KNOXVILLE — Donny Schatz seems to own Knoxville Raceway, at least on the final nights of the FVP Knoxville Nationals. Schatz claimed his ninth Knoxville Nationals title with a wire-to-wire performance Saturday in the 55th running of the FVP Knoxville Nationals presented by Casey’s General Store.
The North Dakota native had the pole position in the finals and made the most of it at the start of the race. Schatz drove the Tony Stewart Racing No. 15 to victory staving off challenges by Kerry Madsen.
Schatz had to make strong moves through traffic in the closing laps.
“It’s not the traffic that was bothering me. It was the restarts. It’s my job to get through traffic. If I can’t then I’m probably going to lose my job,” Schatz said following his win.
“The past couple weeks, seem like people get a run on you and can slide you, so you just had to do something different. One time I’d go to the bottom, one time I’d go to the top and keep mixing it up, but it’s hard to do that without mixing yourself up.”
With 10 laps remaining, a restart had Schatz’s lead to under a second with Madsen and Brad Sweet battling for second working up to traffic. Schatz went to a center line drive through traffic to pull away for the win.
“The boss was here tonight. Can’t thank him (Tony Stewart) enough for all the support to allow us to be with Bad Boy Buggies, Chevrolet Performance, and all our marketing partners to do what we love to do,” Schatz said.
Madsen finished second followed by Sweet, Shane Stewart and Joey Saldana to round out the top five. Terry McCarl of Altoona was 24th.
Justin Henderson driving the BDS Motorsports No. 1, did not make it into the finals race, He ran seventh in the B feature Saturday night, and the top four drivers in the B advanced to the A feature. BDS Motorsports of Newton did win best appearing car for the third season running.