Schatz Looking for Wins and More in 2024; NOS Energy Drink Signs Extension with World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series

Schatz Looking for Wins and More in 2024; NOS Energy Drink Signs Extension with World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series

By Rhonda Beck; WISNC Creations/BeckRacingMedia

2-9-2024

Yesterday it was announced that NOS Energy Drink was extending its long-time support of the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. Charlie Mellilo, World Racing Group’s Chief Media and Marketing Officer, along with Lauren Albano, Brand Officer for NOS Energy Drink, thanked the drivers and fans during opening ceremonies at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.

“We are thrilled to support the series,” said Albano.

NOS Energy Drinks has been the title sponsor since 2019, and it became the preferred energy drink for the World of Outlaws in 2018. It will be a multi-year extension, which makes it the longest running title sponsor in the history of the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series.

Sheldon Haudenschild, whose team is also sponsored by NOS, said, “It’s awesome; it’s a perfect fit. We’re looking forward to more years with them.”

Donny Schatz was also one of the drivers on stage during the announcement. As far as long-standing relationships go, Schatz has been competing with the series for 28 years and has won ten championships. To start this week’s DIRTcar Nationals, he has already had a top-five and a top-ten finish. On Wednesday, he came home sixth in the race that was won by five-time World of Outlaws champion Brad Sweet. On Thursday, Schatz finished fifth in the race won by David Gravel.

Schatz was on the Sage Fruit Stage earlier today on DIRTVision talking with Hannah Newhouse at Volusia. The program features several competitors talking about their racing and specifically the DIRTcar Nationals this week. Schatz said the first two nights have gone pretty well to kick off the season.

“A great start would be two wins, but clearly the sixth and a fifth is where we’re at. The results haven’t been there the last couple years so to come here, get unloaded and be solid the first night--the first night I think everybody here is trying to figure out what’s going on here, on what’s changed. If the tires have changed and any of those sort of things.

“But every time we hit the racetrack, we’ve made strides. And last night in the main, incredible, to be able to run forward like that. Towards the end I thought we were even going to have a chance with the yellow there--we were going to get up there and race. I understand we hurt a motor. It wasn’t bad, but it moved the seat on the valve; so just a minor thing, but down a little bit. And the racetrack’s been very demanding, so it was actually pretty fun. I think we’ve seen some pretty good racing. Cars have come through the field both nights and that’s all you can ask for. The racetrack’s there and you rely on those guys to keep making adjustments. So looking forward to tonight,” said Schatz.

Last Friday, Schatz also talked more in depth about his program during Media Day with the World of Outlaws in Concord, N.C. ?He stated the importance of starting the year off with some wins.

“We want to get a win right out of the box. It can really get you going down the right path. I remember six weeks after the season started, we hadn’t won yet when we got to Las Vegas. And it’s not fun,” said Schatz.

He is hoping for more success this season after some struggles the past two years.

“All I can say is the performance hasn’t been there; my personality hasn’t been there. It’s kind of like a snowball effect. When it rains, it pours.”

He ready to have a kind of reset and to start from scratch. ?

“You know how to get there. You just gotta start making the better decisions, the right decisions. And it just doesn’t seem like we had good performances at a few places. But we gotta put that package back together and for me it wasn’t just on the racetrack. A lot of things in my life had changed in a drastic manner here and there, so I probably didn’t cope with it as well as I should have. But we all make mistakes. We all have errors. We all cope with things differently. I guess the first step is you just acknowledge that you gotta get going down the right track. And so I did. We spent the last six months working hard on trying to get going down that right path and right now it looks really good. So I’m excited to get things started.”

Schatz, his crew chief Steve Swensen, known as Scuba, and his team will continue to work together as they have in the past to improve their racing program.

“Scuba and me have been racing together a long time; we have a lot of history together. We’ve won the big races together; we’ve done all these things. And so I’m happy to know that even though I haven’t been the person that I should be, or haven’t been the driver I should be, they’re still there for me. They didn’t cut and run. They didn’t go down the road. They know what we’re all capable of and we just gotta get out there and get back at doing it. ?We all know how to do it.”

The two have similar ways of going about things.

