Attica Raceway Park has always been known as a racy track, and on Friday night it certainly lived up to that moniker, with two and three-wide racing all night long on the high-banked 1/3-mile. When the dust settled, Joey Saldana found himself in victory lane for the fifth time this season in World of Outlaws competition.
Saldana, the current World of Outlaws championship point leader, made a bold threewide pass on the 27th lap to move around Steve Kinser for the runner-up spot and then he powered around Craig Dollansky, passing both cars in the span of a few feet. Earlier in the race, Saldana and Kinser waged a torrid battle for the second spot, as they ran sideby- side lap after lap.
Craig Dollansky started on the pole and led from the outset. The native of Elk River, Minnesota built a sizeable early advantage aboard the Karavan Trailers Maxim. When the lead pack got into track that allowed Kinser and Saldana to close the gap, and slip around him.
“To get our fifth win of the year already is great, ” said Saldana, driver of the Open Joist Mopar-powered JEI. “We have to keep going and building our team. We have to keep getting better and better, and continue to keep on what we are doing.
A red flag on the 39th lap, gave Kinser and Donny Schatz one more chance at Saldana. By way of World of Outlaws rules, two consecutive green flag laps have to be run to finish a race, and with the three nose-to-tail that set up a final dash to the checkers. Saldana used a strong restart to pull away and win by 0.6 second.
“You definitely don’t want to have a green, white, checker finish with Steve Kinser behind you, ” said Saldana. “The way the track was, you didn’t know where you wanted to go. You didn’t really want to go to the bottom in (turns) three and four. I didn’t want to get a bad restart and let them get a run on me. I chose the top and it paid off. My car was working well up there.
Kinser battled all night coming home in the runner-up spot to earn his eighth Top-10 finish of the season. Early on he and Saldana fought for the third spot. After the 20-time champion gained that position, he set his sights on Paul McMahan and staged an entertaining battle with him for a number of laps, before taking the second spot. In the middle stages of the race, the native of Bloomington, Indiana reeled in Dollansky in lapped traffic, and inched ahead a few times in turn three, only to have Dollansky use the momentum from the high side of the track to retain the lead at the line each lap.
“We weren’t bad, ” said Kinser, driver of the Q Oil Maxim. “It’s the best we have done on a slick race track in quite some time. I was pretty quick through one and two. If I would have gotten by Craig (Dollansky) a little bit quicker, maybe before Joey (Saldana) got by him, I may have had a shot. Once he got back by us, we couldn’t get off the bottom of (turn) four very good. We weren’t quite as good as he was on the top.
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