Merrittville Opener Night Bitter Sweet for Williamson Racing

By Dave Sully - For much of the Spring Sizzler 50 lap Modifed Feature, the opening night of Merrittville’s 2012 season, it looked like the Williamson team was going to be celebrating a hard fought win, but as Yogi Berra always said, “It ain’t over, till it’s over.”  Ultimately the No. 6 crossed the line in fourth, but it could have been much worse.


Flashing championship form, Mat drove from third to the lead on lap seven, when Pete Bicknell, who took the point from the outside pole at the drop of the green, made a rare mistake, jumping the cushion in turn four, allowing Mat to pounce.  From there he navigated high and low through lap traffic to maintain a narrow advantage. “The car could go anywhere,” Mat noted.


Just when the team was thinking about cracking open the champagne (so to speak), fate intervened on lap 43, when he lost the lead and a lap later made heavy contact with Bicknell that almost spelled disaster.  Mat explained, “It was my race to lose and I sure screwed up and lost it. I followed the lap car for a while.  I knew that if I didn’t make a move, I was a sitting duck, so I tried to go around him. Pete capitalized and got me going down the back stretch.  Then I tried to cross him up   He left me room to get under him.  I tried to get underneath him and he closed the door.  He didn’t know I was there. I was only at his bumper. I lost the right front shock, and I was just hanging on from there on in. It was tough. You win some and you lose some.  It would have been nice to get the ‘W’ tonight.” 


Over the remaining laps, with the right front bouncing crazily without the shock, Mat was able to manhandle the car to a still good fourth place finish.  He added, “We could have been in worse shape than we were.  We still got a top five out of it. I can’t say enough about my crew and my ERD motor.  The guys put it all together.  The race track was awesome tonight.” 


With a top field of cars competing each week and a strong opening night performance that came up a little short, look for the Williamson racing team to be in the thick of the championship hunt all season long.