Donny Schatz and Danny Dietrich did not hold back when it came to their thoughts about the current tire situation in Sprint Car racing. Both drivers described it as “horrendous.”

In the most recent episode of DIRTVision’s Pit Bull host Conner Wade questioned Schatz about the inconsistency a number of top level Sprint Car drivers and teams have had over the year and why that’s the case. Schatz pointed to the tires being one of the main causes, “It’s definitely been that way all year. It’s to the point where last week that happened to the 7s car when we were at Ohsweken. They mounted a tire and felt terrible. Hot lapped good, but a new tire on and felt terrible.”

“A couple trailers down someone’s got this machine that you can smash a tire with and go in there and the tire’s got a 100 lbs. different spring rate than the last one or something,” he continued. “I’m like, ‘This is what it’s come to? Now we’ve got to have tire smashers in the trailer to tell whether we got a decent tire or a bad tire. What are you going to do? You can’t take the tire back to the tire truck anymore so you’re kinda stuck with a defunct tire or try to sell it to someone at a discounted rate. Honestly, the tire consistency’s been-. I think there’s a lot there.”

Dietrich then chimed in, “It’s horrendous.”

Schatz concurred, “Yeah, it’s pretty horrendous really for what the tires cost. And it’s really because there’s no competition. There’s no question about that. They got the market cornered with what’s there.”

“But there’s always been this factor in racing too where there’s people that do things like Danny said at the shop. Is it legit? There’s things you can wipe on your tires, put in your tires to make them magic, and I think there’s some of that going on. We won’t know because there’s no such thing as-. Is anybody doing any testing or holding anybody accountable?”

Schatz then called for action from the sanctioning bodies to police the tires, “Just take Danny’s car owner, for instance. Guy works hard, spends a lot of money to have a race team to probably get a little bit of enjoyment out of it, and you find out you got cheated out of $500 or $1000 somewhere else. It just kinda puts a bad taste in your mouth. I feel like they got to do more to hold everybody to a level playing field because of what everybody puts into it and what they spend. That’s just something you don’t see. If you give a racer an opportunity to do something they’re probably going to-. If you give them an inch they’re probably going to steal a foot. That’s just the nature of the beast.”

“When you take the way the tires are right now, I don’t know what you say. I can have it one night where we feel really good, bolt a different set of tires on and all of a sudden you’re chasing your ass with both hands,” Schatz reiterated. “My guy Barry, he’s screaming up and down about it, but it’s kinda like screaming in the mirror. You’re really only screaming at yourself because I don’t know there’s really an answer to it. We don’t really see a presence from the tire manufacturer at many races, probably for that reason. It’s also changed its structure from what it was years ago too. I think that creates a lot of inconsistency in itself.”

Wade then questioned Dietrich to provide some details on why the tire situation is so horrendous, “I got to say it’s the construction of the sidewall or maybe the band that’s in them that keeps them from growing or shrinking. we do [crap] like when we mount them up. You’ll measure them when they’re 25 lbs., you’ll measure them and there’ll be an inch difference at 25 lbs. And then you let it down to say 10 lbs. and they measure the same. Well, something’s different about them because they shouldn’t be an inch different if they’re built the same, with the same construction.”

“And to what Donny said, we were at Eldora, our Joker’s Wild night, felt badass in the B-Main, come in, put a new tire on the right rear, and go out for the A-Main, and absolutely felt like a bag of [crap]. We put ours on a tire smasher. We don’t have one, but we found somebody that had a tire smasher, put the tire on the tire smasher the next day, and the tire from the B-Main, and there’s a 60-70 lbs. spring rate difference,” he shared. “That’s pretty wild to see the difference just in a rubber tire. And then you say the left rears are worse than the right rears.”

“Like I said, it’s horrendous,” he doubled down. “It’s very frustrating when it comes to whether you’re owning a team or operating a team. Say it’s a brand new tire like Donny said, what are you going to do with it? You’re stuck with it. You can’t take it back. You honestly feel guilty if you sold it to somebody because you’re selling them a lemon. It’s like selling them a bad car.”

Dietrich also called for more policing as well, “Maybe we’ll get into doing some teching this year too. Like Donny said, there’s a lot of [crap] going on.”

When pressed by Wade on what things guys are doing, Dietrich noted there seemingly is not any kind of tech happening other than weighing the cars, “I always laugh because if you watch the races, Johnny Gibson watches the guy go across the scales and he says, ‘It’s official! You’re a winner!” Because that’s all we do. All we do is scale and then we’re done.”

Schatz then shared, “They stand there and check your nose wing when you roll across the scale.”

He later added, “They just don’t do it. I just think if they started doing it, it’d probably change certain thing a little bit here and there.”

After going over how it’s not just limited to a single series, but the entirety of Sprint Car racing including the Knoxville Nationals, Schatz concluded, “Maybe there’s not much going on. Maybe we’re just crying wolf here, who knows. It’d be nice to have a little peace of mind with it. Like, hey, go after some stuff. Start looking.” 

Dietrich added, “We probably both just need to win more. We probably wouldn’t be like this, Donny.” 

Schatz countered, “I think we’d still be that way because if we were winning more then somebody would be saying it about us.”

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