News broke from Tony Stewart Racing this afternoon that the team and ten-time World of Outlaws series champion Donny Schatz have parted ways effective immediately. The team has tabbed Kerry Madsen for the remainder of the 2025 season, with the exception of August 22nd and 23rd, so he can run the Knoxville weekly series where he is currently running for a championship. Team owner Tony Stewart issued the following statement through Inside Line Promotions.

“Donny has been an incredible part of TSR for nearly two decades, he’s helped build this organization into what it is today,” said Stewart. “We’ve had a driver/team owner relationship that has gone beyond that partnership, he’s become part of my extended family through the years, and I have the utmost respect for him and what his career represents – a generational driving talent.

The achievements we’ve accomplished together are something that I’ll always be proud of,” said Stewart, team owner. “But in the past few years we’ve weathered changes in the sport and our performance hasn’t been to the level that both Donny and I expect. We’re both competitors to our core and we both hold ourselves to a high standard of performance that we’ve struggled to obtain. Making a change now gives each of us the chance to reset and refocus before 2026.

This announcement is as big as it is shocking. Stewart and Schatz first teamed up in 2008 and have gone on to become one of the most incredible pairings in the sports history. In eighteen seasons, Schatz has racked up eight series titles, nine Knoxville Nationals trophies, and 234 feature victories. And, as weird as it is to say, it’s maybe in equal parts unsurprising. Schatz is 48 years old, and the 15 team has struggled this year. After a 2024 campaign that resulted in five wins and a 3rd place points finish, 2025 has been pretty lackluster. The team has just eight top 5 finishes and no wins. They were close a couple of times, including a runner-up finish last month, the Night Before the Ironman at Pevely, but those impressive runs have been few and far between. Earlier this season, the team even switched away from Ford engines, trying to get the 15th team back into more consistent contention.

I think the general consensus from fans is that we hope this isn’t the end of Schatz in the Outlaws. It would be awful for a driver who has meant so much to our sport to have such an unceremonious end to his career. I personally suspect that we will be hearing more about this situation. Just last month, Schatz tested Guy Forbrook’s #5 car at Knoxville. The two are friends, so little was made of it at the time, but in hindsight, combined with recent news that Forbrook intends to field a car in 2026, who knows?