ROSSBURG, Ohio – Logan Schuchart told World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series pit reporter Blake Anderson prior to Friday night’s feature that he was “tired of finishing second” at Eldora Speedway.
Schuchart did something about that weariness by leading all 30 laps to win the BeFour The Crowns Showdown at the Tony Stewart-owned half-mile dirt track, doing so in commanding fashion.
The Hanover, Pa., native swept the night en route to his eighth World of Outlaws win of the season, setting the overall fast time in qualifying, winning his Drydene heat race, topping the DIRTvision Fast Pass Dash and then going from wire to wire to reign victorious come feature time.
That feature actually finished up during the early hours of Saturday morning, after a rain delay following the conclusion of hot laps slowed up the proceedings for two and a half hours before racing resumed.
None of that was of any consequence to Schuchart, however. His Shark Racing-prepared No. 1s was bullet-quick all night long, and the driver inside was wheeling it with a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
“Man, we just came here with the attitude that this place owed us one,” said Schuchart, who finished second to Brad Sweet in July’s Kings Royal before tasting victory this time around. “It was kind of rough watching those videos (on the track big-screen TV) earlier. I walked up and was talking to guys … my mom (Dana), Bill (Klingbeil, Schuchart’s father-in-law) and everybody and it just stung to watch that video over and over again. It’s not like I haven’t watched it enough the last few months.
“That loss is still going to sting for a while, but we definitely came back hungry. This car was a rocket ship tonight.”
Schuchart’s victory, the second of his career at Eldora, tied him with David Gravel for the third-most on the World of Outlaws tour this season. It’s a career year that still has Schuchart in disbelief, himself.
“This Drydene Performance Products race team and everybody that’s part of it has done amazing things this year. It’s just awesome to see it all,” he noted. “To have a year like this and to win races with the World of Outlaws is very, very tough. So to win eight of them and get another one here at Eldora doesn’t just mean a lot to me, it’s a testament to my hard-working crew and I know it means a lot to them also.”
The roll of Schuchart’s No. 1s was only slowed by a handful of incidents during the 30-lap feature, and after two hard flips – one by Wayne Johnson on the initial start and a second by Brady Bacon with two laps scored – the decision was made to go to single-file restarts for the remainder of the program.
That allowed Schuchart to assert his dominance even more, as he raced away from the majority of his pursuers while Aaron Reutzel fought forward from fourth to become Schuchart’s closest competition.
Reutzel took second from Carson Macedo on the lap-three restart and dogged Schuchart for the rest of the night, cutting the gap down from nearly two second on the seventh revolution to just a half-second by lap 11 as Schuchart found himself pinned in heavy lap traffic.
At halfway, Schuchart led Reutzel, Sheldon Haudenschild, Macedo and Kerry Madsen, but as the race wore into its second half, Schuchart’s car got better and better.
Though Reutzel tried to stay with Schuchart, the driver of the Baughman Reutzel Motorsports No. 87 could only watch helplessly as Schuchart picked off slower cars with virtual ease and pushed the gap back out to 1.174 seconds by the time the twin checkered flags waved over the field Friday night.
Behind Schuchart and Reutzel, Haudenschild hung on to complete the podium, followed by Madsen and Macedo.
Brad Sweet crossed sixth and reclaimed the World of Outlaws point lead by four markers over Donny Schatz, who had to race his way in through the Last Chance Showdown, finished a distant 17th and lost 22 points in the season-long battle for supremacy.
Schatz led by 18 points coming into the Eldora event.
To view complete race results, advance to the next page.