Near Miss at Lernerville Gets Team Back on Track

By Dave Sully - After a disappointing night at Rolling Wheels on Wednesday, the team roared back at Lernerville, narrowly missing its fourth win of the year, but solidifying the point lead with a strong effort on Friday, June 7th. Buoyed by a familiar racing surface and a known setup, Mat came from last in his heat to finish second and then came from tenth in the feature, narrowly losing out to Rex King Jr in the 25 lap feature on a very fast race track.

The team felt that the main reason for the problems at Rolling Wheels and the success at Lernerville centered around the torsion bars. Mat explained, “Torsion bars give new life to a race car. In the modern era, we’re all running torsion bars. They go bad because you’re twisting them up, beating and banging them. They just end up going bad and you can never really tell until you go to a race track and don’t run well. We put all new bars in it this week and ran a whole lot better than we did at Rolling Wheels. That’s for sure.”

Of the night, he explained “We’re comfortable with the race track. We went out in the heat and ran second from last. It was definitely a tough heat. Schwartzlander, King, and other fast guys were in it. I finished second to Shingledecker. Actually, I was catching him. I ran out f tear-offs and couldn’t see a darn thing, so I had to back off a little bit to be able to finish the race.”

“That was kind of an eye opener, so I put 20 tear-offs on for the feature and used all of them too. It was a hammer-down race track for sure. It was tough to pass. You had to almost use the lap cars to your advantage, to pin guys up against them to gain spots. It was another good night for the S and W car. I’m just happy to be up front.”

I was under King when the caution came out with two laps to go. Once the caution came out, I don’t know if I could have beaten him or not, but I think I had a better chance if the caution hadn’t come out. He was faster. When the caution came out, he pulled me down the front straightaway, and then he pulled me down the back straightaway just as much. I think he beat me by three or four car lengths.”

“It was a good run for him. I’m happy for those guys. You can’t meet a nicer bunch of people if you have to lose. Though he started from the pole, you still have to be fast and he definitely was.”

It’s always nice to rebound strongly and the team did that. Now a good showing at Merrittville on Saturday in the 358 would put some icing on the cake.