By Dave Sully - (Thorold, ON) After a good finish at Lernerville the previous night, the clock struck twelve on Saturday at Merrittville, where slick conditions made passing a premium and Mat had to settle for a twelfth place finish, right where he started. The conditions were such that of the top six starters, five of them finished in the top five. Only Shayne Pierce, who started fourth, was not near the front at the end, and that’s because he broke early.
Ultimately, Mark D’Ilario was able to sneak past polesitter Todd Gordon and went on to win by a big margin. For Mat, who started sixth in his heat and finished second, it was a night when it became obvious that, as the track dried out, it would be tough to move forward.
He explained, “It wasn’t the night we were looking for. That’s for sure. We’ve run better here before a whole lot of times, and you can’t let it get you down. Hopefully, we can turn it around. We’re going to go home, scale the thing and get it back to square one. (Tonight) It was the car in general. The shocks weren’t very good. That’s for sure. We had good tire wear tonight, so I don’t think it was that. I think it was a combination of everything. The track got a whole lot slicker than we thought it would. We were expecting more out of the race car than it gave us. It is what it is, but you can’t look back on it.”
“It takes a driver to win on tracks like this. I think it was more starting position than anything. It was so slippery that everybody was fast. It’s tough to pass when it’s like that. There’s not really a lane to miss, because there wasn’t really a lane out there, but we’ll get it. Pete (Bicknell) was right in front of us (he ended up eighth), so it wasn’t like anybody was really moving.”
With Series races at Cornwall on Sunday and back at Merrittville on Monday, it’s important not to dwell on tonight, but to roll up the sleeves and keep things in perspective. As the Carpenters famously intoned, “We’ve only just begun.”
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