Mat Sweeps Weekend With Win At Merrittville

By Dave Sully - Following an impressive effort at Lernerville on Friday, where the team recorded its second win, the team returned home to Merrittville to take on the talented group of weekly 358 pilots. Following a win in the heat, Mat made his pole position starting spot pay off, sparring early with Chad Chevalier, withstanding a strong challenge from Larry Lampman, and then holding off the acknowledged master of Merrittville, Pete Bicknell, to make it two for two on the weekend. You can’t get any better than that.

Mat caught a break in his heat when leader Erik Rudolph suffered transmission problems, which allowed Mat to take the lead after moving up to second from his sixth place starting spot. He wound up winning the heat, which put him on the pole for the feature. At some tracks, the pole is not the most advantageous position, but it was good this night. Mat explained, “It was very important. The bottom was really good. I think this was the first time I’ve started on the pole in about two years, so I had to take advantage of it.”

“You don’t want to go backward when you start on the pole. You need to hit your marks and make sure the car’s really good. We made the right choice on shocks tonight. . I think we screwed ourselves last week on that. My dad and Rob Sawatsky put a real good package together.”

Mat and Chad Chevalier, who started outside him on the front row, swapped the lead a few times in the early going before Mat was able to pull ahead. “I knew the top was fast early,” Mat noted, “I knew it would go away. It was just a matter of time. I just couldn’t let him get ahead of me on the bottom. We had a good race going. It’s good to race with Chad. These guys are all pretty good.”

As the race progressed, Larry Lampman and Pete Bicknell became Mat’s chief tormenters. Larry, driving for Mike Bowman this season, was especially fast on the outside. Bicknell, always on the prowl, moved past Lampman into second on lap 26, with plenty of time to do his thing. A caution on lap 27 put the two side by side for the restart.

Mat got a great run and cleared Bicknell by two car lengths going into turn one. It looked good at that point, but on lap 29 there was another caution, which proved to be a carbon copy of the previous one. Mat got the same great run, cleared Bicknell and this time was able to increase his lead over the remaining laps, putting the opening point night in the win column.

Talking about the restarts, Mat observed, “BRP builds one helluva race car. I get forward drive like nobody else. I can almost flat foot it on the restarts. ERD builds a great motor, so it’s good when you get a couple car lengths going into one. You can give yourself some room for a slip up or two.”

Mat concluded, “You have to take advantage of those opportunities. I’d like to thank my crew. They did a great job.”
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As they say, “You can’t win them all if you don’t win the first one.” Well, they did that. It’s king for a week. It’s time to re-cinch and go for more.