Schatz Wins Fog Shortened Mediacom Shootout at Knoxville Raceway
The win is the 12th World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series victory of the season for the Fargo, N.D. native
KNOXVILLE, Iowa – June 13, 2015 – In an event that no one will soon forget, Donny Schatz scored his 12th World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series feature win of the season Saturday night after heavy fog forced officials to call Knoxville Raceway’s Mediacom Shootout early.
The weather played foe to the series throughout the night. After getting through qualifying, the heat races and the Dash, the skies opened up over the historic track. Intermittent rain showers continued for about an hour. It took two more hours for the track prep crew to get the track back in race condition.
As the green flag finally fell on the feature shortly before 2 a.m., fog began to roll in over the race track. Schatz and Justin Henderson battled side-by-side through the first two laps. As Schatz got some distance from Henderson, he caught the back of the field by lap seven. A caution flag flew the next time by. The field returned to green with Schatz leading Henderson and Kerry Madsen. He quickly built up a lead but again caught the back of the field a few laps later.
As the top three drivers stayed bunched up, the caution flag flew again with 15 laps complete. By this point, the fog, now heavy, had enveloped the track. Past the halfway point, and with visibility too bad to continue, the call was made to throw the checkered flag on the field as they made the final circuit under caution. 1980 was the last time Knoxville Raceway saw an event postponed because of fog.
“I don’t know what happened there with the fog,” said Schatz. “It wasn’t bad until you got to turn three when you rolled down into the turn… that’s a tough call.”
Schatz, an eight time Knoxville Nationals champion, expanded his championship points lead over second place Shane Stewart to 177. He said the diversity of track conditions throughout the night gave his No. 15 Bad Boy Buggies team good information heading into Nationals.
Henderson, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota native, drove his No. 1 Eagle Power Equipment car to a second place finish.
“I’m proud of this team,” Henderson said. “Donny did a good job keeping his momentum up there. I should have move up when I got by him but I lost that race and he did a really good job of taking it like a champ would.”
It was the second night in a row Madsen, who calls Knoxville home along with his Keneric Racing team, stood on the podium.
“What do you do?” Madsen said of the weather. “Thanks to everyone that put in a bloody sterling effort to get the track in; the fans for sticking around… I really wanted to go on the last ten laps, but I couldn’t even see the cone on the restart.”