After racing to their third victory of the season on Friday at River Cities Speedway, the Aggressive Hydraulics #7 team returned to the high banked, high intensity, 3/10-mile on Saturday looking to keep the momentum rolling in the finale of the Duel in the Dakotas.
A strong field of sprinters assembled for battle on the hot sunny day in North Dakota with Dollansky piloting the Big Game Treestands Maxim to 4th fastest time in qualifying among the 34 cars in the pit area. Spectacular heat race competition would see ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ motor from the fourth spot and track down Kevin Swindell to take the lead and cruise to the victory. Winning the heat put the Karavan Trailers #7 in the dash where Dollansky would start second and finish 2nd in the 8-lap event.
Starting from outside the front row of the 40-lap A-Main, Dollansky ran the highside of the track until the first caution came on lap 10. As racing resumed the #7 fell back to fourth momentarily until he worked the cushion aboard the Eaton’s Aeroquip Performance Products Maxim and raced past Donny Schatz and Steve Kinser to retake second and come after Jason Sides for the lead until another stoppage on lap 14. Following two cautions, the intensity of the feature continued to swell as the top four drivers went four wide exiting turn two on the restart with Dollansky slipping back to fifth by a lap 21 caution.
The driver from Minnesota continued to work the highside and motor up to third by lap 24 and then executed a slide job on Joey Saldana in turn 1 to assume the runner-up position one lap later. With Sides running the bottom and Dollansky working the cushion to perfection, the driver of the Big Game Treestands backed sprinter slowly started to hunt down the leader with the laps winding down. The action culminated on the final two corners when ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ exploited his nickname to full potential as he shot between Sides and the outside wall and charged to the checkered flags to sweep the weekend and record the teams fourth victory of the season.
"We got a good starting spot outside the front row for the long 40 lap race and had a few cautions that put us in double-file restarts and one restart we got shuffled back to 5th and we had to work our way back,", commented Dollansky. "It was an intense race and we were able to get up to 2nd and pace ourselves in the latter part of the race, Jason was running a good race and had a good car. At one point it looked like it was going to be a shuffle between five cars for the win. He led every lap but at the end of the race when we were in lapped traffic running second I could tell he was primarily running the bottom and we got a good run on him in the last corner and had just enough room to get through and get the win. It was great to get back to back wins for Aggressive Hydraulics and everyone that supports this race team."
More bullring action continues this coming weekend as the Big Game Treestands #7 team rides the hot streak into their hometown of Princeton, Minnesota on Saturday. The big race day kicks off with an open house at the racing shop from 11:00AM-1:00PM followed by an Aggressive Hydraulics hospitality event at 4:00PM before racing gets underway at Princeton Speedway.
- Craig Dollansky Racing on Jun 21, 2011
- Article Date: 6/21/2011 by Reid VanEck