From CDR
Following a top-five on Tuesday, short-track action continued on Friday for the Big Game Treestands #7 team as they traveled north to River Cities Speedway. In ten previous appearances, ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ has great familiarity with the high-banked bullring leading the World of Outlaws with three victories along with nine top-tens and seven top-fives including a third place finish earlier this season in June.
A solid field of 37 sprinters signed in for racing at the facility located in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Beginning with qualifying, Dollansky muscled the Aggressive Hydraulics Maxim to the 4th fastest lap at 10.366 seconds around the 4/10-mile. Lining up outside row two, the World of Outlaws point leader needed to finish top-two in the heat to earn a spot in the dash and did just that powering into runner-up on the opening lap and finishing 2nd. An inversion of six again put Dollansky in row two for the start of the dash where he lost one position in the 6-lap race.
In the 40-lap A-Main the MobileStar #7 started fourth. After a couple of incidents in the early going halted the main event, the 24-car field diced it up high and low all over the track until the next yellow on lap 16 when Dollansky ran third. On the ensuing restart ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ challenged Donny Schatz low in turn 1 for the runner-up spot but couldn’t quite make it stick. As the laps clicked off rubber down on the track made passing more of a challenge until a final caution with 8 to go. Dollansky held 3rd in the remaining circuits but it wasn’t until after the race when the driver of the #7 explained the challenges going on inside the cockpit.
“We dropped a cylinder at the drop of the green which began soaking me with fuel the entire race. I was more concerned about catching on fire than trying to get to the end of the race,” explained Dollansky. “Thankfully we made it to the end so to get out of here with a top three with that going on we’re pretty fortunate.
“They don’t come much better than River Cities Speedway. The track was in nice shape but took rubber towards the end. It was unfortunate we had that happen, we could have been mixing it up for the lead and win but given what we dealt with we’ll take 3rd.”
More World of Outlaws action in North Dakota continues on Sunday at Nodak Speedway in Minot.