“We gotta get back to the top where we want to be, and it takes leadership from Scuba. Scuba’s been very good with it. You gotta have someone that has a personality and a character kinda like I am. And him and I are both the same. We’re not scared to have confrontation, which we do quite a bit. But when you take someone that’s passionate about what they do, you’re going to have that. If you have two people that agree all the time, well, that’s probably not going to work out. …So I’m pretty fortunate to have Scub; he’s a great leader. He’s great with the guys and the more we’ve kind of been through the trenches together the last couple years, the more it’s built both of us up to now we look back at that and it’s just a hiccup in the road. Things are that way sometimes. Now we know what we don’t let it get back to and what we don’t let it happen. So we’ll have to lead the other guys to make sure that don’t happen.”

In all his years of racing, a key element to Schatz’s success has been having great people around him.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s in business or anything you do. You have to have great people. I sit here today and look back on the last 28 years and I have been surrounded by some of the best people there are in this industry, in this sport. The best fans. I think one of the greatest families.”

In 2023 Schatz won the Knoxville Nationals and the Kings Royale, two giant events in the history of sprint car racing. But Schatz said they just hadn’t put the whole puzzle together to find what they needed at all the small tracks and big tracks. They’ve also had some hit and miss results with the engine program.

“You take a combination of say, ten different engine combinations and some days you feel like maybe it’s flipping a quarter as to what you’re going to try. We got a really good handle on it now.”

Testing they did after ending the year at the World Finals in Charlotte last fall was essential to that improvement.

“I think that probably gave us more good data and more good results for what’s to come than what we’ve had in the three prior years. So that to me is what really the turning point is. That’s why I feel great about what’s going forward. It’s because we can go and see those things that I’ve been talking about. The guys at Ford have seen what I’m talking about, and it literally took their ability to be able to monitor it remotely just to see it.”

Being part of the sport for a long time has helped Schatz develop the work ethic and dedication needed to maintain a high level of success.

“28 years. You know, I sat as a kid in the grandstands watching sprint cars. And I became a sprint car fan because of my father and the family business. I was able to race a sprint car and get to the World of Outlaw level, and I’ve worked hard at trying to get to the top tiers. I’ve been there. But I feel like I’ve also been at the bottom of them too. And the work ethic on both sides is the same. You work just as hard to be not where you want to be as where you want to be.”

?He is a competitive person who has done a lot of work to develop the following he has today.

“I’ve worked hard to build the Donny Schatz brand that it is today amongst the fans and the other racers, and I think I’ve earned a level of respect with the other racers and fans from the loyalty that I have. And that’s what keeps me going. …When you want to race with the Outlaws or you want to race a national series, you better be competitive. If not, you’re going to learn to be competitive. But you’re a competitve person just in general and so you set up to win a World of Outlaw race—you do. You set out to win a championship—you do. But that doesn’t mean that you’re complete. You’re not whole; you’re not done. It’s the competition. That’s what keeps you here every day. That’s what brings you back every day. That’s why when we leave the racetrack every night, whether it’s a win or it’s a 20th and a DNF, you’re still motivated to come in the next day--because you’re going to compete again.”

Schatz explained the status of his current engine program.

“We’re a standalone engine program. The Ford FPS 410. I think there’s 14 motors in existence, and I’ve run all 14 of ‘em. We’ve got 10 different combinations. We’ve got all these things. And on the other side of the fence, everybody’s been working on the same block of metal for the last 35 years and there’s 500 cars across the country doing all these different things. So it’s kind of like one against a million is what it feels like some days. And you can’t do the same things that we’ve learned. We all learn to do things a certain way and we try to apply those things to what we have now and it’s just, you gotta learn what not to do.”

Making progress in the engine program has involved some key people.

“Ron Shaver all the guys with Shaver’s Specialties and all the guys at Ford Performance--they’ve stood there with us and understood where we want to be. We maybe have not taken big enough strides to get there, but obviously we’ve taken some strides and got there to where I feel like we’re gonna have one of the most competitive engine packages there is. And obviously it’s gotten to the point where now it’s going to start trickling to people who also want to run the FPS 410.”

As an athlete who has been in the game for so many years, Schatz talked a little about his fitness regimen and the main thing he felt made a person a top competitor in racing.

