Winning Moment: Ryan Gustin kept Tyler Erb at bay on a restart with two laps to go to complete a wire-to-wire win at East Bay Raceway Park Wednesday night (Feb. 8), his first career Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series victory.
The win marked the third straight victory at East Bay for Rocket Chassis and came on a night that Longhorn Chassis’ fleet of heavy hitters all were racing.
Dramatic Moment: After a banzai charge to win his heat race earlier in the evening, Donny Schatz used a ridiculous run down the backstretch to take the race lead from Carson Macedo in the All-Star Circuit of Champions feature… only to have crash damage incurred in an earlier exchange with Anthony Macri come back to bite.
The damaged front wing popped up on his racecar as soon as he passed Macedo, allowing Macedo to take the race lead and the win. Schatz held on for second and absolutely opened fire in his post-race interview.
In a Nutshell: Late models, sprint cars and big blocks all racing within a few hours of each other. Florida is awful dirty this time of year.
What They’ll Be Group Chatting About This Morning
Rocket Chassis has now won three super late model races in a row after watching Longhorn cars win more than a dozen features in a row. Gustin’s win on Wednesday was different. Every one of Longhorn’s big guns (Jonathan Davenport, Ricky Thornton Jr., Tim McCreadie, etc.) were in the field this Wednesday night, yet that didn’t stop the feature from being dominated up front by the Rockets of Gustin and Kyle Bronson. Parity, thy name is East Bay, and we love you both.
There’s a reason Schatz has won 10 World of Outlaws championships in his career and that was on full display in Wednesday night’s entire ASCoC program at Volusia. His heat race win was as authoritative a display of sprint car driving as fans are likely to see in 2023.
But, we’ve seen this movie before. Let’s not forget that last year Schatz won arguably the race of the year for the WoO tour at Volusia during Speedweeks, only to fade from being any sort of title contender over the course of the full season. Schatz is still an extremely talented driver that’s capable of scoring an 11th crown, but Volusia’s not going to tell that tale, be it racing with ASCoC or WoO.
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