Dave Schotz is no stranger to the NASA National Championships. In fact, he won the Performance Touring B National Championship at Mid-Ohio in 2008, and he was leading the Camaro-Mustang Challenge race that year until the number seven wire fell off the spark plug.
When the National Championships moved to Miller Motorsports Park the following year, Schotz took the top step on the podium in the Camaro-Mustang Challenge. After that year, Schotz needed a break from racing, so he took 2010 off completely.
“I actually just went into doing Time Trials, competing locally here in Arizona, having a lot of fun, still being able to win tires and not beat on the car as much,” he said. “I just needed a couple of years off from spending so much.”
When the Championships returned to Miller this year, Schotz and his father Joel cooked up a plan to take their two cars to Utah and compete in PTB, TTB and TTC. He logged just enough races this year to qualify for the Nationals, so he and his father rented a second truck and trailer and brought two cars to Miller this year. He brought his 2001 Pontiac Firebird for PTB and TTB and his father towed up an ’89 Camaro for competition in TTC.
In the end, it worked. Dave Schotz scored a National Championship in PTB and TTB. But how did he snare a championship in TTC, which was in the same run group as TTB? Schotz’s father would sit out the last session each day so Dave could drive the Camaro. Though he held the lead by .9 seconds, he wasn’t happy with his times because he was always running at the end of the day, when the temperatures were higher and the track wasn’t as fast.
He had planned to run one last time in TTC on Sunday morning to try to set the bar a bit higher, but it was raining, so he’d have to stand pat with the time he had.
“I was in the stands timing (second-place finisher Brad Kettler) that last session,” Schotz said. “He was dropping time every single lap. And kudos to him. When he started the event on the first day, he was behind my dad. He was way in the back and he just got quicker and better every day. His last lap of the last session he got within a half second of me. It was great to see him be able to do his best time, and I was still able to hold him off.”