“So it’s kind of funny. I’ve had a personal trainer for a long time. And honestly this all started back when the NSL NST split happened years ago. I started training real hard. I was training four, five days a week. I guess I felt like that was my opportunity. I figured I better capitalize on it, so I did. And I’ve kept up with the fitness regime pretty handily for my age, I think. I got down to two or three days a week and in the winter, I go a little harder. But I can tell you what my trainer told me before I left yesterday. He said, ‘I’m part of the problem.’ He says, ‘I haven’t been getting on you to hoist trophies up over your head enough.’ So we worked on that some. That’s the next thing to work on. ‘We’ve been working on the wrong things,’ he said.”

“I think it’s you staying active, really. If you follow me around at home, I’m an active person all the time. I always find something to do that’s active. I can turn something into--and I acquired that from my father--I can take the simplest project and turn it into a three-day, double throwdown sweatfest. So I think that’s just an inherited trait. But, yeah, everybody has a different way about it. At the end of the day, I think the most important thing for being successful and competitive in racing is right here,” said Schatz pointing to his head. “And they don’t make a training tool for that. I wish they did. In fact, I’m working on a that with a couple of sixteen-year-olds that I’m trying to get going in the right direction. I know what my father went through trying to get me going down the right path and how the thought process in racing works. But I have believed my entire career, that if you’re physically fit and you’re never tired, and you’re always there, your mind will come too. You’ll figure that out. If your body’s not behind, your mind won’t be. And obviously, there’s guys that are in better physical shape than me, but I feel like my mind’s still sharp as it’s ever been, maybe even better.”

Schatz credits his dad for the notion that you certainly can’t control everything that is going to happen, including why certain drivers may stay with a series or chose another path. You have to focus on what you can control.

“I was always taught that, ‘Stay in your lane and worry about what you can control.’ I remember going to the racetrack and looking at my phone and going, ‘Oh, it’s going to rain.’ And my dad would take my phone and say, ‘What the hell are you going to do about it? You can’t control the weather.’

“So I can’t control what other people have done. I guess in the back of my mind I can sit here and ask myself ‘Why’ all I want. I don’t have the answer. Not racing against great racecar drivers. That’s kind of unfortunate, but I didn’t do anything that made them go somewhere else. I don’t think I scared them by my performance that made them want to go somewhere else. They just did and I guess that’s when you have to ask yourself why they did. Only they have the answer. I have kinda an inclination in the back of my mind as to why, but I guess I might have different opinions than others. I think when you look at it, you’re still going to see a lot of those guys that aren’t going to race with the World of Outlaws full-time probably still be at almost all the races. Unfortunately, now they’re just going to have to pay to get in the gate. It’s just the nature of the beast and it’s out of my control, so I just worry about what it is I can do. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing--just go to the races and you try to win. Go to the races and try to be competitive. Go try to do the right things by the fans that I’ve acquired over the years and hopefully they still come around and stay excited and still enjoy watching me.”

Schatz has seen the opportunities his race team has had over the years being with Tony Stewart Racing, Stewart’s involvement in different forms of racing, and the styles of communication within the program.

“Well, you know Tony is very fortunate, as I have been, being at TSR, because we’re always surrounded by great people and Tony even moreso. You know, he’s left the Cup ranks to kind of retire and enjoy his life and now it obviously gets more complicated with him drag racing. You know, Tony, he hasn’t, with the performance we’ve had the last several years, he hasn’t come and sat us down in the room and said, ’Guys—either do or die.’ He has never done that. He can show his frustration the same way I do and not be happy. We can all read each other; we don’t even have to tell each other. So him and I haven’t had a lot of conversations. He’s relying on me to do what I do and fix what I can and rightly so.

“He’s on to the next adventure. But we’ve gotten on the same page. And I think you can get burned out on things. And not saying he got burned out on NASCAR or any kind of racing, but I can tell you what it’s like when you go into a form of motorsports that you haven’t been around—it’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s something new. It was like when I first started racing late models. It was something different—it was different scenery, different people, different mindset. So he’s got that same thing with drag racing. I went to Pomona with him at the end of the year, and I seen exactly why. I’ve never been a California fan, but I went to California and had the time of my life at the drag races. I see how motivated he is, how excited he is. I see how our partners on the other side of the shop at TSR Nitro are fans of the World of Outlaws. When they’re working on their cars at night we’re racing, they’re playing it. So now we have another team to support us and that’s because Tony believes in this product. He believes in the dirt racing, he believes in me, and so that’s trickled down to those guys. So you see it in a company as a whole how important it is to him.”

