CONCORD, N.C. — Donny Schatz may have finished sixth in the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series standings, but those in attendance at Sunday night’s season-ending banquet learned it was very evident the 10-time champion remains motivated to chase victories and championships.
“I have to get back at that table there,” Schatz said looking at title winner Brad Sweet. “It is hard to swallow when you want to be somewhere that you are not. This game is the most humbling thing I have ever done. I have always been surrounded by great people and I am still surrounded by great people.
“Things don’t always go your way and every person in this room realizes that. I want to get back there. I enjoy the competition.”
Schatz has been pursuing his racing dreams since he was a youngster.
“As a child growing up watching the World of Outlaws, this is what I wanted to do,” he explained. “To be able to win a race, to be able to win a championship, to be part of this was all I really wanted and everything after that is icing on the cake. But the cake tastes a lot better with more icing on it.”
Despite recently becoming a grandfather, Schatz believes he has many good years of racing ahead of him.
“Gordy and Savanna made me a grandpa, so apparently I have this old status because I am a grandpa, but I am not that old,” Schatz said with a sly grin. “I am 46. I still have a lot of good years left in me, and I think that everybody forgets that the greatest guy (Steve Kinser) to ever drive a sprint car did this until he was 60 and he kicked our ass until the day that he left.
“That’s probably not going to be me, but I am going to try. I will do what I can as long as I can.”
• Brad Sweet was crowned World of Outlaws champion for the fifth consecutive season. He said overcoming adversity is one of the keys to winning a title.
“There are some great competitors in this room. The 2 car (David Gravel) really stepped up this year,” Sweet explained. “I feel like David had the fastest car all season. It made us step up. Competition is what drives this sport. It is a lot of adversity that you have to fight through. It’s easy and it’s fun when you are winning races. What wins a championship are the bad nights and how you can recover as a team.
“It’s not easy to bring positive energy to the race track every night. It is easy to get down,” Sweet said. “There are so many things going on in your life in and out of the race car. This year we overcame a lot of adversity.”
• Giovanni Scelzi finished fourth in the standings and earned the Kevin Gobrecht Rookie of the Year Award after his first full season on the World of Outlaws tour.
“I had run a handful of Outlaw races but hadn’t run for a championship since I was 15 years old racing with NARC,” Scelzi said. “It was unbelievable. It was one of the hardest years I’ve had in my life on and off the race track — driving up and down the road ad really racing against the best teams and drivers in the world.
“It is easy to come out with you guys when you are racing part time and win a few races, but when you are racing with you night in and night out, it changes your mindset about everybody in this room,” the KCP Racing driver added. “It was an incredible accomplishment for our team.”
• Former sprint car racer, television analyst and race promoter Brad Doty was honored with the Ted Johnson Award, named for the late series founder.
“I am honored and humbled to win this award,” said Doty. “I joined World of Outlaws in 1982. That was there fifth year. I was just trying to get to the next race and I would have never dreamed it would become what it is today.”
• David Gravel was the series runner-up for the third time. He said the Big Game Motorsports team is motivated to continue chasing that elusive championship.
“We want to win that championship,” Gravel said. “Brad has been a fierce competitor for a long time, and a good friend, but I feel like we had an opportunity to beat him this year and we just didn’t get it done.
“We are excited for the future and we are going to keep building this thing. It was my third year with Big Game Motorsports. The future is bright and we are very motivated.”
Gravel said three DNFs made the difference.
“We led the series in wins and top fives, but we DNFed three times this year,” Gravel said. “You can’t win World of Outlaws championships doing that. I remember Donny Schatz was on his streak and didn’t have a DNF for a few years in a row and I think Brad went two years without a DNF, so I feel like if we clean those things up we are right there.”
• Ten-time World of Outlaws champion Donny Schatz said learning how to win championships is a process.
“Brad has learned how to do it. I learned how to do it,” Schatz said. “We all have a different path in how we get there, the process. If you want to be sitting up at the head table here, you aren’t going to do it tearing the race car every night, you are not going to do it thinking you are going to win every race. There are going to be nights when you have to sacrifice.
“There will be nights when second is going to have to be good enough, there are going to be nights where 20th is going to have to be good enough. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the nature of the beast. I think championships are still won the same way, but everybody has a different process.”
• Second-year World of Outlaws driver Noah Gass concluded that his second season was more challenging than his rookie campaign.
“I would argue it got harder. It was a crazy year,” he said. “There were a number of times that I just wanted to pack up and go home and lay in bed for two weeks. It didn’t feel like that the first year. I don’t know what changed, but it seems like it got harder. I’m glad it’s over. I am sorry to be brutally honest with you, but I was getting tired.”