Learning Experience at Humberstone

By Dave Sully - (Pt. Colborne, NY) Following a fourth place finish at Merrittville on Saturday, the team traveled down the road to Humberstone with the small block on Sunday, as they had considered doing since the big block wasn’t working there. After winning his heat easily from the outside pole, Mat entered the dreaded redraw and wound up tenth on the grid for the feature, behind some very fast cars, mostly small blocks. In fact, there were only two big blocks on hand.

The race had a dubious start, as four cautions were recorded before the second lap was official. Mat was able to avoid the early carnage, and by the eighth lap he found himself fifth for a restart after Bill Bleich and Robbie Krull got together.

From there, it became a matter of survival, as the tightly grouped field never really got strung out because of cautions on laps 15 and 21 in the 30 lap race. The track slickened, with the only big motor able to utilize its power was eventual winner, Dale Planck, who got past small block pilot Erick Rudolph and was able to dictate his own route around the race track.

The veteran Planck was able to out power the small block on the straightaways, while losing some ground in the turns. Mat did the best he could with the slick surface and ended up a respectable seventh.

Mat conceded that that the crew is still trying to work some bugs out that have kept them from challenging for wins. They have been fast at times (witness the record breaking lap at Merrittville), but not fast enough long enough, if you get my drift.

Commenting on the course of action, and his night at Humberstone, he declared, “We’ve been struggling with our shock package and our whole combination really, and it’s nice to have this Friday off (from Lernerville, which has a three day Late Model show), so we can get back to the basics. We washed the car, and we’re going to make some major changes to hopefully get a little better. We haven’t had the right combination yet. We’ve been searching for it, but every time there’s a slick race track we’ve been struggling. We actually thought about changing the frame out, but we’re going to keep trucking.”

The bad news is that they are still looking for the right combination, and the good news is that they are still looking for the right combination. The news will be even better when they find it, which they will, because this team has a never say die attitude.

There is still a lot of time. Heck, the summer just officially started on June 21st. The team can use that as a fresh start.