Williamson Racing Team on Top at Lernerville

By Dave Sully  - After an encouraging Big Block foray to Canandaigua a couple of weeks ago, the Williamson Racing Team started its season in earnest at Lernerville Speedway on Friday, April 26th, in fine style by winning the inaugural event of 2013.

Despite a bad draw, which put him at the tail of his heat, Mat wound up winning it. The top three finishers in each heat were placed in the redraw, which, thankfully, was conducted by the track, as Mat, by his own admission, has terrible luck in redraws. The track came through big time, as Mat started on the outside pole, next to Brian Schwartzlander.

Regarding the race, Mat explained, “He got the lead early, and then we got a restart. I
got the lead and built a little bit of an advantage over him, a little bit of a comfort
zone. Then he caught back up to me, and the caution came out. I sealed my right rear
tire over. It was two or three to go. He got by me, and I couldn’t pass him back. . He
went over the scales and was light by a drastic amount. They tried again and he was
still light and they gave the win to us. That’s good because we get a good point lead
this week.”

Unfortunately, as the team was heading home at 11:30, another drama had to be
played out. Mat noted, “Apparently somebody, said that I had a small block and I should have had to weigh more and that I was light going over the scales. That wasn’t the case. I had the big block
I ran in Florida. They made a big stink over it, so they said they had to cube the
engine, and we had to unload the car. They cubed the motor and it turned out we
were well under what we could have been, so there was nothing to worry about.
I’m pretty excited.”

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Schwartzlander runs an open small block,
which isn’t even dirt legal. If the Schwartzlander motor is legal, he might run his small block there as well.

Track conditions for the race were slippery, not ideal for big blocks. Mat observed,
“Schwardzlander was good. No doubt about it. We’ve got some homework to do.
I made the wrong choice on the right rear shock and that hurt us. We’ll get better
for next week. I don’t think the car is what it should be to go down there and win.
I think we were lucky to get a win, but the monkey’s off our back now. I think we’ll
be better as the weeks go on and we figure out the race track. We’re definitely learning.”

Ultimately, a win is a win. Any racer will tell you that you’ll take them any way you
can get them. It really helped to do it at a foreign track, with championship points
at stake. We’ll see what happens next week.