Donnie Schatz earns his 7th win of the grueling WOO Sprint Car Schedule. Weedsport Speedway opened it gates for the first time this season with a double bill show that proved to be a good one. If you haven’t visited Weedsport Speedway in a few years, then you really should make a point to do so.
Crome the well prepped track surface, to the new grandstands, and let’s not for get the HUGE Jumbotron. Along with of those cool nuances let’s talk about the LED lights that light up the track. These things are awesome. I shot most of the night without a flash on. With these new lights it changes they way we as photographers can shoot a race, but that is for a different blog post.
Ok enough of that stuff lets get back to why we were at Weedsport. Sprint Cars, Sprint cars, Sprint Cars, that’s all I have to say. The WOO Sprint cars made their way up from PA to give us Dirt Modified fans a thrill.
Twenty Eight sprints cars were on Hand along with 35 DIRT Sportsman. $1000 to win the sportsman feature and a cool $10,000 goes to the winner of the Sprint car A-Main
Donny Schatz seems to have his stuff together when he shows up at NYS dirt tracks. Heck let’s face it he has his stuff together where ever he goes. Pictured above Joey Saldana set a new track record in his Famous ” Beef Packers” car. Joey ran flat out around the tacky banked Weedsport Speedway at 12.274 seconds. Saldana was a touch faster then Hodnett, Logan Schuchart, and Daryan Pittman.
After the thrilling Sportsman race the sprint cars rolled out onto the speedway for the pre-race program. The news track lights started to go off and on in a sequence that went around the track along with some fireworks to get the crowd pumped for what they were about to witness, Sprint Cars.
As the cars fired up in front of the push trucks, music blasted through the High Def sound system, and the packed grandstands roared with excitement. Fans waited for the Four abreast parade, that still gives me goosebumps. After a couple parade laps the driveres stepped down on the throttle to clean out their 410ci power plants.
Logan Schuchart lead the all star field to the green. Logan is still looking for his first WOO feature win. Let me tell you Schuchart did a great job out front all night except for the last five laps. Schatz started 9th with 8 heavy hitters ahead of him. I reall didn’t think Donny was going to win, but you can never count him out. Pittman and Hodnett got together and into the fence at the start of the race. This definitely changed how the race played out in my opinion.
At a WOO event the leaders run into lap traffic after a few laps, and this race was no different. Logan got out front early keeping Saldana, Gravel, and #2 Shane Stewart behind him.
After a few caution flags I noticed that the #15 car had made his way into the top three. Schatz had been working the bottom most of the race picking off one car at a time.
Meanwhile Logan was running both the top and bottom trying to get through traffic. Lap 30 Schuchart went up high in turn one giving Schatz the bottom, and the room to move into the lead.
I must admit I was hoping to see Schuchart in the Bobby Allen car take the win, but the elder Schatz prevailed. David Gravel finished third, Daryn Pittman, and Grad Sweet rounded out the top five.
Just after the race winner finished in victory lane the sky’s opened up ending a great night of racing.
Thank you for stopping by.
I will see you at the track!
Under The helmet 