Knoxville Nationals Yields Top Ten
After
putting on a show charging through the field on the Thursday qualifying
night before suffering misfortune in the final hand full of laps, The
Big Game Treestands #7 team converged on Knoxville Raceway on Saturday
for the Super Bowl of sprint car racing, the 51st Annual Goodyear
Knoxville Nationals, as Craig Dollansky made his sixteenth Nationals
main event in nineteen attempts.
Since
the lineup for the main event was set after Thursday's event, the
Aggressive Hydraulics Maxim accumulated the eighteenth most points to
start outside row nine. The initial start would be short-lived as
Austin McCarl got upside down in turn 2 but on the second attempt 'The
Crowd Pleaser' would make his way up to fourteenth by the time the next
stoppage came on lap 4. Racing resumed until lap 14 when Kerry Madsen
got upside down on the backstretch at which point Dollansky lost one
spot but regained it and another position by lap 23 and held the
thirteenth spot until the competition caution came with 23 laps to go.
After
the only 'pit stop' in sprint car racing due to the 50-lap event, 'The
Crowd Pleaser' restarted thirteenth and gained two spots by 14 to go.
The remaining circuit would see the Karavan Trailers #7 race into the
top-ten and cross the checkered flags in 10th. The strong finish marked
the twelfth time Dollansky has finished in the top-ten at the Knoxville
Nationals, an accomplishment that moves the Elk River, Minnesota driver
up to 6th most all-time tied with Doug Wolfgang and Donny Schatz.
"It's
unfortunate that we had the troubles that we did on the qualifying
night," commented Dollansky. "We were going to be sitting pretty good
but it is what it is and that kind of put us in a hole for Saturday
night. We had a good car on our qualifying night but didn't have a very
good car on Saturday night and made the wrong tire choice for both
segments and kind of maintained and advanced to make some progress. We
salvaged a top ten out of it but it wasn't what we were hoping for this
year at the Nationals."
Racing
continues this coming Friday for the Big Game Treestands #7 team as
they look to sweep 2011 World of Outlaws competition at River Cities
Speedway in North Dakota, a track Dollansky raced to victory in the two
previous events in June.
