Every single time that Donny Schatz has competed at K-C Raceway in Ohio with the World of Outlaws, he has been in contention for the win. After finishing fourth in his debut at the track in 2004, he picked up his first victory at the track the following season. He followed that up with two more triumphs including a victory last season and the three-time and defending series champion made it two wins in a row at the high-banked bullring on Saturday night.
For Schatz, it was his 11th A-Feature win of the season aboard the Armor All J&J and the 99th of his World of Outlaws career, as he looks to become just the fifth driver in 31-plus year history of the series to accomplish that feat.
He started on the pole and paced the field for the entire distance, withstanding an early challenge from Dale Blaney followed by a late race battle with 20-time series champion Steve Kinser.
“I always look forward to coming here,” said Schatz. “This has been a good track to me. We’ve managed to get some wins here fighting hard and tonight we had a fading race car there at the end, but it was enough to get the job done I guess. It’s always fun here. It’s always slick and hard to get your race car stuck, but we seem to be a little bit above what everyone else has, so that is a good thing.”
The race began with Schatz leading from the pole, with Kinser and Blaney in tow. Blaney shot around Kinser to move into second coming off turn four on the opening lap. The first caution of the night came out on the fourth lap. Schatz led on the restart, with Blaney keeping pace with him as they neared lapped traffic on the eighth lap. The caution flew again on the 12th lap as the leaders were in very heavy traffic.
Schatz led on the ensuing restart, with Kinser charging around Blaney on the high side of turn four to take the second spot. Near the halfway point of the 40-lap contest, the leaders were back in heavy lapped traffic with Kinser gaining a lot of ground on Schatz. At this time, Blaney also began to close back in on the leader and Joey Saldana found himself in the lead pack as well.
“That’s what we want to see,” noted Schatz. “We want to see the traffic. If it’s hard for me to get by them and I’m out front, then it might be as hard for the second-place guy to get by and we can put some room in there. On the restarts my car was awesome and then each lap it got a little worse. I couldn’t figure out how to drive it different to get it right. We’ll keep working on it and we’re making a lot of changes and had some good runs and a couple of seconds
On the 27th lap Kinser went high exiting turn four and nearly took the lead from Schatz. He used the same move two laps later to again nearly take the top spot. As the laps wound down the leaders continued to work lapped traffic, with Kinser, Blaney and Joey Saldana going three-wide down the back straightaway on the 34th go-around. This allowed Schatz to extend his lead slightly. Kinser held the second spot after the furious battle with Blaney and Saldana. He cleared a couple of lapped cars down the stretch as he tried everything he could to track down Schatz.
| 
|