LAS VEGAS — Donny Schatz may be the current kingpin of the World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series, but he’ll have to do battle with one of his old arch rivals Wednesday and Thursday at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Dirt Track.

Two-time Outlaws champion Jason Meyers will make his return to the series for the two-day FVP Outlaw Showdown, which begins tonight, as a precursor to the NASCAR tripleheader invading the 1.5-mile oval across the street for the remainder of the week.

The effort will be a joint effort between H.P. Myatt and Meyers himself, utilizing KPC cars stored at Meyers’ race shop, and the two races at the half-mile dirt oval will mark Meyers’ first time competing against the Outlaws since 2015.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but I wanted to wait until the time was right,” Meyers said. “I’ve had a lot of irons in the fire the last few years, with my family as well as other business endeavors and it just felt like now was the right time to go and have some fun.”

Despite retiring from full-time racing in 2012, Meyers has kept himself busy. Along with competing in select races on the West Coast over the past six seasons, Meyers has also built a successful commercial wood framing company, Meyers Constructors Inc.

“I really put my head down and my wife and I worked hard to build a new life, if you will, over the past five years,” said Meyers. “We got things situated at home … and we’re still continuing to do that, but I really felt led that this was the time to get back and put something together again. I’ve got a lot of great people working at my company now that are all doing a great job, and I just felt like it was time. I felt ready to try something like this again.”

“I’ve run some California races over the last few years, but the main reason that we’re going to Vegas is because we had already planned on running at Tulare (California’s Thunderbowl Raceway) during the Outlaws’ West Coast swing and I was lucky enough to talk Charlie Garrett into building me a new motor that he got done way ahead of schedule. At first, he told me he’d have it done in May, and then at Christmas I talked to him and he said, ‘I’ll have it ready if you want to go to Vegas.’

“I made him a deal that if he got it done in time, we’d go to Vegas. He got it done, so now here we are.”

Meyers is a 57-time feature winner with the Outlaws, including a victory at the Las Vegas Dirt Track in 2010, the first of his two championship seasons.

However, Schatz has won three of the last four races in Sin City, and Meyers knows it won’t be easy to stop the modern-era master of the Outlaws.

“Of course, as racers, when we come to the race track we want to win, but when you race against the Outlaws you’re racing against the best there is,” admitted Meyers. “To say we’re going to come in and beat them … I don’t know that I could even tell you that right now. This is what these (full-time) guys do each and every day and they’re really, really good at it.

“We’re going to see where we stack up this weekend because it has been a while, but if you want to be the best then you have to race against the best. We have to be realistic. Donny’s obviously started off very strong this year … so I’m not going to put any expectations on these two races. We’ll just see what happens.”

Beyond his two Outlaws starts this week in Las Vegas, and then running at Thunderbowl Raceway on March 9-10, Meyers said that he has no plans to adjust from the schedule that he’s set over the past few years.

Instead, he wants to “have fun” as a part-timer, isolating 10 to 12 races through the year where he knows he can enjoy what he does and contend if the cards fall in the right way.

“I’m not coming out and trying to start another Outlaws career — I’ve already been there and done that,” said Meyers. “I just want to come out, have a good time and hopefully be competitive.”

“Our plan right now is to run Vegas, move on to Tulare next week and then possibly run Stockton (with the Outlaws on March 16-17). We’ll see how these first few nights go. I know we’ll run the Peter Murphy Classic in April (at Tulare) as well … and beyond that, I don’t have any set plans. The goal has always been to put something together where I could run 10 or 12 races a year, and I’ve enjoyed doing that and believe I will again this year as well.”