basically be cutting their own throats as 90% of the teams across the USA use chassis for mulitple seasons if they can (some don't, but a lot of "local teams" will use stuff that's anywhere from 2-7 years old).

Knoxville was the driving force behind the ( standard tire ) we have now 

Warner won the Gumout series with Tyler Walker. and how many titles did Schatz win before Warner. Face it boys they are good for each other, and if they stay together there is no limit to what they can do. And the rest of the team Scuba and Eric are the best at maintaining a car as any that are out there today. It's a team effort and when they get it going, everyone else is chacing. The fact is there is no (I) in TEAM

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  Winged Nation - Oct 14

  23 time winner (so far) in 2014, Rico Abreu, crew chief for Donny Schatz, Ricky Warner, and King of ...

Here is an interview with Kendra Jacobs Interviewing Rick Warner, He can tell you what he thinks of Donny Schatz