RacinToday.com

   Donny Schatz, the three-time and defending World of Outlaws sprint-car series champion, retained the lead in the standings after a fourth-place finish on Saturday night at Thunderbowl Raceway.

   Schatz, driving for Tony Stewart’s team, has a 32-point advantage over 20-time series champion Steve Kinser. Third is Jason Meyers, while three-time series champ Sammy Swindell is fourth.

   Joey Saldana, who won on Saturday night, is fifth, just two points behind Swindell and eight points out of second.

   Next up for the Outlaws is racing at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix. Racing there is scheduled for Saturday night.

   Saldana is tied with Schatz with three A-Feature wins this season after his victory on Saturday night at Thunderbowl. Saldana has four consecutive top-five finishes at the half-mile Manzanita as he seeks his first win at the track.

   He’ll arrive in Phoenix with an intact car.

   “This week we don’t have to work on our car,” Saldana said. “Last week we tore a bunch of stuff up. This week we can focus on our race car and what we need to do. I’m looking forward to Manzanita. I have never won there and really would like to before it closes. We’ll do our homework this week and hopefully we’ll have a good run there.”

   Swindell has two second-place finishes this season. He thinks he is close to getting his first A-Feature victory.

   “It’s going really good,” Swindell said. “We are on kind of an accelerated learning curve since I have not been out here for a while. Things have changed. The motors have changed and the cars are a little different. We just have to put it all together, where some of these guys have been doing it a while with the same stuff and able to tweak on it. I am trying to tweak and learn and get a base set up all at the same time.”

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