PR by Reid VanEck - April 1, 2012

Sunny California weather finally greeted Craig Dollansky and the Big Game Treestands #7 team on Friday as they returned to Merced Speedway for just the second World of Outlaws event at the tight bullring.

With the track slightly reconfigured after last year’s inaugural event, 29 cars signed into the pit area for competition.  In qualifying time trials the Aggressive Hydraulics Maxim stopped the clock at 11.440 seconds, missing the heat inversion by a couple positions.  Lining up fifth on the grid for heat two, ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ used a great restart to race up to third and then close in on Jason Sides.  Battling for a spot in the dash, Dollansky raced with Sides on the final circuit but contact sent the MobileStar #7 flipping out of turn four.

"We ended up qualifying 14th and had a shot at getting into the top two in the heat race," commented Craig.  "I tried to get it on the last lap but got into the wall on the front stretch and tipped over.  DJ, Luke, Pete, along with a few others from California that kicked in did a great job to make repairs to the Big Game Treestands, MobileStar car after the heat."

After rebounding to win the B-Main, the Eaton’s Aeroquip Performance Products backed sprinter lined up outside of row seven for the 40-lap A-Main.  Following two cautions in the first ten circuits, Dollansky ran eleventh before another yellow flag on lap 14.  The Elk River, Minnesota native continued to battle early cautions and chip away by cracking the top-ten on lap 16 and then using a great restart to take ninth from Terry McCarl.  The Big Game Treestands sprinter kept charging to the front passing Chad Kemenah around the halfway point and then stealing seventh from Joey Saldana a few circuits later. 

Making the highside work best, ‘The Crowd Pleaser’ then narrowed the gap on sixth place running Steve Kinser and claimed the spot with five laps to go.  In the remaining circuits the MobileStar #7 closed on Jason Meyers for a spot in the top-five but crossed the finish line in 6th to earn the KSE Hard Charger Award.

"In the feature we were moving up pretty good," explained Dollansky.  "I was hoping we would have some longer green flag runs to get into traffic but it seemed like everytime we did the yellow came out and then during the latter part of the race the track rubbered up and we dropped in line to follow."

Racing was supposed to resume Saturday at Calistoga Speedway but significant amounts of rain postponed the event.  With the early season West Coast swing in the books the Big Game Treestands #7 team will now travel back to the shop in Minnesota before action continues at Paducah International Raceway in Kentucky on April 13th.

Be sure to check out the latest CDR wallpaper for April HERE.