By Dave Sully - THOROLD, ON - After the encouraging finish at Lernerville on Friday, the team arrived at Merrittville on Saturday, August 17th, with a degree of confidence, despite the broken push rod, which sidelined them the week before. Using the same car and motor, Mat and the team turned in the most technically perfect race performance anyone has seen at Merrittville in a long time.
After winning the heat, albeit by a technicality (Mike Bowman crossed the line first, but was penalized for jumping the start, while Mat crossed the line second, after starting fifth), Mat lined up tenth for the start of the feature. The car took off at the drop of the green. With the race going caution free, Mat had to race past nine cars to take the lead. By lap 16, he was in second, passing Tyler McPherson, and one lap later he drove past Fred Carleton to take the point.
He wasn’t finished there. Staying on the gas, he built a half straightaway lead, which became close to half a lap by the time the checkered flag flew. Through the whole race, the car never wavered, and Mat could use any line he wanted to engage the lap cars. This, the team’s third win of the season at Merrittville, was easily their strongest performance. It wasn’t the most exciting. The other two wins had more drama, but on this night it showed the kind of dominance that they have been seeking all year.
Mat concluded, “We’ve been rolling since we won down here three weeks ago. We just haven’t had any luck. We broke a push rod last week, and the week before we were rolling pretty good and just got caught up in a little wreck and had to go to the back, but
this car’s been good for the last four weeks. I’ve got to give credit to all the guys who helped me get here, all my crew, my father, and all the sponsors. I couldn’t do it without those guys. You also get a lot of input from a lot of other drivers, like Matt Sheppard and Mike Payne, when I was struggling. We’ve got seven (wins) now. It feels good to be back here. Maybe we’ll get two more here and two more at Lernerville and we’ll be up to eleven. We’ve got to win a tour race one of these days and get ready for Syracuse and Charlotte.”
Of the race, he explained, “I’ve got the setup here where I’ve got to keep the momentum up. When we’ve got to shut down and putt around the bottom as much as you have to, it doesn’t help as much, so we try to roll in a little bit heavier than anybody else. We’ve got some good side bite with this thing, so it tends to stick and drift up to the cushion. We just hammer the throttle. These guys (the crew) make things a lot easier for me when they set it up like this. It feels good to be back in Victory Lane.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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