Austin Pierce wins 30-lap feature as local drivers dominate NOSA-IRA challenge series

Jul. 16—GRAND FORKS — If it wasn’t understood already, it is now.

Local sprint car drivers are pretty good. In fact, they’re really good after their showing in the weekend’s King of the Wings NOSA-IRA sprint challenge series that wrapped up Saturday night at River Cities Speedway.

Local NOSA-based drivers won all three features, capped by Austin Pierce’s 30-lap win in the finale — a win that was the 50th of his career and paid him $5,000.

Mark Dobmeier, who won features the first two nights of the challenge series in Fergus Falls and at RCS, was named the King of the Wings as he claimed the points title. He finished fourth in the series finale.

Pierce, who won one of the two challenge series races last season, said NOSA may not get the credit it deserves.

“We don’t get the publicity like some of those other bigger ones because we don’t do much traveling,” said Pierce. “But we’re starting to do more and more. The IRA is closer to Pennsylvania and that helps them get some publicity. The IRA came here for the series so until we go there I don’t think we’re going to build our name.”

There were 37 cars on hand for the final night, the majority from the IRA, which has drivers based in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois.

Pierce started on the pole but slipped back to third early as 17-year-old IRA driver Brenham Crouch from Lubbock, Texas, passed NOSA regular Jack Croaker for the lead with 21 laps to go. Crouch came into the weekend as the IRA series points leader.

Crouch held the point until Pierce used a slider to take the lead with six to go.

“The lapped cars got heavy and the No. 1 car (Crouch) decided to move up into my line,” said Pierce. “I knew the only chance I had was to get him in lapped traffic. I knew the bottom of Turns 3 and 4 had some moisture. We came into lapped traffic. He went high and I dove to the bottom and made it stick.

“I kind of cut him off at the wall and I don’t know how close it was but that was my chance to make a move.”

Dobmeier, meanwhile, was shooting for three straight features wins in the series. He started eighth and worked his way to fourth.

But it was a good weekend for his team and NOSA, he said.

“We wanted the three straight wins but we made the best of the weekend,” said Dobmeier. “Our team keeps digging and we’re working hard. We have a great group of guys here at NOSA.”

Crouch finished second in the feature, followed by Brendan Mullen, Dobmeier, and Croaker.

In qualifying, NOSA regular Nick Omdahl posted the fastest time in Group A at 10. 290 seconds while Dobmeier was the fasted in Group B at 11.049.

In the other three sprint features, Andy Pake won the IMCA RaceSaver series main event for the second night in a row. The 20-year-old driver from Felton, Minn., won by 2.943 seconds over Tye Wilke.

Alan Truscinski snapped Dexter Dvergsten’s seven-feature win streak in the lightning sprints. He edged Dvergsten by 0.455 seconds.

In the non-wing main event, Jeremy Lizakowski captured the 20-lap race in dominating fashion. He won by 5.443 seconds over Eric Guyot.