From Reid VanEck
Another night of action on the tight 1/3-mile bullring of Thunderbowl Raceway was on tap Saturday for Craig Dollansky and the rest of the STP World of Outlaws following a top-ten performance by the Eyecon Trail Cameras #7 team the prior night.
A pill draw of 30th out of 31 competitors looked like it might put the #7 in an early hole to start the racing program but ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ was able to power the Aggressive Hydraulics Maxim to a solid 6th quickest at 13.380 seconds. Emphasis then shifted to heat three where Dollansky used a great start from inside row two to motor into the runner-up spot by turn 1 and go on to earn a spot in the dash. After the six-pill inversion was drawn for the 6-lap dash, the Big Game Treestands backed sprinter again lined up third and, similar to the heat, took second in the early going and battled Jonathan Allard for the lead but crossed the finish line in 2nd.
With a prime starting position for the 35-lap A-Main outside the front row, Dollansky led the field into turn 1 before a red flag on lap 3 halted action. After a yellow on the ensuing restart prompted single-file restarts for the remainder of the main event due to deteriorating track conditions, the MobileStar #7 again paced the field until two more accidents on lap 5 and 13.
Following a yellow six circuits later, ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ again used a great restart to power into turn 1 on the lowside while runner-up Jonathan Allard worked the highside. As the top two began to separate themselves from the rest of the field, the duo encountered lapped traffic on lap 29 but the final yellow of the feature was displayed two laps later. Holding the top spot with only four to go, Dollansky again hit his marks on the restart to seal his first victory of the 2013 season and first with primary sponsor Eyecon Trail Cameras onboard.
“It hasn’t been the start to the year we would liked to have but these guys have been working hard and we have been making progress,” commented Dollansky who vaulted up five spots in the point standings to 4th. “We had to overcome a bad pill draw as the track was definitely slowing up and we were able to get a good qualifying lap to set us up for the rest of the night.
“This all starts with Tod Quiring, he is a great supporter of our race team with this new Eyecon Trail Cameras brand we are flying for Big Game. We have a great race team with a lot of great people behind it like Aggressive Hydraulics, MobileStar, Aeroquip, and others. This is a tough arena out here in California, the track was a little bit of follow the leader but we had to put ourselves in position to get there. Any time you win is a total team effort and this is a great race team that is going to keep working hard.”
This coming weekend Craig Dollansky and the #7 crew of DJ Lindsey, Sean Michael, and Pete Stephens take on Stockton 99 Dirt Track for the inaugural STP World of Outlaws event on Friday, March 22nd, before a stop at Silver Dollar Speedway in Chico the next night.