Born February 10, 1966 in Danville, Indiana, Mark Dotson’s passion for motorcycles started with a desire to customize his bicycles. Though Mark never owned a motorcycle as a child, he lived the motorcyclist life vicariously through a neighbor who taunted him as he road his dirt bike day after day. That neighbor planted the seed for Mark’s road to racing.
Mark was nineteen years old before he got his first motorcycle, a 1980 Yamaha 400 Special. He rode the bike everywhere and a year later stepped up to an ’81 CX-500 Honda. While riding with a friend in Southern Indiana, Mark traveled through a town named Bean Blossom. He looks at that trip as fate, putting him in the right place at the right time. Their accidental ride through Bean Blossom found them right in the middle of a bike rally called the Bean Blossom Boogie. The rally included an all-Harley drag race at a local outlaw track that Mark swears wasn’t even an 1/8th mile long. Mark and his buddy purchased tickets and went in to check it out. It didn’t take Mark long to talk the promoter into letting them race their Honda’s against the Harley’s. The hand wave start grudge races proved easy so Mark and friend started beating up on the Harley’s. The event sparked Mark’s interest in drag racing, one that took many more years to ignite.
Mark finally started drag racing at his local track in 2008 on a ten year old Suzuki Katana 750F. After a few months of getting beat up by bigger bikes, he upgraded to a new Hayabusa to level the playing field at Kanawha Valley Motorsports Park. The next year Mark felt he was ready to jump straight from the frying pan into the fire by joining and racing at AMA Dragbike national events and starting his own team called AAAC Racing Team. That led to attending a Rickey Gadson’s drag racing school , which was a huge help in learning to launch, decrease 60’ times and get down the track quicker.
