“Battle of the Border” Produces Top Ten Finish

By Dave Sully - (Ransomville, NY) On Tuesday, July 3rd, the Williamson Racing Team traveled to nearby Ransomville Speedway for the $5,000 to win “Battle of the Border,” which this year took on added prominence, as it was dubbed a 358 Modified Series event as well. Things started out well, as Mat set fast time in hot laps, time trialed fastest in his group, had a good starting spot in his heat and wound up winning it going away. That put him into the redraw, an area that has not been kind to Mat so far this season. After drawing No. 11 at the last series event at Mohawk, Mat once again drew the eleventh starting spot, putting him at an immediate disadvantage.

In the 75 lap feature, try as he might Mat wasn’t able to make much progress against the stout field and ended up finishing tenth, but beating some good cars, like Pat Ward, Alan Johnson, and Dale Planck, among others, in the process.

Mat described his night, noting, “We started eleventh, got stuck behind some junk and then went backwards, but we ended up tenth. It was similar to what happened at Mohawk. We were racing behind some people who don’t use their heads or show the same respect that these guys here have. It was a good race. We would have been a top five car, but we were behind Matt Billings, and he was all over the place. We were behind him about forty laps or so. Every time I went to go around him, he put me in the moat. When I tried to go under him, he put me on the infield. If we could have drawn a better number and started further up, we would have been better. It is what it is.”

Regarding the overall picture, he added, “It’s a little frustrating to be experimenting and not going anywhere. We tried some different stuff on Tuesday night. We thought the track was going to get looser than what it was, and we were a little tight.”

So, it’s back to the drawing board, once again, with a lot of racing still to go.