By Dave Sully - (Thorold, ON) - A strong run at Merritville on Saturday, June 15th, was short-circuited, literally, with Mat running fourth in the feature. After a dominating win the heat race after starting third, Mat sat sixth on the grid for the feature. Scott Wood established himself early, while Mat, Pete Bicknell, Bill Bleich, Tom Flannigan, and Mike Bowman all battled hard for positions near the front
As the race progressed, Mat and Pete swapped positions several times, with plenty of action all around them. On lap 17, the lights went out for the No. 6 when the engine suddenly quit as he exited turn two, causing a logjam behind him. Fortunately, there was no serious contact, though Bowman was right on his tail when it happened. So, what looked like a probable good finish ended up with a push to the pits and a sixteenth place in the books, upping the challenge for the coming weeks.
Mat explained, “We had a good race car tonight. There’s no doubt about that. We were racing with Pete there. Got by him. Then he got by me, and I got by him again. It was a good race going on and then that last caution before I went off the race track (lap 9), we started having some ignition problems. It wouldn’t fire at the end of the straightaway. It started losing its power and it went dead off of two there, completely gone. It wouldn’t fire because there was no spark there.”
“We got pushed in and the crew tried really hard to get it back out there for the points, but not so lucky tonight. We don’t race tomorrow, so we’ve got a long weekend to get this thing back on track.”
Upon further review, it seems that the problem was the battery, which, if so, s a fairly easy fix. The challenge is to find out if another condition caused it. The team will do that and the car will be back stronger than ever, with a little more of a hill to climb, but a lot of time to do it.
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