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Mark Dobmeier- Twin Features Sweep in River Cities!

Mark Dobmeier and the Jimco Racing/Polaris #13 team swept Twin Features last Friday night at River Cities Speedway. The second feature included a bonus from Buffalo Wild Wings to start at the tail. The Grand Forks, North Dakota native accomplished that feat and in turn, scored wins #118 and #119 at the popular bullring. Unfortunately, bad luck struck late in the feature Saturday night at Badlands Motor Speedway near Brandon, South Dakota costing Mark another win on the weekend. This Friday, the team will be back at their home track, River Cities Speedway. Saturday and Sunday, Mark will take on the World of Outlaws at Badlands, the scene of two of his career wins with that series.

This was a Friday that River Cities doesn’t usually see sprint cars. “It was Fair week here,” says Mark. “Normally, they don’t run sprint cars there during the fair, but Buffalo Wild Wings once again helped the local sprint car community throwing some money up for a double-feature night. The fans paid $5 to get in the fair, but the races were free so it was pretty packed.”

Mark would win his heat race, setting up the first of two features. “We started fourth in the first feature,” he says. “We were able to make a pass of the top three in turn four on the first lap. (Dusty) Zomer, Wade Nygaard and Austin Pierce were all together running the middle to the top. We were able to go on the bottom and get them in turn four.”

The first win of the night came 25 laps later. “We led the rest of the way from there,” says Mark. “The car was really good, and we were able to get through lapped cars really well. That one went really well.”

The second feature was a total invert of the cars running at the conclusion of the first main event. “They had a back row challenge, which had a bonus if you could pull off the win,” says Mark. “It took a while to get going. The first few laps, we really didn’t get anywhere. There was a caution about five laps in. I could see Zomer was up in seventh or eighth. We were back in 16th or 17th. On the restart, we went to the bottom and got quite a few cars right away.”

The shark smelled blood at that point. “We worked our way up through the field and kept it trucking,” says Mark. “Zomer was leading and I was running second. We kind of caught him, but he was running through lapped cars really well. We were just waiting for him to make a mistake. With two laps to go, he got tangled with a lapped car coming out of four. That took him out of the race. We don’t like to win races that way, but you take what you can get. It was damn good night. When it was all added up, I think it was $4,900 or so with the bonuses. The car was perfect.”

It appeared things would go as well at Badlands Saturday. After timing in seventh quick and running second in his heat, the feature draw finally went well for Mark in the draw. “I thought we were going to have a perfect weekend,” he says. “We finally drew the pole. We led the entire thing. I think we had about a four second lead with six laps to go. It was about a half a track.”

That’s when disaster struck. “We broke a left front radius rod,” says Mark. “That wipes out your steering. I went up and rubbed the wall on top. I kind of got turned a bit. I knew something was broken, I just didn’t know what. We got going down the backstretch, and when I turned right, the car turned left. We ended up tagging the inside cement barrier and bounced around a little bit.”

The team went to work to get Mark back on track. “We got into the work area, and our hard working crew got things fixed in a couple of yellow flag laps,” he says. “They replaced the radius rod, and a couple torsion arms. We restarted 19th and got up to eleventh. We definitely had the car to beat, we just had a little bad luck there. We were lucky too, in that it could have been a lot worse.”

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