Close But No Cigar in Series Race at RPM

BY DAVE SULLY - Like a golfer who has a great round going, but has a few bad shots, the Williamson Racing Team put themselves in a position to win their first ever Series race at RPM on Friday, September 20th, only to be victimized on a late race restart, which resulted in an eighth place finish. The night started very well, as Mat timed second, finished second in his heat and then drew the outside pole for the feature on the tight quarter mile oval. Mat led the first 75 laps and things looked very good indeed, until fate intervened. A caution on lap 75 set up the final side by side restart, next to Chris Raabe, and that proved to be Mat’s undoing.

He explained, “It was the last double file restart. On all the other restarts he was playing games, smashing into the side of you, firing first to get the jump. The last one was his last chance to do anything. He just decided he was going to drive into turn one and not lift. He hit the side of the car and bent the front end all to hell, put us up on the cushion and pushed us back to about seventh or eighth. Going into the next turn, because of the damage he caused, we ended up getting spun around. It was unfortunate.”

“Because there were so any cautions, there weren’t any lap cars, so we went all the way to the back. There were about eighteen cars left on the track. We passed ten cars and finished eighth. It’s unfortunate to finish eighth, when we knew we had the fastest race car. Apparently, he does that to everybody, so it wasn’t just me. The track was neat. It was something different. I can’t wait to go back there.”

The upshot of the whole thing is that Mat left Quebec in second place in the points to Erick Rudolph, who now leads Mat by 34 points going into the next Series event at Weedsport on Wednesday night of Super Dirt Week. Mat summed it up, saying, “We’ve run better than anybody on the tour so far, and, unfortunately, the results don’t show it. We’ve still got a chance to win this thing, so we need to just keep going and hope for the best.”