Dollansky Looking For Best Start At This Weekend

Apr 24, 2008

Brandon, SD—Not much has been able to slow Craig Dollansky down this season. Mother Nature has tried her best in the form of rain, cold, sleet and even snow, as have the other 18 full-time Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series drivers, but he just keeps winning races and racking up Top-Five finishes.

Dollansky will look to continue his strong start to the 2008 season this weekend, as the Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series takes to the track for two full nights of racing, beginning at the high-banked 3/8-mile Huset’s Speedway in South Dakota on Friday, April 25.

“I have always enjoyed racing there,” said the driver of the Auto Value Maxim. “It definitely is one of my favorite tracks to go to. Anytime people ask about my favorite tracks, I always mention Huset’s.”

Dollansky has had a great deal of success at Huset’s Speedway over the years, as he has four wins, including the 2000 Gold Cup, which was sanctioned by the World of Outlaws Gumout Series. In that event, he bested a very strong field that included four fellow current Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series drivers.

The race this week will be the first of three visits by the series to Huset’s Speedway in 2008. The last time that he competed more than twice in a season at the track located just outside of Sioux Falls was in 1999, when he had five Top-two finishes. He won two races at the track that season and was the runner-up in three others, and in total had six Top-10 finishes in the same number of starts. The event on Friday will mark the second short track event of the season for the series, to go along with a stop at I-55 Raceway in Missouri earlier this month.

“It’s definitely is a high-banked race track,” he noted of the configuration at Huset’s Speedway. “When they have the track prepared well, you can run the top and the bottom. It really produces some great racing. I can’t really compare it to anywhere else we go. It’s a pretty unique track.”

Dollansky and his crew led by veteran crew chief Mike Woodring, along with Rob Beattie and Lester Groves look to pay extra close attention to the racing surface on Friday night to see how it changes over the course of the evening, as they seek to gain additional information for the series two return visits to Huset’s Speedway in the heat of the summer.

“This first time we go there this year, the track conditions will dictate what we do with our race car,” explained the native of Elk River, Minnesota. “It’s early in the year, so a lot will depend on how they prepare the track. We look to put on a good show for the fans.”

Dollansky won the opening event of the 2008 season for the World of Outlaws during the Alltel DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Florida. He followed that up with a fifth-place run and a second-place performance, to earn his second consecutive Alltel DIRTcar Nationals championship. That came after he finished fourth, fifth and sixth in the opening three races of the six night event at the half-mile which were sanctioned by the All Star Circuit of Champions.

After a strong fifth-place run at the storied Manzanita Speedway in Arizona, Mother Nature interrupted the World of Outlaws schedule, but Dollansky and his team headed east and picked up a win at the famed Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania, where the World of Outlaws will compete on three separate occasions this season. He followed that up with a fourth-place performance at Lincoln Speedway against a very strong field that included several fellow World of Outlaws drivers.