No Good News Emanating From Mohawk

By Dave Sully - (Hogansburg, NY) Mohawk International Raceway is fast becoming a curse word for the Williamson Racing Team, as another disappointing result entered the record book on Saturday, September 15th, complicated further by a rainout of the Big Block event on Friday, which necessitated a re-write of the Saturday schedule. Shuffling the calendar to cram a two day show into a one day show with two admissions, one for the afternoon Big Block race, and the other for the full evening show, which included the 358 Series event, created mass confusion, as the afternoon crowd had to be cleared out, while haulers and spectators for the evening show were trying to get in. By the time everything settled out, it made for a LONG night.

Randy commented, “Racing finished at 2:03AM last night. They scheduled the Big Block race for 1:00PM. Because of that, we couldn’t get into the pits, so we had to wait outside until they ran the Big Block Show. They finished that about six o’clock, but when they finally cleared the pits and the grandstand, everybody was jumping in front of everyone else. By the time we got into the pits, there were no pit stalls, so we were put in the infield. There were probably ten or fifteen teams on the infield, including Cody McPherson, Brandon Easey, and Gary Lindberg, along with us.”

This increased the team’s frustration level even before the No. 6 took to the track. Ultimately, the show went on, but it didn’t produce the desired outcome for the intrepid travelers.

With a healthy field of 42 Modifieds in the pits, the task was challenging from the start. Randy noted, “We didn’t qualify real great. We time trialed sixth in our group. We just missed the setup. So, we changed the car for the heat race and got fourth in the heat, which was good. That meant that we had to start fourteenth in the feature. However, they had a full day of racing and never touched the race track for the night show. By the eighth lap of our feature, which was about midnight, it rubbered down to one lane on the bottom, so it was a matter of waiting for the guy in front of you to screw up. They were trying to ride around the infield tires, and Mat was running good. He came from fourteenth to ninth, and we just finished passing Carey Terrence on the track when he caught a tire with the left front. He got in just a little too tight. Nobody pushed him. He did it himself and pulled the front end out of the car and took out the steering box at the same time. We couldn’t fix it.” So, the No. 6 went off on the hook, the second DNF in a row at Mohawk, a disturbing trend to be sure.

As for the aftermath, he continued, “We’ll still be second in points, but we lost a lot of points to Dale Planck. It will be tough catching him now, but anything can happen. I know Mat’s beating himself up pretty bad about hitting the tire, but I said to him on the way home, ‘Don’t feel bad about hitting those tires, because when Pete used to go to Brewerton and Fulton, we used to pull out the front end yearly. I saw Brett (Hearn) hit the tires while leading the Victoria 200 and pull the front end out. It happens to the best of them.’”

Naturally, Mat was disappointed, but the reality is that there is another race coming up on Saturday at Brighton, so there is little time for the team to lick their wounds. Randy commented, “That’s a track we usually run good at, so we’ll see what happens over there.” They’ll roll up their collective sleeves and be ready.