Saturday and World of Outlaws racing haven’t gone hand-in-hand recently with the last four scheduled events on Saturday succumbing to rain. That all changed last night at Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Indiana as Craig Dollansky and the Big Game Treestands #7 team prepared for a Saturday battle for the first time since March 10th.
Having great success scoring a victory in every even year since 2006 at the tight ¼-mile bullring, the night got underway with qualifying as ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ muscled the MobileStar #7 to the 4th fastest time among the 31 cars. Starting from third in heat #1, Dollansky and Steve Kinser put on a great battle with the Aggressive Hydraulics Maxim taking the 2nd spot and earning a spot in the dash. After the four-pill was drawn for the 8-lap dash, the Elk River, Minnesota native claimed the pole for the dash and put on the burners winning by over two seconds.
In the 40-lap A-Main the Eaton’s Aeroquip Performance Products #7 started on the pole and led the field into turn 1. Following a caution on lap 3 and 4, the ensuing restart saw Joey Saldana challenge for the lead but Dollansky carried the momentum out of turn 2 to maintain the point and open up a one second lead before hitting lapped traffic just five circuits later.
As Dollansky battled with a lapped car on lap 15, Joey Saldana narrowed the gap and stuck his nose into a tight spot making contact with the #7 and sending the #9 flipping. After losing the lead on the restart, Dollansky ran second before another caution on lap 18. When the field roared back into action, ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ reclaimed the top spot in turn 3 and then widened the gap between him and the competition by knifing through traffic and charging to his third victory of the season along with completing a weekend sweep for Big Game Motorsports.
“This was a great win for our entire team, to win 4 out of the last 7 World of Outlaws races at Haubstadt is not easy to do,” commented Dollansky. “Tri-State is one of the best dirt tracks in the country. DJ and Luke did a great job and to get our 3rd win out of the 13 races we’ve run so far this year is a great start to the 2012 season.”
Racing resumes this coming Wednesday at Farmer City Raceway in central Illinois.