Schatz says Stewart is the kind of person that hires the people he wants and lets them do their jobs.

“That’s why I’m super excited that he’s kind of left us alone to let us figure things out and now we’re kind of back to where I feel like we’re on the right track. And someday maybe he’ll come back and run sprint cars too, but right now obviously he’s got his sights set on something a little bit more different. It’s going to be a huge challenge and I think it’s probably the first time in his life he’s probably ever been nervous.”

Last year’s World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series Rookie of the Year, Giovanni Scelzi, also was present at Media Day to ask Schatz a question or two. ?Schatz answered one involving the notion of defending a championship.

“Gio, I don’t think you win a championship on that mindset. It’s when you get in the car, there’s no such thing as defending. Man, it’s a sprint car race, and this is go. But you have to go as hard as you can within the parameters. And when I say that, I mean, there’s going to be nights when you’re running third or you’re running second and you make a great lap but you’re about half over the cushion and you’re about this far away from wearing it out which could be a dnf, you know what I mean. Your mind is telling you, ‘I can win this. I can win this.’ But some nights it’s gonna be, to win a championship, you’re going to run third. You’re gonna run second. You’re going to run tenth. Some nights it might even be 20th and still a lap down or something, which to me that’s the mindset. I don’t know that you ever get into defense mode. …It’s controlling your aggression, not doing things that--obviously you got to push, but if you can control it and push and know exactly what you’re getting out of it, you’re doing it right. But if you’re getting to the point where you don’t have control, then I think maybe you’re going a little bit too far and can put yourself in harm’s way in a bad place.

“But does that prove true? It’s been so long since I won a championship, I can’t remember. But I can tell you this, if you want to look at stats, I think you look at the guy that’s won the last five. He hasn’t won the most races. He's just been consistent. He takes those nights that someone makes a mistake, where David’s made a mistake and he’ll capitalize on it. It may be an eighth place. You just have to look at what that means. I don’t ever look at it as a defense and I hope you find this out some day. When you go into that first race--I can tell you this for a fact and you probably will, and I hope you do--when you go into that first race after you’ve won a championship, you obviously look up and you go, ‘You know what? It’s all gravy from here. I did it.’ The hardest part is done. You’ve won it once. Second through however many you’re gonna win, it’s like a pleasure. It’s gravy. But the first one. The first time you ever do anything, it’s hard. You know what that’s like. Remember the first night you won? Pretty cool, wasn’t it?”

Schatz also addressed a few rules and changes he’s encountered with the World of Outlaws in recent years. One involves fuel stops and another is the use of wicker bills.

“There’s been this thing since the day I’ve started racing where it’s kind of been overshadowed last couple of years—red flags and fuel stops. Or red flags for fuel stops. So if you recall, way back in the day we used to start the race, the restarts, on the backstretch and a cone. And they’d get away with it, because that extra half a lap got to the point that guys were running out of fuel. And I agreed with that. And then every time they go and do something that adds in laps to get people lined up, or this or that, it adds to that fuel situation. Maybe in the summertime at Williams Grove, 40 laps in the Summer Nationals, or some of these races where fuel probably isn’t so much of an issue. But we when we ran 50 at the Knoxville Nationals you can’t do it nonstop. You can do 40 without the fuel stop.

