Question: US 36 Raceway is a pretty unique track. What are the biggest challenges you face there?
Donny Schatz: “It’s a nice track and provides a great venue for us. Two years ago, we had one of those nightmare nights where we just kept being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think we cleaned out a trailer’s worth of parts. Last year, things went a little better for us until we got moved up the track going for third about halfway through the feature. That may be one of the challenges that’s unique about it. The banking makes it tough to see exactly where guys are around you. I don’t think Terry (McCarl) saw me on the outside of him in turn two, and he just moved up and took the line.
“Like a lot of places, you have to be able to get your car working all over the track. There’s going to be traffic to deal with. Whether you have to get up on the cushion and blast it around the top, have some finesse and run the bottom, or even get your car to roll the middle, it goes back to having the best car in the feature. I’ve got the best guys in the business working on the Armor All/Chevy car. (Crew chief) Ricky (Warner) has been doing this for a long time, and the rest of my guys (Shane Bowers, Kyle Sundby and Evan Funk) continue to work as hard they can to give me a great car. The nice thing this year is that we’ll be able to work with (TSR No. 20 crew chief) Jimmy (Carr) and the Bass Pro Shop team throughout the night there. They’ve been really fast there in the past and, hopefully, both cars can run up front.”
Question: Last weekend you were scheduled to compete at Knoxville Raceway, but Mother Nature forced you to race at Eldora Speedway instead. Is there anything you learned at Eldora that can help you at Knoxville this weekend?
Donny Schatz: “Knoxville and Eldora are two completely different animals. We learned that we’ve got tremendous horsepower from Chevy and that will help us a bunch at Knoxville. We’ve got a really good baseline to work off of at Knoxville and that’s where we’ll start on Saturday night. With all the rain they’ve had, you just don’t know for sure what to expect the track to do. We’ll continue to try and keep getting better with our entire program and the best way to do that would be to get two nights of racing in this weekend.”
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