“When the weather is really good and it’s really cool, these motors take a lot of fuel and that’s always that inherent issue. So that’s why when I see things change on the fuel conservation side, like we take five laps to line up the race for a double file restart or something, that’s where all the fuel is burned. These things burn as much fuel on idle as they do literally at speed, so it puts us into that area where fuels a question all the time. Then we’re going to get people that say, ‘Well, just put bigger tanks on them.’ We’re at the point now, with 32, 33 gallon tanks, that if a car crashes in the first five laps of the race the tank is coming off the car. So now we’re hearing about tethering tanks. The last thing I want connected to me is a fuel tank on a loose tether. So to me that’s kind of out. It’s a no-brainer. Whoever’s race director is gonna have to do the best job of getting the cars lined up, get them going so we don’t run into these fuel issues. But for the most part we don’t have races where they’ll have a per say fuel stop and I sure hope that it isn’t something that gets to be a thing. Because even Knoxville’s done it. I think they did it for their 50th and it worked. Or they felt like it worked but it’s really two 25-lap races, in my opinion. But ultimately it’s still the Knoxville Nationals and it’s still the holy grail of sprint car racing, so it’s still a pleasure to go.”

In the past, Schatz has competed with no wicker bills.

“Well, I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but years ago we had no wicker bills and we had dished wings. Everybody for some reason wanted to get rid of dished wings because they wanted to unhook the cars. And then they said but you could have a one-inch wicker bill and I’m like, ‘Well, what’s the difference?’ We went from dished wings with no wicker bill to a flat wing with a wicker bill to unhook the car. It did the same thing. The car drove not as good in dirty air or around other cars because with the wicker bill all the weight carries on the wicker bill not halfway across the wing or pushing down on the front of the car. It hangs over the back, so it’s like having 75 gallons of fuel in the tank versus 30. Then, for some reason we end up with two-inch wicker bills. I’m not sure where that came from but my whole philosophy on the air is ‘What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to hook it up or unhook it?’ Because giving more wicker bill hooks it up harder; taking wicker bill away unhooks it. And what can happen, and I think you see it.

“There’s a lot of guys that race this way; you see the guys running two-inch wicker bills all the time. What happens is they get their car so dependent on air, so dependent on the wicker bills, that if you get behind another car, now they’re in dirty air. They’re dependent on absolutely having the maximum amount of air and they’re like done. They completely lose control. They have no control of where it’s going and where it’s came from, and we all know that those same guys don’t know that the gas pedal moves two directions. It’s just all the way done. So, you know, I’m glad to see them trying something, but it’s all about what the goal is. If they’re saying we want to unhook the cars, I think it’s the right move. If they say they want to see if it races different, I say it’s the right move. But I guess we gotta know. I guess they have a goal. It’s not like they have to tell us what the goal is, but obviously I’m speculating that’s what the goals are. They’re trying to make the racing a little better and unhook the cars at the same time.”

Finally, Schatz spoke about being critical of some drivers, providing guidance for some others and his own history with a notable person in the sport, Ted Johnson.

“I’ve been very good at criticizing certain drivers. And that’s on me. This is America. I can do that and not get in trouble for it. But also on me is maybe instead of just criticizing young drivers, I need to go smack them up alongside the head. …Or try to help them along. And I’ve been bad about that. There’s a couple young guys that I have a lot of hope for. They’ve been around a lot. Gio’s one of em. Sheldon’s one of em. …It’s not like every time somebody does something wrong, I need to sit there and criticize. I don’t want to see anybody get hurt either. In the way people race, if it gets to be a common habit and a common practice, it could take long terms off of their learning curves to help them along. I’ve spent a lot of time with Sheldon. I’ve spent a lot of time with Gio. And honestly, you could sit here and say, ‘Well, you only give them enough to that he doesn’t beat you.’ That’s a bunch of bs. …You got to be an Outlaw by pushing each other. I’m not going to go lie to them about it. Like I tell Gio, I hope someday he finds out what it’s like to become a champion.

“I don’t know that you can ever carry on what Ted did. Theres so many Ted stories. There’s so many things Ted did that--I mean he drug me back in the woods at Lernerville down in the trees and I thought, ‘What’s this?’ And he wanted to let me know that I had ran the top ten 17 straight times and I got a girlfriend—and there went my results. I think my dad might have put him up to it. I doubt it. Save the family feud. But that was Ted; he didn’t have any problem doing that. And he did more criticizing to the young guys like me, which I think helped pave the way for me as to realizing that he did care for me. He did care about me being part of his product. So, yeah, I guess I’m going to have to find a way about myself to try to help some of these guys along that I feel like will listen and maybe share that same value. And the ones that don’t—it’s like a tear-off, man. See you,” said Schatz.

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